Monthly Archives: February 2018

Before I ever breathed a breath or saw the light of day, my mother prayed for me. Throughout the time she was pregnant with me she prayed. Every day of my life she prayed. She prayed for me and for my spouse. She prayed that God would bless us, that God would use us for His glory.

Prayer was as normal to my mother as eating or breathing. She didn’t pray loud or with impressive speech. She prayed as a child with a need would approach a loving parent. This is how I learned to pray. Watching, listening, praying alongside.

We prayed before every meal. We prayed at night before bed. We prayed when tragedy came and we prayed when good things happened.

Several occasions are carved into my memory forever. One of those was when I was just five years old. It was a school day, so my sisters were all at school and I had gone with Mother on some errand. As we pulled into our driveway, a neighbor came running up to the car. She was clearly very upset as she wailed that the president had been shot. We went into our house and Mother and I knelt down in our living room and prayed for God’s mercy in that hour.

Mother often shared stories of her experience with prayer. As a young girl she experienced God’s answer to her prayers so, being convinced God truly listened and cared enough to answer, her faith was unshakable. Before I was born, my sister was stricken with a serious disease and near death, Mother was praying earnestly in the night when God gave her the name of a doctor to call. As soon as the sun came up the next day, she called and my sister’s treatment was changed so that she fully recovered.

Mother didn’t just pray for me. She didn’t just pray with me. She taught me to pray on my own. When the weather was severe and I tended to panic, Mother would calmly remind me to pray to the only One who could do anything about the weather. If I was worried about an illness, a test at school, piano recital, or any other challenge, she would encourage me to pray.

Over the years of ministry, we would be so excited to share with her what God was doing here at NewSpring. I remember the year we first recorded the stories of those being baptized. We took the DVD down to Texas to watch with her. I watched her weep tears of joy, seeing God changing lives for eternity. This, too, is an answer to her prayers.

During the dark days of Mark’s illness in 2010 and early 2011, my desperation drove me to pray more than I ever have in my whole life. It seemed every breath I breathed was with a prayer for God’s direction and help. And he answered. In God’s time. In God’s way. And he answered, not just with resolving our difficulties, but with using that very painful experience to bring us new relationships that have lead to more opportunities to serve Him.

Every time we see God’s hand in our lives. Every story of a life changed through this ministry, I’m reminded that God hears and answers our prayers, and my mother’s prayer — before I was born.

Not Just A Name

The most fundamental concept we develop is also the most important. As an infant, we learn to respond to our name, but our name is not our identity. If you have any siblings, you learn early that your name differentiates you from the others — until your parent is distracted and “calls roll” while looking straight at you, which seems to indicate they may have forgotten the one thing you think identifies you.

I remember in elementary school being asked what differentiates us from everyone else. After several missed guesses, the teacher explained that the one thing that makes you unique is that you are the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. son or daughter born to your specific mother and father. From a biological vantage point, that would be true. But even as specific as our biological parents are, they do not determine our identity.

In our modern culture, it is common to express that parents “make” their children. How preposterous! Parents can only participate in the conception of a child, they can make no claim on crafting the DNA that will dictate each and every characteristic of a child or breathing the eternal breath of life into that eternal soul. We are created by God and are not a product of our parents as some would have us believe.

“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”
Psalm 139:13-16

We often may think of this passage in reference to our physical bodies, but as my mother taught me, my identity is not my physical body. My soul, the essence of the person God created, is eternal and only lives in this body temporarily.

My mother’s unconditional, nurturing love demonstrated to me that I was hers, but from my earliest memories she stressed to me that I belonged to God. She would say, “You belong to God. God just loaned you to me to take care of.” Why is this so important? Who I am determines how I live my life. It sets my sense of self-value and purpose. If I discover my identity gives me privilege, my circumstances no longer rule over me.

I was intentionally created by the one who made everything, owns everything, and rules over everything. I belong to him. He is my Father.

I have spoken with so many women who were given a very false sense of identity. Many were rejected by one or both of their biological parents. They were made to believe that they were inconvenient accidents having no value or purpose. They, in effect started their lives with a sense of identity bankruptcy. Believing they had no value or purpose, they threw themselves on the trash heap of life.

In stark contrast, I have talked with women who had a loving parent or parents who instilled in them a sense of their God-given value and purpose and even though they may have had very little in the way of material possessions and in spite of distressing life circumstances, they persevered. Why? They had an identity that gave them the strength to endure hardships. An identity bigger than a name or parentage – a unique identity created by God.

Today, the prevailing formula for determining identity is strictly driven by emotions. “Be who you want to be.” Because our emotions and circumstances change from day to day, this is at best a very confusing philosophy to follow and definitely brings no sense of purpose or inner fulfillment.

Because none of us had any part in beginning our existence on this earth, we should be asking bigger questions than who do I want to be today or which of my various feelings should I submit my destiny to. First we should stand firm in the knowledge that we are an intentional creation of an all-loving God, who has a purpose for our life. With that settled, we can then ask what did God create me to experience and accomplish in this life.

This is the year in which I will turn 60. Sixty years seems like an incomprehensible period of time really. Whether you are viewing it from childhood, young adulthood or even the maturity of 40 years, sixty seems so far away. But as hard as it is to realize these years have passed, here I am!

Looking back is both a blur of endless videos and a collection of crystal clear snapshots. As I stand gazing backwards, it’s only natural to analyze the whats and whys of my life thus far and that leads me to people. People who influenced me and steered my life as I have lived it. There are a large number of people who have spoken truth into my life, a sizable group of people who, by their lives have shown me what not to do, a handful of people close to me who have given me counsel as I shared my heart, but only two have had the most impact on my life and soul, my husband and my mother. The story of my husband is for another day. This is the story of my mother’s influence on my life. What she taught me, not just words said, but her life lived.

With over 40 years of ministry experience, I have listened to so many stories of people in painful situations who are looking for answers. In many cases, much of their pain could have been avoided if they had applied wisdom but when they reached into that storehouse that should have provided guidance for them, they found it empty. No one had deposited wisdom in that account for them to draw on when needed. In fact, I have come to realize that the core foundations my mother invested in me are long forgotten in today’s world. They are not just dismissed, but mocked in the public discourse. I contend that what matters has not changed, no matter how loud the objections and I want to share with you what I learned from my mother and why it matters.

Everyone on this earth who has taken a breath was first influenced by their mother — even if they never met her, she influenced them as she carried them, as she delivered them, she gave them a part of herself that will never change. For most of us, that relationship continued and developed over the course of a lifetime. For some, the story is not a happy one, but for many of us, our mothers molded and shaped us to succeed in life, both now and for eternity. My mother, Mary Lou Current McDonald, shaped not only my life, she shaped my soul.