Mother Knows Best
May 16, 2002Judges 5:7 says, “Village life in Israel ceased, ceased until I, Deborah, arose, arose a mother in Israel.” The Israelites lived under martial law for twenty years. When they finally cried out for help, God sent a mom to the rescue.
It doesn’t say a judge arose. It doesn’t say a prophetess arose. It doesn’t say a military strategist arose. Deborah was all those things. She played all those roles. But that’s not what it says. It says a mother arose! Like so many other critical junctures in history, a mom rose to the occasion.
Rosa Parks confronted racism by refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Hariett Beecher Stowe exposed the evils of slavery by writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Emmeline Pankhurst went to jail twelve times in 1912 in her fight for a woman’s right to vote. And Deborah restored freedom and peace for forty years by leading a successful military campaign against King Jabin.
Talk is cheap. It’s easy to complain and criticize, but we aren’t called to talk about what’s wrong. We’re called to do what’s right. James 2:17 says, “Faith, by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
In 1980, Candy Lightner’s thirteen year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver. The man responsible had two previous convictions and he never served time for killing Cari. Candy Lightner could have become critical of the judicial system. She could have let the anger eat her alive. But she decided to do something about it. She formed an organization called MADD--Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. Twenty years later that organization has 3 million members and 600 chapters worldwide. Who knows how many innocent lives have been saved through the efforts of MADD? In the words of Judges 5:7, “a mother arose.”
Motherhood
Motherhood is the most challenging and rewarding profession on the planet. Raising kids takes incredible physical and intellectual and emotional and spiritual energy. Kids are tough to keep up with. I recently read an email titled “12 Tests for Expectant Parents.” Here is one test to decide whether or not to have children:
Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child, a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy. Until you can easily accomplish this do not even contemplate having children.
Moms don’t get the credit they deserve, especially single moms! No occupation is more noble. When Tony Campolo taught at the University of Pennsylvania, his wife was a stay-at-home mom. At faculty functions, she’d invariably get asked what she did for a living. When she said she was a stay-at-home mom, she felt patronized by the intelligentsia. It was almost as if what she did didn’t count, so she decided to redefine her role. The next time someone asked what she did, she said, “I am socializing two homo sapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they might be instruments for the transformation of the social order into the teleologically prescribed utopia inherent in the eschaton.” She’d pause and ask, “And what is it that you do?”
Prophet
Judges 4:4 says, “Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time.” The word “prophetess” can conjure up lots of unbiblical images. The word “prophet” or “prophetess” has two basic meanings: seer and speaker.
A prophetess sees what other don’t see because she sees with spiritual eyes. Prophetesses have supernatural in-sight and fore-sight and they say what they see. A prophetess speaks with spiritual authority. They know what to say and when to say it--they have a supernatural sense of timing.
I Corinthians 14:3 gives parameters for prophecy. It says, “Everyone who prophesies speaks to others for their strengthening, encouragement, and comfort.” Prophecy serves three purposes: to build up, to urge forward, and to come alongside. A prophetic word strengthens, encourages, and comforts.
It’d be easy to read Judges 4:4 and say, “Deborah was a prophetess. Good for her.” But Moses said in Numbers 11:29, “I wish all the Lord’s people were prophets.” I think we have a mistaken notion that prophets are a very small, very select group of individuals. Not true.
Jewish philosophers believed that becoming prophetic was the crowning point of mental and spiritual development. It was expected--the more you grow, the more prophetic you become. In the New Testament, prophecy is the supernatural by-product of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:17 says, “In the last days, God says I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy.”
Prophets see potential. They see in us what we can’t see in ourselves--the hidden strengths and blindspots. When Paul looked at Timothy, he saw potential. He said, “Do not neglect the gift that is in you,” and “Fan into flame the gift of God.” Timothy was timid. He had inferiority issues. But Paul plays the role of prophet in his life. Goethe said, “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.” A prophet brings out the best by the believing the best.
No one is better at that than mothers. Even when everyone else gives up, moms keep believing in their kids. When Thomas Edison was in elementary school, his teacher sent a note home that said, “Your child is dumb. We can’t do anything for him.” His mother wrote back, “You do not understand my boy. I will teach him myself.” Listen to what Edison wrote in his autobiography years later.
“My mother cast over me an influence which has lasted all my life. The good effects of her early training I can never lose. If it had not been for her faith in me at a critical time in my experience, I should never have become an inventor. Her firmness, her sweetness, her goodness were potent powers to keep me on the right path. My mother was the making of me.”
For better or for worse, moms are prophets! In Judges 4:14, the prophetic mom in Deborah comes out. She says to Barak, “This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?” She had a supernatural sense of timing--"this is the day.” And she had a supernatural sense of destiny--"has not the Lord gone ahead of you?”
According to Laurie Beth Jones, 40% of our lives are based on personal prophecies. We crave positive prophecies. We need something to live up to! We need something to shoot for. Prophecies can keep us going when the going gets tough. In her book, The Power of Positive Prophecies, Jones tells a story about a man named Michael.
“I grew up in an alcoholic household where I never heard a positive word. On my way home from school I would always stop in at Jimmy’s, the local dry cleaner, because he kept candy on the counter. He got to know me, and told me one afternoon, ‘Michael, you are a very smart boy. Someday you are going to run a very big business.’ I would listen to him in disbelief and return home only to get called a ‘dog’ and knocked around by my dad.. But you know, Jimmy the dry cleaner was the only person I can remember believing in me. Today I run a multimillion-dollar health care organization, just like Jimmy predicted. I guess you could say that a dry cleaner was the prophet in my life.”
Amos 1:1 says, “I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’”
Just like Amos, you may not see yourself as a prophet. He was a simple shepherd. But prophets come in all sizes and shapes. They are moms and dads and dry cleaners and shepherds. They are ordinary people who see with spiritual eyes and speak with spiritual authority.