This is my Bible.  I am what it says I am.  I have what it says I have.  I can do what it says I can do.

The Bible is a collection of 66 manuscripts and letters we call books, written over a period of approximately 1500 years by somewhere around 40 writers.  Somehow it all miraculously fits together into (1) a revelation of the character of God, (2) a continuous history of his chosen people – Israel and Christians, and (3) a documentation of His plan to have  a race of Godly humans that He (God the Father, God the Son and Holy Spirit) could have a never-ending relationship with.
God is a God of relationships.  God exists as the Trinity --  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Remember our discussion last summer of the raw egg and how God uses all creation to reveal Himself to us?  (The shell is the outer casing holding the egg all together, the white provides the liquid medium in which the embryo develops (cushions the embryo), and it also contains a large amount of the protein necessary for proper development, The yolk is the source of food for the embryo and contains all the fat in the egg.)  Three different functions, one egg.  All in perfect relationship but doing what each was created for.
 Genesis says God created humanity in His own image.  Therefore, God created people to be relational beings, just as He is relational.  Humanity was created first to relate to God and Secondly to relate to one another.
In Genesis, Chapter 1, it records God speaking the physical world into being:  water, sky, earth, plants, and animals.  The key point to notice in the creation story is that God SPOKE creation into being.  After each part of the physical world was created, God reflected on His work and declared that it was good.  Genesis 1:1 says that the earth was formless, void, and empty.  Webster defines the word “VOID” as completely empty, nothing.  God created the world out of a void of nothingness. He SPOKE it into being from nothingness.
 God then created humanity but He does it in a way that is very different from the way He created the physical world.  Genesis 1:26 and 2:7 says humanity was to be created in God’s own image. Genesis 2:7 says, “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”  God SPOKE the physical world into being. But God created humans by breathing the breath of life into us!  Whose life force? Whose breath of life? God’s life force!
Now, it is true that God loves all of His creation.  Matthew 10:29 says (NIV) “…are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them falls to the ground outside your Father’s care.”  However, the human race has a special purpose. The term breath in Hebrew can also be translated Spirit.  God acted with deliberate and great intentionality.  He breathed His own spirit into humanity in a way that separated us from the animals and God’s other creations that were SPOKEN into existence.  Genesis, Chapter 2, tells us that God walked and talked in the garden with Adam and Eve.  Revelation says in 22:3 that “the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and His servants will serve Him.  They will see His face and His name will be on their foreheads.”  Relationship – from beginning to end.
Man was created to connect to God --  to understand who He is, what He values and to have a close relationship with Him and with all of the rest of His human children. 
In order to have this real relationship, God needed a family that truly loved Him and really wanted to be with Him.  He didn’t want a group of robots or people that were with Him because they had no choice.  One of God’s main attributes is LOVE and He wanted His children, --  us -- to understand and internalize that.  How was He going to teach that to us?  
It’s hard for us to get ahold of but there is no time or space in heaven.  God knew before He even started creation that man would rebel and He knew that Christ would be the solution.  He also knew that what looked like one big failure would be the seed for a new family, as numerous as the stars the Bible says.  You realize God is God. He could have made it so fully formed adults grew up out of the ground like trees, or that a door from another dimension opened and people popped out on earth or that even that we grew on trees like fruit!  But God had a perfect plan to teach his new family about love, trust, relationship and His many attributes – attributes that fall into the categories of what we call masculinity and femininity  -- male and female.  He created a plan where humans would come into the world completely helpless and dependent and he designed mothers and fathers to display his attributes and raise Godly children.  In this environment, if parents follow God’s way to live, God’s love can be developed and shown.  Parents begin to really understand God’s heart towards us, HIS children as we protect and nurture our children  (soccer mom--  pitbull with lipstick?) and children begin to understand God as love is revealed through tenderness, mercy, provision, patience and, yes, discipline.  IF parents follow God’s way to live!
Genesis 1:26-27:  Then God said, “Let us make man in our image , in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them.”
Denise Jordan states that “It takes a man and a woman to fully display what the image of God is like – that’s why we have two sexes on earth. In Genesis 1:28, the terms “male” and “female” are not speaking primarily about biological and sexual characteristics.  God is spirit.  But there is something in the way that He formed us as human beings that gives a revelation of what His character is like. All the traits of masculinity and of femininity are supremely and originally in the nature of God.  “
I hate to break it to you but no matter what the WOKE thought is today, men and women are NOT the same.  Certainly, they can do most of the same things and accomplish most of the same goals but they often do it in a different way, and it will be harder if they are not naturally equipped for the tasks they take one.  I do not think I would beat Duane Johnson in a wrestling match!!  But I don’t think he would last a day in my classroom!
I checked some scientific journals, (which have a bit of a different perspective than The New Yorker, The View etc.) to see if there was a difference between men and women and this is just a couple of the differences I found:
(1)  Male’s bones are bigger and stronger in both size and density.
(2)  On an average women are shorter than men.
(3) The hip bone structure of men and women are different.  The biological sex of an adult skeleton can be determined with 95% accuracy by measuring the hip bones alone.
(4)  Men have bigger brains than women by more than 10% -- but wait! There’s more! – but women’s brains have more connections between the two hemispheres which allows them to use both sides of the brain much more often than men AND they have 30% thicker cortices -- which just happens to be the place that affects cognitive and general intelligences such as multi-tasking.
CARTOON
There was a lot more but ALL of the articles emphasized that all of this does Not mean one sex is smarter than the other but that they do arrive at how to do a task in different ways and that they each have specific strengths and weaknesses.
Let me tell you about three men that were following a trail to a great fishing hole.  They came to a raging river that they realized they would have to cross to keep following the trail.

The first man looked up at God and said “God, please give me the strength to cross the river.” And poof, God gave him strong arms and legs and he made it across the river in 2 hours.

The second man looked up at God and said, “God, please give me the strength to cross the river in less than an hour.” And poof, God gave him a row boat and he made it across the river in 45 minutes.

The third man looked up at God and said, “God, please give me the strength and the intelligence to cross the river.” And poof, God made the man a woman.  She reached into her backpack and took  out a map.  She turned right and walked around the bend and crossed the river in 5 minutes by using the bridge!

All of this to say – God had a purpose in what He was doing and He wants to use family, however that is made up, which can be a lot of different configurations these days, to teach love, relationship and many other of His attributes.  (Please note: we live in a fallen world and we are all imperfect people with sin in our lives.  Therefore the quality of the fathers and mothers we have, or had, varies a great deal.  Some of us are blessed to have, or had, loving, caring, encouraging parents.  Some have, or had, abusive and/or controlling parents who wounded us deeply.)  But the PLAN is for Godly adults to follow God’s teachings and raise up Godly children to be in a relationship to JESUS.  
As you read the Bible, you see that God’s plan to teach love included siblings and friends, a father figure, and a mother figure. 
Siblings and friends were to meet a person’s needs for communication and companionship.  It has been shown that even when children have a good relationship with parents, deep secrets and social interactions often take place primarily with siblings and friends.  But if siblings and friends try to control or devalue each other due to what is happening in their own lives, a person often becomes distrustful and uncommunicative and have a great deal of trouble understanding how Jesus could possibly want a relationship with them.  But Jesus says many times in the New Testament, “I will be with you always.”
 The earthly father was to exhibit God’s masculine qualities and be the member of the family that imparted identity and value to his children as well as providing protection and the main provision.  According to SOZO counselors, it has been shown that both sons and daughters establish their self-worth, identity, and knowledge of their abilities from the way their father relate to them – what he says to and about them.  When a dad is not around physically or emotionally to let his children know who they are, the children become confused as to their value and destiny and struggle in adulthood to find that.  Father God says He is our provider and defender.  He loves us unconditionally. 
One of the most popular teachings in the recent years has been on the Father Heart of God – his authority, gentle forgiveness, consistent faithfulness to His promises and His generosity and attentiveness.  This is important but we can’t forget the Mother Heart of God!  (remember -- to be a race of people made in the image of God requires both male AND female!).  God wants us to know about His tender heart and His longing to care for us and nurture us.  And so He gave us MOTHERS!!
Do you think the concept of Fathers and Mothers was just a “suggestion” from God?  It is SO important to Him that He gave it as the 5th of the Ten Commandments and gave it with a promise: “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

(Now, once again, if our moms were controlling and made sure that we knew that she was not pleased with our opinions and/or decisions, we learned that we need to be perfect to keep someone happy with us and to never share our feelings.)  But God meant for us to have mothers that are comforting, encouraging, --  that mostly have patience with us as we learn and to spend time talking with us.  Mothers hear the word “why” more than anyone else as a little baby learns to walk, talk and grow into adulthood.  SOZO says God gave us moms to be a picture of what love is.  People are meant to learn to love as a response to being loved. ( Now, that doesn’t always work out, as we look around and see the many hurting people who are using love to manipulate or hurt others.)  But God’s plan is for Godly mothers who will show their children the heart of God – unconditional love.  That Godly mother may be a biological mom, an adopted mom, a foster mom or a spiritual mom.  The church of today is crying out for spiritual moms and dads, grandmas and grandfathers to guide and teach newly saved Christians.  A harvest/revival is coming!
Denise Jordan explains the Mother Heart of God well.  She says:
There is something that God has put within the feminine that a baby really responds to – the softness of the feminine.  When a father holds a baby he gives to the baby a whole different impartation to what the mother gives.  The baby feels the strength of his arms, the solidity of his chest, the safety and definition within the man.  What the father gives is meant to convey the sense of a defined world out there… But when a mother holds a baby, the baby feels gentleness and tenderness, that “sinking into” feeling, which is a feeling of oneness.  This is the oneness that we are born to feel.  We were never meant to feel alone.  God never created us as humans to ever feel that we are on our own.  One of the tremendous needs that we as human beings have is to feel that deep sense of belonging – that this is where I, as an individual, am supposed to be…It is a mother who usually first gives us that feeling of the essence of belonging. (Today, dad’s may also get up in the middle of the night and feed or change that little one.) She does this through her gaze and through her words, but also through the tone of her voice and the cadence of her speech.    God has intended that we would hear the sound of the mother’s voice, and receive her words as words of life – words to soothe and comfort and know that God wants to always comfort and nurture us.
In Isaiah 66:13, God says:  As a mother comforts her child,
    so will I comfort you;
In I Thessalonian 2:7-8 God says:  Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, 8 so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.
(Luke 13:34): "How many times I wanted to put my arms around all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me!"

The way that a mother comforts her child is often different than the way that a father comforts his child.  When a little child, for example, falls over in the garden or yard and runs indoors crying with a hurt knee, the usual father – if he gets there first – will generally bend down, perhaps give the child a pat on the back and say, “You’re OK.  Off you go.  Go run and play.  Everything will be fine!”  A mother will stoop down and scoop the child into her arms.  She will hold her child, soothe them and let them cry.  She will comfort them.



Today, Satan, through our culture and our WOKENESS, is trying to discredit the roles of mom’s and dad’s and family.  I just want to remind you that no matter what job we do to earn money, there is no greater calling than to be a Godly Father, Godly Mother, Godly Grandfather or Godly Grandmother that teaches our children who our God is, what He is like and how we can learn to be like Jesus.  If we are not rooted and established in the nurturing love of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, we will always and ever be searching for it.  There will always be a hole in our hearts.  We will always, always be searching for something to fill that need for God’s love.  Romantic relationships may go some of the way towards filling the gap but there will always be a deeper need gnawing at our soul.  We all have a constant need for God.  He loves us not only as a father loves but as a mother loves.  
I will close with this poem that says all I have said in a different way.  Happy Mother’s Day to all of you ladies of all ages!


• When a mommy (grandma) hugs her children,
• She plants a seed of love
• And all her wonderful kisses
• Come from God above.
•  
• When mommy (grandma) laughs and giggles,
• She plants a seed of joy
• Like when she tickles your funny bone
• Or plays with your favorite toy.
•
• When mommy (grandma) tucks you in at night,
• She plants a seed of peace.
• She prays for God to bless you
• With a sweet and restful sleep.
•  
• When a mommy (grandma) asks you to wait for things,
• A seed of patience is what she sows.
• For all the really good things in life
• Take some time to grow.

• When a mommy (grandma) makes your favorite food,
• She plants a seed so kind.
• She knows when chicken soup is good for you
• Or when there’s cookies on your mind!
•  
• When a mommy (grandma) says “don’t tell that lie,”
• Seeds of goodness start to grow.
• And through your changing heart
• Holy Spirit starts to flow.

• When a mommy (grandma) takes care of you all the day,
• Faithfulness is the seed she sows.
• She makes sure you have all you need,
• Like lots of good food and shoes on your many toes.
•  
• When a mommy (grandma) rocks you in her arms,
• A gentle seed is planted deep.
• Sometimes she’ll sing you a little song,
While in her arms you fall asleep.

• When a mommy (grandma) tells you, “No, No, No,”
• She plants a seed of self-control,
• For she knows not all things are good for you
• So make sure you listen to what you’re told.
•  
• But the greatest seed that a mommy (grandma) plants,
• Is the seed of God’s great love.
• She wants you to know him just like she does,
• So that one day you both will live in heaven above!

Come to Him and receive deeply of his nurturing love!