May 11, 2012 <br> <br>What a Mother Needs <br> <br>You are a mother and you have 10 children. You immigrate to the United States. Shortly after completing the move you lose an infant daughter and before that child is buried you get news from overseas that your husband has died and now you’re a widow. <br>Can you imagine becoming a widow with 10 children at age 40 and no resources? The spiritual darkness and despondency overwhelmed a mother named Mary Winslow for months after losing her 10th child and then losing her husband. Yet her story is a story that every mother and every person needs to live: darkness, which we all face, can turn to light when Jesus is our husband. And we all need him to give us hope we desperately need. Welcome to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris, sharing the great story that’s all about Jesus for a Mother’s Day weekend and this is a program called “What a Mother Needs”. In a little bit we’re going to hear a song by Fernando Ortega. It’s a title song to the album I play the most as I drive. Fernando has great music. We’ve had him on this program before. We’ve listened to a lot of music from a lot of his albums but something about “Come Down, Oh Love Divine” is special. As we’re in this Mother’s Day weekend I want to invite you to get a copy of this CD by Fernando Ortega. I’d like to send it to you as our thanks for your gift to Haven Today. So after the program I want to invite you to call 1-800-654-2836, that’s 1-800-65-HAVEN. Or you can go online if that’s more convenient. And let us know how you’re listening please, when you do get in touch, when you go to haventoday.org, that’s haventoday.org. Make your gift to the ministry and then be sure and ask for “Come Down, Oh Love Divine”. As we begin this program, “What a Mother Needs” I’ve asked a mother – my wife Janet – to open the program with a prayer for mothers today. <br>JM: Lord, it’s a privilege to come to you on behalf of so many mothers. A mother’s heart is a universal thing and we thank you that you understand our mother’s hearts. Thank you that we don’t have to explain to you how a mother loves her children because you know! You created that mother/child bond, you built it into your creation and Lord Jesus you even compared yourself to a mother hen who wants to gather her chicks under her wings. And you know that fierce desire to protect and to shield our children from harm and you know how sometimes we’re powerless to do that. You have such compassion for us as mothers that we can come to you and we can place our children into your arms and we can know that we’ve put them in the absolutely safest place. Lord your word is full of promises that we can lay hold of and we can trust. You said in Isaiah 54:13, “All your sons will be taught of the Lord and the wellbeing of your sons will be great.” Lord, that’s a magnificent promise and we ask it for our children. We pray that you would forgive them their sins. We pray that you would teach them and make yourself known to them. We pray that their wellbeing would be great and that you would work all things together for good in their lives, even the hard things. And ultimately Jesus the best thing we could ever want for our children is that their lives would bring you glory. And we ask for that, that blessing of all blessings for our children, in Jesus’ name, amen. <br> <br>Song: Come Down, Oh Love Divine <br>Performed by: Fernando Ortega <br> <br>We have so many unique relationships in life. Each one fulfills a special place, a special need: Mother, wife, husband, father, brother, friend. Even in our mixed up world we know when there is a relationship gap and we know it makes a difference, but do we know that the Lord is the one who fills our relationship gaps? Do we as believers understand all the aspects of the relationship we have with him? Do we understand what it means that he is our husband? This is Mother’s Day weekend and to mothers but also to all of us, I don’t think there’s any more amazing and mysterious concept than that of husband. The Lord is my husband. What exactly does this mean? How can I get hold of it and understand what it says about his love for me? The theme runs through the scriptures all the way to the closing chapters of Revelation and the promise of the New Jerusalem to come. The whole unfolding revelation of God to his people that starts in Genesis culminates in a wedding feast. The bridegroom is the Lamb and his bride is his people. But it’s Isaiah 54:4 and 5 where the Lord actually uses the word husband to describe himself and his love for us. Listen to it, <br>“Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. <br> Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. <br>You will forget the shame of your youth <br> and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. <br>For your Maker is your husband— <br> the LORD Almighty is his name— <br>the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; <br> he is called the God of all the earth. <br> <br>The Lord makes this promise as a consolation to a widow who is afraid, who is feeling shame and grief and rejection. I think that’s a clue about how to understand this relationship the Lord has with us. Widows have a special insight into what it means to have a husband. They learn it in the school of grief. They learn it by losing it. And in that loss they really understand what a deeply consoling thing it is that the Lord is there husband. I’ve talked to many widows who tell me that Isaiah 54:5 transformed their grief. They knew the Lord was whispering to them very gently, very personally, comforting them in their loss with this wonderful realization: Your maker is your husband. Let me share with you what a 30 year old family friend of mine shared with me. This is from her prayer journal a few weeks after her husband died. <br>“Lord, I’ve just realized what I’ve lost in losing Tom. It’s not just him, the person that he was, the missing him. It’s the identity he gave me, the partnership I had with him as I traveled through life. He gave me the identity of ‘wife’. Now I’m no one’s wife. I feel uncherished, uncovered somehow. I was one who was loved and chosen and claimed and protected by her husband but now who am I? And I’ve lost the partnership of marriage. I’ve lost the deep security of knowing I’m part of a union of 2. I’m not traveling through this life alone, that I’m doing it together in the security of the unbreakable bond of marriage. But death has broken it and I am crashing. Do you know what this means to me Lord? How can I handle the fact that the unclaimed, lonely status that I thought was behind me forever has come on me again?” <br>Well, the answer to this family friend’s prayer was written in her journal too and she shared that with me. <br>“’Your maker is your husband.’ Thank you Lord! Thank you for speaking these sweet, sweet words to me, for filling the emptiness with your presence and your love. You love me with a husband’s love. You chose me, you protect and cherish me. You’ve given me your name. You’ve united yourself to me with an unbreakable bond of love and death cannot break it.” <br>Well the school of widowhood taught her what it meant that the Lord was her husband. Octavius Winslow was one of those 10 children of Mary Winslow. He was named Octavius because, obviously, he was the 8th child and his mother was left with no resources after she had come to the United States in Upstate New York and her husband was in the British military and all of a sudden he died and she got word just after her 10th child, a little girl, died and was buried. Octavius and some of his brothers went on to become ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he talks about these schools we have to attend, these circumstances that teach us new and wonderful things about the Lord. Here’s what he wrote: <br>“Look how many different names God has and how many ways he relates to us! He speaks directly to our circumstances and teaches our hearts to love him more. Think for example of how precious it is for a Christian woman who has lost her spouse to hear “Your Maker is your husband.” You go to special schools,” he says, “to get special knowledge. We learn about the special relationships we have with God in special situations. If you’ve lost your husband that sorrow becomes a school where you learn a more dear and close relationship with the Lord. He becomes your portion. He’s your husband. He understands your loss. You’ve lost the man who listened to you or had the right words to say, the man who worked so hard for you, who shared your life, the arms that embraced you. The Lord though, has become all things to you.” <br>But this isn’t just true for widows like Octavius Winslow was writing about. The Lord has become all these things to each of us. There was a very special reason why Winslow understood how widows feel, because his mother, at age 40, Mary Winslow moved to New York with her 10 children and a few weeks after she got there her infant daughter died. And even before the little girl’s body had been buried she received this heart stopping message: her husband had also died. Years later Mary Winslow wrote a letter to her children describing what she learned in that school of sorrow and insecurity. <br>“MY very dear children, the Lord, in his wonderworking provision has brought us as a family to the beginning of another year. Truly of all the families on earth we have reason to say, ‘Truly goodness and mercy have followed us.’ Look back with me to 1815, at the very moment that I was weeping over the corpse of a very darling child I received word that a still heavier calamity had fallen: I had become a widow. I was bereaved of a fond husband and you of an affectionate father. With very little finance, living in a foreign land, all the present and future concerns of a large, young family had been given over to my care. None but God could know the deep anguish in my heart. I felt I was going to sink under my load of suffering. Everything was dark. One whole night I passed wrestling in prayer a night that became forever memorable. Everyone in the house was asleep except for your widowed mother. I paced my room crying out for help and comfort from him who alone could give it. I tried in vain to grasp some divine promise and when dawn came I was still wrestling with God. It was then that a voice spoke to my innermost soul, so blessed that I couldn’t mistake it. It’s promise was so divine, it’s comfort so real and it’s assurance was so explicit that I was left with no doubt about whose voice it was. ‘I will be a father to your children.’ Those were the words. I felt in an instant that God was with me, with me in my room. I felt assured that he had seen my sorrow and had come down himself to comfort me. I felt assured that God would not only be a father to my fatherless ones but also a husband to their mother.” <br>Well, no wonder Octavius Winslow, son of Mary Winslow knew what it meant that the Lord is our husband and our father. He grew up knowing, “The Lord will provide for you and for your children and he will love you with an everlasting love.” <br>“There is a sacred place in the heart of Jesus Christ only for you.” Those are Octavius Winslow’s words. He knew them to be true and we need to know them to be true as well. You’re not just one of a crowd of people he loves, the Lord has an intimate, unique love just for you, a very personal, individual love just for you. And if you are a mother whether you’re old and your children are gone or they’ve died or whether you’re a young mother and one of your children is about to meet death, the Lord wants you to know this Mother’s Day weekend that you can take Isaiah 54 and make it your own. <br>“Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. <br> Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. <br>You will forget the shame of your youth <br> and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. <br>For your Maker is your husband— <br> the LORD Almighty is his name— <br>the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; <br> he is called the God of all the earth. <br>Widowhood isn’t the only school where we can learn that the Lord is our husband. Dads I’m speaking to you and younger people who aren’t even married or older people who’ve never married, I’m speaking to you. “Your maker is your husband.” You don’t even have to be a divorced woman or a single mom. The Lord is talking to anyone who knows what it’s like to feel abandoned and unloved, unclaimed and uncherished. Do you feel that way, female or male? Then he’s talking to you! He’s talking to anyone who feels ashamed and afraid and alone. Do you feel that way? Then he’s talking to you. You’re in a very privileged situation, a private school where you can experience the full significance of these beautiful words. You can hear him speaking personally, telling you that your situation has changed because your Maker is your husband. The Lord Almighty has married you. Maybe you feel too ashamed to be his wife, too sinful but the Lord has swept all that away in his love. In Hosea 2 the Lord is talking about his wayward people. They’ve turned away from him like an unfaithful wife. In fact, the Lord had the prophet Hosea marry a prostitute as a shocking demonstration of what his people had become. Their unfaithfulness to him was brazen. It was shameful. But then the Lord had Hosea buy her back and bring her home and love her like a husband. He wanted us, his people, to understand what kind of husband he is to us. Listen to what he says he’s going to do. <br>I am now going to allure her; <br> I will lead her into the desert <br> and speak tenderly to her. <br>There I will give her back her vineyards, <br> and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. <br>There she will sing as in the days of her youth, <br> as in the day she came up out of Egypt. <br>“In that day,” declares the LORD, <br> “you will call me ‘my husband’; <br> you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ <br> <br>That’s from the book of Hosea and then the promise in Isaiah 54 that the Maker will become our husband was fulfilled. It was fulfilled in Jesus. The promise in Hosea that the Lord would allure his shameful, unfaithful people and make us love him as a husband was fulfilled in Jesus. When we see him going to the cross to die for us, we are seeing the love not only of a Savior and a shepherd but we’re seeing the love of a husband and it’s meant to allure us with it’s passion and love. It’s meant to win our hearts. You see the relationship the Lord is teaching us to have with him? We’re no longer to call him ‘Master’. He becomes our husband. He brings us into the desert places so we can hear him speak tenderly to us. He swings open a door of hope. He makes us sing because of his love and he makes us fruitful. In a marriage there’s a physical union, right? And it’s out of that union and act of oneness that children are conceived. The marriage bears fruit, to use the Bible’s language. There’s an analogy that we’re meant to see. We have a spiritual union with the Lord. He’s united himself to us in a spiritual oneness. That spiritual union of love is not meant to be barren. It’s meant to bear fruit. Fruit that can be seen in our lives. We don’t just obey the rules. We don’t just do good deeds. We bear fruit because we’re united with the Lord. The power of his life is united with our lives. Paul the Apostle was getting at this wonderful reality in Romans 7. Romans 7:2-6, <br> <br> For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. <br>So, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were controlled by sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. <br>You see the distinction that Paul is making? The law is like a husband that just makes demands all the time but we’ve died to the law. In his own body Jesus broke that bond and now we belong to another. We serve in a new way, by the Spirit in the power of the Spirit. It’s an obedience of love. The Lord is our husband. Our union with him bears fruit for God. These are deep truths. <br>Lord, would you teach them to us? May we learn them and may we live? <br>The Lord is my husband this Mother’s Day weekend. <br> <br>Song: A Mother’s Prayer <br>Performed by: Rachel Aldous <br> <br>Singing “A Mother’s Prayer” that’s Rachel Aldous here on a Haven Today that we’re calling “What a Mother Needs”. We had a prayer just sung and my wife Janet prayed in the beginning of our time together. And we also talked about a mother of 10 who became a widow and yet the Lord worked through Mary Winslow in a very amazing way. All of us understand, don’t we, when we’ve taken steps and then everything seems to fall down upon us. In Mary’s case she lost her 10th child and then while still grieving for the loss of that infant she then got the news that her husband back in England had died. Here she was, a widow, having to raise all of those children. And we heard in the last few minutes what she needed the most and that’s what every mother and every one of us need the most. <br>Well, we also got to hear a great song, the title song by Fernando Ortega “Come Down, O Love Divine”. Now maybe you have a copy of this CD from us but you want to give it to someone else. I want to invite you today in this Mother’s Day weekend to go ahead and call us. We’ve got somebody on the phones 24/7. Give us a call. Make your gift to the ministry and be sure and ask for your copy of “Come Down, Oh Love Divine”. That number to call is 1-800-654-2836, that’s 1-800-65-HAVEN. And of course you can go online, haventoday.org, that’s haventoday.org <br>I’m Charles Morris. Won’t you come back again next time when again we’ll be sharing together the great story? It’s all about Jesus here on Haven Today. <br>
Come Down, O Love Divine
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After 5 years Fernando Ortega teams up again with producer John Andrew Schreiner for his new album Come Down, O Love Divine.This lush album is complete with 14 songs and features a full choir ensemble to accompany Fernando's vocals and arrangements....
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Flame On
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Have you ever wondered how a good God could let something evil happen for no apparent purpose? Have you ever pleaded with God for answers in the midst of great pain? Has tragedy shaken your faith in God? You're not alone and your question deserves...
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