A Mom Who Prays

   Because May is the month when Mother’s Day is celebrated, I wanted to share some encouraging thoughts about a mom who prays in this month’s blog. 

For starters, I was personally blessed by God to have a mom who prayed for me and with me from the earliest days of my childhood. She began storing God’s Word in my heart by sitting at my bedside and reading me the Bible as I prepared to go to sleep each night. 

And now I am doubly blessed to be married to a woman who, as a mom, now prays with her own children and reads the Bible to them every day. I’m married to a woman of prayer and great faith in a faithful God. 

There is no way to calculate the eternal value of these investments of time and patience. 

My paternal grandfather was a minister and his own mother was also a woman of great faith and prayer for her children. I was recently reminded of this by the pastor who officiated at my grandfather’s funeral. 

In a Mother’s Day devotional, he wrote about his recollections from my grandfather’s funeral which took place on January 15, 1995.

The thoughts he shares were spoken by my grandfather’s younger brother, Edwin Grant, about their mom and how prayer sustained her faith and shaped her home…

She lost her first two children.  One of them lived just a few days and the other for just two years.  Then she had three sons who lived to adulthood. 

In childbirth she suffered circulation problems in her legs.  For the rest of her life her legs were swollen and painful. 

Mrs. Grant loved Jesus and the church. 

In Mt. Vernon, Illinois, it was sort of a joke that no matter how deep the snow was on Sunday, you better hold church because Mrs. Grant and her three boys would be there.

Her husband was addicted to alcohol which caused him to lose the two grocery stores he owned.  Mr. Grant died prematurely mainly because of alcoholism. 

Mrs. Grant was left with the task of raising her three sons in near poverty. 

The boys recall coming in at night and trying to get to bed without turning on any lights; they often tripped over their mother’s feet as she knelt in prayer.

All three of those sons became pastors. 

The oldest, Lawrence, was a missionary to China.  The second was Charles, the founding pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis.  The third was Edwin, who pastored in Arizona.

Countless thousands of people have been influenced for Christ through the three Grant pastors, and the three of them were introduced to Jesus by a devout, praying mother.

It’s both humbling and encouraging for me to see how God has preserved my family through faithful moms who prayed for their children and taught them God’s Word. 

That baton has now been passed to a new generation. We must run our spiritual race with endurance and not lose hope! Keep making those little, daily investments. 

May the Lord bless more and more of our homes in this way!

With gratitude for faithful moms and a faithful Savior,
Pastor Kevin

 

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