A Daughter's Prayer (For A Mother’s Healing)

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing

with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Romans 8:18 NIV

I know that for this month our theme is, “A Mother’s Love” and everyone will probably be expecting to hear how great our mothers are . . . and I could write several books on how great I thought my Mom was, but God did not give me that to share with you, this time. The reason why I said, “God did not give me that” is because I asked Him several times, what He wanted me to share about Motherhood in all of its realms; Stepmother, ‘Play’ mother, Godmother, Auntie or Neighbor who stepped in to be mother. What I kept hearing in my spirit was, “Talk to the Motherless”. My prayer to God was, “Tell me what to write God, and I’ll do it”. Well, here it goes.

God gets blamed for everything; when things go well and when things go bad. When they go well, we thank Him, but when they go bad . . . , it’s still His fault because He’s God and He could have fixed it, right? Have you heard this before? I have. You see, I had a very good friend as a teenager who came to Church faithfully, went to Sunday School and the works. She was a bold, pray-in-front-of-everybody teenager. I was not. I wanted to run every time it was my turn to pray in front of a crowd of people. Anyway, my friend’s mother became very ill, and she fervently prayed at the altar for her mother every time she was in attendance at Church. My friend loved the Lord and knew His promises because she told them to me proudly. She truly believed in her heart that her mother was going to get better and come back to Church, because she prayed to God. Well, her mother passed away and my friend was devastated! She blamed God. She was angry. She talked to my mother about her feelings and my mother explained God to her in a way that she could understand God’s Sovereignty. But my friend stopped coming to Church and eventually my Mom and I lost contact with her.

In my senior year of College, I had to take a religion class and the only thing offered at the time was a class called, “Death and Dying”. Whatttt??? It turned out to be one of the best classes that I could have ever taken to prepare me in later years for the Care Ministry that I would be involved with. I call moments like this, a God experience!

“So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable, it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory, it is sown in weaknesses, it is raised in power, it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”

 I Corinthians 15:42-44

A few days before my Mother-in-Law’s passing, the Deacons from Thankful came to pray for her and in the prayer, the Deacon said something like, ‘Lord, please bring our Sister back to the fold to do Your work’. She opened her eyes, looked at the Deacon and said, ‘Don’t pray that prayer, ask the Lord to prepare someone else for that work because I’m leaving to be with Jesus’. You have to know the God you serve to say something like that!!! She passed a few days later. Take time to learn what the Bible says about heaven. Trust God’s assurances about what eternity is like for those who love Jesus and apply yourself to knowing and serving God more and more. The more real God is to you, the less sorrowful and fearsome death will be. It will not be thought of as something awful when you know the time will be spent in God’s eternity.

I was blessed to be brought up in a loving, spiritually Christian home where God was always included in my Mother’s conversations, during the good times and the not so good. She talked to us about the goodness and the judgments, or wrath of God. No sugar coating in our house. So, unlike my friend and so many others even now, I not only learned about the easy breezy things about being a Christian, but I learned the ‘You will understand it better by-and-by’ things - like the death of a loved one. So, when my own precious Mother was told that if she elected to have heart surgery she would most likely die, or if she elected to not have heart surgery she would surely die, I had to remember what I was taught by her. My Mother taught me the beauty of believing in God in all of His Glory and she prepared me concerning His Sovereignty. She taught me that the Sovereignty of God means that God is the Supreme Authority, and all things are under His control. She also taught me that God has an absolute right to do all things according to His own good pleasure. I would have been devastated without the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of a loving Mother. My prayers to God were not that God would be with me, but that I would recognize His presence and His Hand in all of this so that I could experience peace of mind and heart, no matter what may occur. The Prayers of a Daughter!

God does not say He will always prevent crises in our lives – this is a world where terrible things will happen. God does promise to be there with us and for us always, helping us through any crisis. He promises to guide us towards peace and hope. He also promises to bring us to a place – Heaven – where all trouble will end forever. This is our hope in believing. 

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