A New Series: Becoming a Spiritual Mother

As a young girl, I remember flipping through the pages of my mother’s Parents magazine, filled with pictures of babies. I was entranced. I would practice being a mom with my baby doll, a Christmas present I specifically requested.

In my senior year of high school, I decided to pursue pre-medical studies, with the desire to work with women and children, either as an obstetrician or a pediatrician. When it became clear that this wasn’t the best path for me, I switched gears and began working with children as a preschool teacher.

Even in college, I was always keeping an eye out for my younger sisters in Christ. I remember many times sharing a meal and teaching my friends how to bake cookies in my little apartment. When I was a senior, I started a freshman girls’ Bible study and trained up a replacement before I graduated so they could keep it going.

I’ve always assumed that getting married and having my own children would be in my future, and now I see that God was gracious to grant me this desire of my heart. He didn’t have to.

But for all my interest in babies when I was little and all my work as a preschool teacher, I had zero understanding of what it meant to be a mother that honored the Lord. Sure, I understood the tasks of motherhood, but I did not understand the heart of motherhood. I needed to learn these by watching older women in my life that I respected as they established their households and raised their children in the Lord.

Now my oldest child is 27 and my youngest is 16. We are entering yet another season of parenting, and I find myself still looking for counsel and advice from those who have gone before me. But I also am realizing that now, I too, am the older woman.

Before, during, and after the arrival of each of my children, God has taken that desire I had long ago to work with women and children and nurtured it. I may now be past the age of childbearing but building up the next generation of younger women in Christ is still a passion for me: nurturing new life, be it spiritual or physical, is one of a woman’s greatest privileges.

This is not surprising, for this has always been God’s desire, from the moment of creation. In Genesis 1:28, he commissions the new couple with these words: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Even after the flood, God retains this call to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 9:1).

In Matthew 28:19, Jesus, who is the new and better Adam, commands His followers to continue this fruitful multiplication in His Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Along with biological children, we are to work with our Bridegroom to raise up spiritual children.

This is the call of every believer, whether or not we actually have physical children. Even if you are single or childless, we are all invited to participate in this task of expanding God’s eternal family by passing on the faith.

This starts in the home as the nation of Israel anticipated entering the promised land. Moses charges them with these words from Deuteronomy 6:6-9: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

The home is the literal picture of a spiritual reality. We are first and foremost a part of God’s family and when we structure our homes around this reality, we will speak of Him, point to Him, and remind those around us about Him every moment of the day.

Some parents were faithful to this call, as we see in the book of Proverbs. Here, we see a father faithfully passing on wisdom in a world where foolishness abounds.

But unfortunately, unless each generation is trained and equipped to do so, it doesn’t take long before apostasy and unbelief settle in. This shouldn’t be surprising, for this is the natural bent of our hearts as sinners.

It requires each believer in each generation to rise up and take up the baton and run the race, growing in our faith as saints, in the midst of our sufferings, as we work out the sin in our hearts. It requires that we spend time faithfully studying God’s Word and allowing the Gospel of grace to change us. It means living our days with intention, not merely to be productive but to order our days so that we might further the Gospel in our everyday lives.

Earlier on, I had spent some time studying Titus 2:3-5, where the apostle Paul exhorts: “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.”

Since that time, I have been reflecting on this passage as I consider God’s next steps for me. Now that I am in my mid-50’s, I know I definitely qualify as “the older woman” addressed here. And this is a charge I take seriously. This is not just about equipping younger women with the know-how to cook a good dinner for their husbands or to change a diaper or to discipline an angry toddler. It goes beyond that.

As an older woman, I am called to build up women to be reverent worshippers of the Lord as they work at home, to be women of character and honor who exemplify and reflect Christ so that His name is glorified. It is this inter-generational transfer that keeps the gospel alive for another generation that is what is so critical.

Throughout Scripture, we see that it doesn’t take long for rot to set in. Just one generation is enough. (See Judges 2:10.)

For that reason, I firmly believe that it is not enough for older women to be strong in their own faith. They need the skills to pass on that faith to the younger women, whether they have children of their own or not. This is not a call to older mothers only; it is to all older women.

So, again, even if you are single or childless, you are called to disciple other younger women. There is much even a married young woman can learn from an older single woman.

In the coming series, I want to explore this command. What do we teach? How do we teach it? What is required in an older woman? How might being a woman impact how we make disciples?

I hope this will be an inspiring and encouraging series to look into together. May the Lord use our efforts to make disciples of the next generation of women so that they might also turn around and do the same. This is powerful kingdom work—let us not neglect it!