Theological Status: DEAD ORTHODOXY / DECISIONISM
Biblical Parallel(Archetype): Sardis
❓ What do these grades mean?
🔍 Biblical Discernment: The 7 Church Parallels
The Cold Orthodox Parallel
Ephesus
Teaching that upholds doctrinal precision yet parallels the loss of the "first love"—the vital, motivating power of the Gospel (Rev 2:4).
The Compromised Parallel
Pergamum
Teaching that parallels churches tolerating the "doctrine of Balaam" through cultural accommodation (Rev 2:14), characterized by weak boundaries, sloppy theology, and worldly compromise.
Why strictly "Mark & Avoid"?
We do not issue this rating to attack the speaker, but to protect the listener. This ministry's overall teaching trend consistently deviates from sound doctrine. As per Romans 16:17, we identify these patterns so believers can guard their hearts.
We do not issue this rating to attack the speaker, but to protect the listener. This ministry's overall teaching trend consistently deviates from sound doctrine. As per Romans 16:17, we identify these patterns so believers can guard their hearts.
🧐 Overview
Theological Verdict & Summary
Sermon Summary: A heartfelt tribute to the unseen burdens and resilient faith of mothers, drawing on biblical examples of persistence and surrender.
Pastoral Analysis: While the sermon offers compassionate encouragement to mothers facing hardship, it fundamentally fails to anchor this encouragement in the Gospel. By omitting the core message of Christ's atoning work and relying on human moral effort and emotional endurance, the sermon presents a 'dead' orthodoxy that leaves the congregation without the power for true spiritual change.
Biblical Parallel (Archetype): Sardis — The sermon presents a 'name that it is alive, but is dead' spiritual state. While it utilizes biblical narratives and commands mothers to persevere, it completely omits the Gospel of salvation by grace through faith. Instead, it promotes a framework of human moral effort, emotional endurance, and self-stewardship, which is the essence of dead orthodoxy and synergistic works-righteousness.
Big Idea: Mothers are the queen of hearts because they possess a heart that carries unseen burdens, refuses to let go by releasing children into God's destiny, breaks yet continues to believe, and persists in faith despite rejection and silence. [00:03:11 ▶️ 📄]
📖 How they Handle Scripture & Jesus
- Primary Text: Exodus 2:3-10
- Usage Classification: Thematic
- Text-to-Talk Ratio: Moderate
- Pulpit Decorum: ✅ PASS - No coarse language or pejoratives were detected.
✝️ Christological Focus: Absent
"The sermon fails to connect the mothers' struggles or biblical examples to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ."
Scripture Saturation: Verses Read: 7 | Referenced: 4 | Alluded: 2
📖 View 3 Passages Read Aloud
-
Exodus 2:3-5
[00:14:43 ▶️ 📄]
"but when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister, her name was Miriam, stood at a distance to see what would happen to him."
-
1 Samuel 1:17-18
[00:23:28 ▶️ 📄]
"Eli, who is the priest answers her, well, go in peace and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him. And she said, may your servant find favor in your eyes."
-
Matthew 15:22-23
[00:28:50 ▶️ 📄]
"a Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, came to Jesus, crying out, Lord, son of David, have mercy on me."
Key References: Luke 2:19, Exodus 1, 1 Samuel 1, Matthew 15:22-28
🎙️ Sermon Content & Delivery
Word Count: 5,108 words
📌 View 11 Key Topics Addressed
-
Motherhood and Stewardship
[00:03:11 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor describes the difficult realities of motherhood (diagnosis, exhaustion, guilt) and frames motherhood as stewarding the 'hand' one is dealt rather than seeking perfection. -
Mary's Faith and Pondering
[00:06:07 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor analyzes Mary, mother of Jesus, focusing on her ability to 'ponder' (symbolusa) events in her heart, connecting the dots of mystery and divine calling without needing immediate explanation. -
Releasing into Destiny
[00:12:50 ▶️ 📄]
> Using the story of Moses' mother, the pastor illustrates that letting go is not abandonment but releasing a child into their God-given destiny, protected by faith and preparation. -
Releasing vs. Letting Go
[00:18:01 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor distinguishes between 'letting go' (giving up) and 'releasing' (entrusting to God), using Moses' mother as the primary example of entrusting a child to God's protection. -
Faith in the Spiritual Realm
[00:24:46 ▶️ 📄]
> Explaining that spiritual breakthroughs precede natural manifestations, illustrated by Hannah eating after her spirit was relieved, showing that faith acts before physical evidence appears. -
Honest Breakdowns and Prayer
[00:26:02 ▶️ 📄]
> Arguing that God is not intimidated by emotional breakdowns or raw honesty in prayer, citing Hannah's wailing as an example of effective, persistent faith rather than a failure of composure. -
Persistence Despite Offense
[00:32:14 ▶️ 📄]
> Using the Canaanite woman to illustrate that true faith persists even when faced with silence, rejection, or offensive words from God, emphasizing that offense hinders prayer while persistence invites breakthrough. -
Persistent Faith
[00:33:21 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor uses the Canaanite woman to illustrate that believers must persist in prayer even when facing silence, rejection, or difficult circumstances. -
Divine Missional Order
[00:34:29 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor explains that Jesus' initial refusal was not rejection, but an explanation of his primary mission to Israel before extending grace to the Gentiles. -
Surrender and Trust
[00:39:11 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor contrasts asking God for a 'better hand' with the call to trust God regardless of the circumstances, emphasizing heart surrender over changing external conditions. -
Emotional Burden and Restoration
[00:41:49 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor addresses the congregation's feelings of being overwhelmed and heavy, promising that God restores the heart fully rather than in pieces.
🖼️ View 6 Illustrations & Stories
-
Sermon Illustration
[00:07:58 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor shares personal anecdotes of nearly losing her children: leaving a child in a car seat thinking the husband took them in, and a time at a restaurant where an usher informed her she had forgotten her son at church. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:14:29 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor recounts the biblical story of Moses' mother hiding him for three months, then placing him in a waterproof papyrus basket (linked linguistically to Noah's Ark) coated in tar and pitch among the reeds of the Nile. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:15:21 ▶️ 📄]
> The story of Moses' mother placing him in a waterproof papyrus basket (ark) coated in tar and pitch, trusting God with his destiny despite Pharaoh's decree. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:22:24 ▶️ 📄]
> The story of Hannah in 1 Samuel, who was declared barren, wailed in prayer at the tabernacle, was mistaken for being drunk by the priest Eli, and eventually found peace and favor with God. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:28:30 ▶️ 📄]
> The story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 who persistently begged Jesus for help for her demon-possessed daughter, enduring his silence, the disciples' annoyance, and his initial refusal, until her faith was rewarded. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:35:59 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor shares a personal story about receiving a call that his 17-year-old son was in a severe car accident. He describes racing to the scene, seeing the flipped vehicle, and finding his son alive but bruised. He recounts the police calling the area 'dead man's curve' and his spiritual struggle to release his fear for his children's safety, ultimately choosing to trust God rather than live in fear.
🚀 View 2 Calls to Action
-
Pastoral Charge
[00:39:11 ▶️ 📄]
> Stand on feet -
Pastoral Charge
[00:40:55 ▶️ 📄]
> Close eyes and bow head
🧭 Biblical Alignment Dashboard
Overall Verdict: Fundamentally in Error
| Category | Status | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Gospel Presentation | ❌ FAIL | The Gospel Engine is critically compromised. The sermon relies on a thematic, moralistic framework that emphasizes human stewardship and emotional endurance without substantively presenting the doctrines of Total Depravity, God's Wrath, or Monergistic Regeneration. It fails to anchor the congregation's response in the finished work of Christ, resulting in a complete Gospel Omission. |
| Soteriology | ❌ FAIL | The sermon omits the Gospel entirely, promoting a works-based perseverance rather than salvation by grace through faith. |
| Bibliology | ⚠️ WEAK | While Scripture is referenced, it is used primarily for moral exhortation rather than revealing Christ's redemptive work. |
| Hermeneutic | ⚠️ WEAK | The hermeneutic is moralistic and thematic, extracting behavioral lessons from narratives without connecting them to the Gospel. |
| Theology Proper | ❌ FAIL | The sermon affirms the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which contradicts the biblical doctrine of Total Depravity. |
| Sacramentology | ✅ PASS | No sacramental errors were detected. |
| Confessional Depth | ❌ SHALLOW | The sermon lacks depth in Christology and Soteriology, focusing instead on human emotion and moral effort. |
⚙️ The Core Gospel Framework
What is this? This section checks if the sermon contains the essential building blocks of the Gospel. We look for explicit, substantive mentions of God's holy standard, human inability, and Christ's finished work on the cross.
Why it matters for the final verdict: A complete Gospel framework protects a sermon from becoming man-centered. If a preacher gives commands for good behavior but leaves out the grace and atonement of the Gospel, it often results in a 🔴 Critical or 🟠 Major error for Moralism (teaching human self-improvement rather than reliance on Christ). However, if these Gospel elements are missing simply because the pastor is preaching a highly focused, practical message to mature believers (e.g., instructions on biblical marriage), our system applies a "Safe Harbor" pardon, graciously reducing the omission to a 🟡 Minor error.
Why it matters for the final verdict: A complete Gospel framework protects a sermon from becoming man-centered. If a preacher gives commands for good behavior but leaves out the grace and atonement of the Gospel, it often results in a 🔴 Critical or 🟠 Major error for Moralism (teaching human self-improvement rather than reliance on Christ). However, if these Gospel elements are missing simply because the pastor is preaching a highly focused, practical message to mature believers (e.g., instructions on biblical marriage), our system applies a "Safe Harbor" pardon, graciously reducing the omission to a 🟡 Minor error.
❌ The Law And Wrath: Not observed in the sermon.
❌ Total Depravity And Inability: Not observed in the sermon.
❌ Active Obedience Of Christ: Not observed in the sermon.
✅ The Cross And Atonement:
"raising a son that you know will eventually die violently as a sacrifice for sins for humanity" [00:10:22 ▶️ 📄]
⚠️ Theological Concerns
🔴 Critical Gospel Omission
Root Cause: Moralism
The Belief/Behavior: The sermon relies on a moralistic framework, urging mothers to endure hardship, release burdens, and persist in faith based on their own emotional strength and stewardship.
Why It's Dangerous: This leaves the congregation without the power for true spiritual change, as they are not anchored in the finished work of Christ or the doctrine of grace.
Biblical Correction: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
🔴 Critical Affirmation of the Immaculate Conception
Root Cause: Roman Catholic Dogma
""The reality that she just gave birth to a child through immaculate conception."" [00:06:34 ▶️ 📄]
The Belief/Behavior: The speaker explicitly affirms the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, stating, 'The reality that she just gave birth to a child through immaculate conception.'
Why It's Dangerous: This directly contradicts the Reformed doctrine of Total Depravity and the biblical teaching that all humanity, including Mary, is a sinner in need of grace.
Biblical Correction: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: (Romans 3:23-24)
✅ Commendations
Pastoral Care | Compassionate Tone
The speaker demonstrates genuine empathy and vulnerability, sharing personal anecdotes of fear and loss to connect with the congregation.
Biblical Illustration | Use of Biblical Narratives
Effective use of stories such as Moses' mother and the Canaanite woman to illustrate persistence and faith.
📜 Full Sermon Transcript (Audit)
Use the 📄 icons next to quotes above to automatically jump to their location in this raw transcript.
[00:00:01] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:01] Mom is in the house and we're going to welcome everybody that is joining us online. Sometimes people don't realize how actually large this church is. Not only do we have multiple campuses, but we have people from all over the world joining us. And we say this, we say we're a small church with a whole lot of people because we care about every single person. So we're small in that aspect, but there's just a lot of people that attend and a
[00:01:09] a lot of people that join us all over the world right now. We have North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Connecticut, Colorado, California, Pakistan, South Africa, Cyprus. Where is Cyprus?
[00:01:24] Is that in the middle? It's your mother. Oh my gosh. What's her name? Jenny. Happy Mother's Day, Jenny from the block, Cyprus. We are so glad that you're joining us. We also have London, Germany, Sweden, and Dubai. Wow. Welcome to everyone that is joining us and welcome to
[00:01:53] everyone in the room. If you were not aware, we have been in a series called Poker Face.
[00:01:59] y'all know that can't read my can't read my polka face I've been singing that like all week but the name of this particular message what we wanted to do is we wanted to take that same message and just incorporate it for mamas and this one's called queen of hearts
[00:02:20] thus like I'm in character today and all week I've been singing playing with the queen of hearts No, no, no, really. Like one person. Got it. We're going to try that again.
[00:02:34] Playing with the queen of hearts. No, no, no, really. The joker is the only fool to keep me.
[00:02:43] Okay. Do we have just like a lot of young people that don't know? Is that what it is?
[00:02:49] So we've got like one old person with me. Okay. All right. Has anybody heard that song before?
[00:02:58] Raise your hand. Did you just not know the words? You didn't want to lip sync it? Is that what it is? You don't know the words? Okay. Well, we have been in that series and today we're going to talk
[00:03:11] about all the mamas who are queen of hearts. And you know, there are moments in mothering where you feel like you've been dealt a hand that you didn't ask for, quite honestly. Not the diagnosis
[00:03:24] that you wanted, maybe not the marriage you had anticipated or the child that you thought you had raised, not the sleepless nights that sometimes seem to never end, not the comparison that you can feel at times as a mom looking at other people and comparing yourself to them,
[00:03:48] not the emotional exhaustion that you can often feel or the guilt that will sometimes try and come and tap you on the shoulder and whisper in your ear, making you question whether you're doing enough, all that you can. Not the anxiety that sometimes will show up uninvited when you
[00:04:09] did not ask for it. Or for some of you, you never anticipated that you would be doing it alone.
[00:04:17] And your heart has been broken over that. Yet, right here in the midst of a hand, you did not choose, that you did not ask for, there is still purpose, there is still calling and grace for exactly what you are carrying. You've had moments where you wanted to fold,
[00:04:36] if you were truly honest, where you wanted to just walk away, maybe even run, emotionally shut down, spiritually shut down, stop believing or in all truthfulness, let the overwhelm of the moment set in, but we know that God doesn't call us to fold when it gets hard. He calls us to stay
[00:05:01] in the hand. And I've learned that motherhood is not just about getting the perfect hand, but stewarding the one that you do have. Stewarding the hand that we've been dealt. We have to steward ourself as long as we're also stewarding our children simultaneously. Their struggles,
[00:05:26] their little personalities, their hard wiring, their paths. You may not have chosen the hand that you've been dealt, but here's what I want to say. You do get to choose how you play it.
[00:05:40] Your response matters, your faith, your consistency, and your unwavering love.
[00:05:48] Mothers are the queen of hearts. Why? Why are mothers the queen of hearts? Well, because mothers have a heart that carries what others cannot see. I think about Mary, who was the mother of Jesus. All the different things that she was carrying and the pain and excitement,
[00:06:07] both simultaneously, that she was feeling. She accepted the call, no matter what the season.
[00:06:16] And there were seasons for her that were extremely difficult. In Luke 2, 19, it says, but Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. What things was she pondering at that moment? The reality that she just gave birth to a child through
[00:06:34] immaculate conception. That's a pretty phenomenal and overwhelming thing to experience.
[00:06:41] The fact that the angels are at the birth proclaiming his deity and calling him the son of God. The humble reality of his birth. Here he is a king, but he doesn't have a royal setting.
[00:06:57] He was born in a manger and he was laid in a feeding trough for animals. The Bible says she was pondering those things in her heart. The shepherds who were appearing to her and prophesying
[00:07:11] over her and the baby. The fact that the sky was lighting up. Man, what she must have felt in those moments, the tension between the promise that she had and the reality that she was facing.
[00:07:28] And then we see later in his life, when he was around 12 years old, she again was pondering.
[00:07:38] It says his mother kept all these things in her heart. Well, what things at that moment?
[00:07:44] Well, when he was 12 years old, she lost him for three days. I've had lots of mothering moments, but I've never lost my 12 year old for three days. I may have left him in a car seat in the car.
[00:07:58] Anybody ever done that? That was one of the worst moments ever. I thought my husband took her in the house and she was left in the car. I also had moments where when we were in the setup and
[00:08:12] breakdown days of Freedom House, Pastor Troy and I would drive separately because our cars, we had to load everything in and out and I thought he had the kids one Sunday he thought I had the
[00:08:25] kids and here we are driving off and I see my son in slow-mo in the mirror chasing going it wasn't the only time we did that one time I got a call we were at a restaurant from an usher saying hey
[00:08:42] did you forget anything at church I said no he's like well your son is sitting here said you forgot him. I've forgotten a few things, but never for three days. Okay. It was just momentarily here.
[00:08:57] She is, she's lost her son for three days. And when she finds him, he's like, did you not know I would be about my father's business? It's like, Oh, sorry. He was at the house of God
[00:09:12] worshiping. Did you know, even Jesus went to the house of God. Do you know what a big deal?
[00:09:20] we just dedicated a lot of children today. I don't know how many at this campus, but a lot of children. Do you know how important it is that we raise our children in the house of God? And do you
[00:09:35] know how important it is for you as a parent to be in the house of God? Jesus understood that.
[00:09:44] Mary, she expected obedience and normalcy, but she was also operating in a divine calling.
[00:09:52] one that nobody had a playbook for.
[00:09:57] She was raising him, but he wasn't hers.
[00:10:02] Mary's faith matured through the years from holding onto what God said to trusting him when it didn't make any sense to her at all.
[00:10:12] Mary carried more than a child.
[00:10:13] She carried a prophetic word in her heart.
[00:10:19] She carried pressure and she carried pain as well.
[00:10:22] raising a son that you know will eventually die violently as a sacrifice for sins for humanity watching him be persecuted and spit on holding moments that no one else could possibly know but her that greek word for pondered is a really big word that is in the greek called symbolusa
[00:10:49] and it connects the pieces like a puzzle.
[00:10:54] It's like Mary getting all of these different pieces through the life of her son and she begins to start to connect the dots, put the pieces of the puzzle together to understand that there was a bigger picture
[00:11:08] than just what she might have seen in the moment.
[00:11:13] She was connecting to something bigger, way bigger that she was doing by stewarding his life. She understood the gravity and the weight of what she carried and it was no small thing. Pondering here means that Mary had a faith that
[00:11:31] she could hold mystery without needing every single thing explained. Mary knew how to sit with God even when she didn't fully understand what he was doing. She didn't dismiss what she didn't understand. Instead, Mary protected it. And some of us here, moms, some of us,
[00:11:55] we have burdens that no one knows about, only heaven. We have prayers that have been said out loud when no one was around, or tears that we've cried on our pillows that no one understood,
[00:12:11] questions that we just didn't have the answers to. But you know what we didn't do, moms? We didn't fold. We didn't fold because the hand we were dealt looked difficult. We carried it and we
[00:12:26] continue to carry it. And just because no one sees what you are carrying doesn't mean that God isn't counting it. Mothers are queens of hearts because mothers have a heart that refuses to let go. There was a decree in ancient Egypt that was declared where the Pharaoh said that
[00:12:50] all of the Hebrew boys are to be taken and they are to be discarded and killed and thrown in the Nile River. Why was that? Well, because the Jews, no matter how hard they got persecuted,
[00:13:03] they always would rise. And the Pharaoh noticed this. So he thought at first, well, let me just, because they're our slaves. Let me just make things a lot harder on them. Let me double their
[00:13:16] workload, but it didn't work. They still kept rising much like today, no matter how the Jews get persecuted, no matter how much people want to come at them. This has been their history ever since they've been on planet earth. They keep rising. They are not victims. They've never been,
[00:13:40] you've never heard a Jewish person become a victim. They rise no matter what comes at them and they come back owning the companies, owning the land because there was a promise made to the Jewish people. But what we see here in the scripture is that the midwives were told in Exodus
[00:14:01] to take the babies that were Hebrew and they were to discard them and to get rid of them. But the midwives said, the Bible says that they feared God and they would not do it. So the rulers in
[00:14:16] Egypt would come and they would tear the little baby boys away from their mothers. They would discard them and throw them in the Nile. But there was one mother named Jacob bed and she hid her
[00:14:29] baby boy. And the Bible said that she hid him for three months until she could no longer hide him anymore because his cries were heard. And let's pick up in Exodus and read where this story
[00:14:43] continues. It says, but when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the
[00:14:56] bank of the Nile. His sister, her name was Miriam, stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Now, when you read this story, it looks like she just carelessly put her son into a very
[00:15:14] violent, raging river. It may have seemed that she was letting go of him, but she wasn't letting go.
[00:15:21] She was releasing him into his destiny. And she does like any good mother would do. She planned it. She purposefully planned this event. It says she prepared a basket of papyrus. And that papyrus or papyrus, what would happen is it was a reed that was waterproof. And what's interesting,
[00:15:47] if you actually study this in the Hebrew, that word for basket actually is the same word used when it describes Noah's ark. Why is that? Because it means that there was this persecution that decided to float on the waters of judgment and this perseverance
[00:16:17] and this preservation that now came into its place. And so now there's preservation despite the waters of persecution, despite the waters of judgment. The exact same word that's used for ark.
[00:16:38] I love reading the word of God because it's so revelatory. There's so much revelation in it.
[00:16:45] I love digging into it and just seeing all that it beholds. We also see that that papyrus, it was laid in the bottom of the ark because it was waterproof, but also they treated this basket
[00:17:02] the same way that they did with the ark. They coated it in tar and pitch so it would be buoyant, so it would float, so water could not get in. She placed him in the reeds. She didn't just
[00:17:17] toss him out into the current, she positioned him where she knew he would be safe. Even when the waters were raging and things were happening all around, she positioned her baby boy.
[00:17:36] And even when it looked like she had abandoned him, she still had watchful eyes. His sister kept watch over him while he was in the reeds. Please understand that there are times in life in mothers where it looks like we have let go, but we haven't actually let go. We've released.
[00:18:01] You see, letting go means I'm done, but releasing means I'm entrusting God. And there are times as mothers where we have to release our children on the river of life and just pray because there's
[00:18:21] nothing else we can do in the natural but point them in the right direction and pray to God they get where their destiny is and in this scenario what I see is I see who bumps into their destiny
[00:18:39] shows up maybe at the dock of the palace, but he's still to the palace, even though it wasn't to the front door. And I think sometimes we don't like the way that our kids show up in their
[00:19:02] destiny because we envision them showing up in the front of the palace and living and staying in the palace the entire time. But sometimes they bump up against the jet ski out back and they get brought in and drawn from the water. That's what his name, Moses. That was Moses.
[00:19:28] His name means drawn out. And you would think that was the end of the story for his mother, but Pharaoh's daughter was bathing out back and she sees this little Hebrew boy and her heart is
[00:19:44] moved and she decides to keep him, but she's not a lactating mother. So she needed to find someone who could feed her baby. And Miriam is right there in the reeds and says, wait, I know someone. I know a Hebrew woman that could take care of this for you. And Moses has returned
[00:20:09] to his mother until he's finished weaning. Now in those times in ancient Egypt, because of the quality of water and things not being safe like they are today. They would nurse their children from three to five years old. So she got to pour into her son in those most formidable years.
[00:20:30] Those years of early learning, she got to pray over him and love him. What an incredible testament to just using your faith when you don't know what else to do, because the mother must often
[00:20:50] release her children, but she never lets them go. It is hard to release what you love the most into the river of life because moms, we like to control things. We do, but it's a different kind
[00:21:07] of faith when you have to let them go. He showed up at the palace and fulfilled the call of God on his life, even though there were some bumps in the road. And that's what we focus on as mothers.
[00:21:25] Some mothers in the room, you've had to release your child, not let go, but release. And it's been painful at times. You've had to believe for a child who wandered down the river and maybe your
[00:21:37] child hasn't come back yet. Maybe they haven't bumped into the palace yet, but you're still using your faith. You're still trusting and you are still believing and you, you've released, but you haven't let go. Maybe you've had to split nights and weekends and share visitation.
[00:22:01] Wasn't the way that you thought it would go, but you've held on to prayers when that's all that you've had. Your refusal to quit is your faith actually speaking. Mothers are queens of hearts because mothers have a heart that breaks, yet still believes. There's a woman named
[00:22:24] Hannah in the book of Samuel, and she's believing to have a child, but she was declared barren.
[00:22:34] and she's watching all of these other women who are birthing and having children and this was not her story.
[00:22:43] She shows up at church because that's where you go when you need a miracle is you show up at church and she shows up there and she's on her face, she's wailing, she's crying, she's believing God for this child, praying.
[00:23:02] so much so that her wailing gets the attention of one of the priests and he actually thinks she's drunk because she's flailing about so much and she lets him know that she's not drunk that she's actually grieving she's praying she's believing for a baby and in first Samuel
[00:23:28] chapter one, verse 17, it says, Eli, who is the priest answers her, well, go in peace and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him. And she said, may your servant find favor
[00:23:45] in your eyes. Then she went her way and ate something. Now it's so important when we see things like that in the Bible because paper, which they actually wrote on papyrus and pen, which they use, it was a costly ink that they used. It was so expensive. So for them to write
[00:24:08] this down, they didn't waste words. So for it to say, and she ate something and her face was no longer downcast. That meant something big. It's saying that because when you grieve, you often are
[00:24:24] not hungry. You're sick. You feel just overtaken. And often when you're believing for something, you're fasting. You're believing for your situation to change and to turn around. And it's when you feel something break in the spirit that you have this turnaround. You have this release
[00:24:46] and you know that it's done, even if you haven't seen it in the natural, you know in the spiritual, it's already shown up. You see, the natural realm comes after the spiritual realm.
[00:25:01] Things happen in the spiritual realm, and then we see it show up in the natural.
[00:25:07] So spiritually, something in her broke, and she knew she could now eat. There was something that shifted internally in this mother, this soon-to-be mother, and her request was granted.
[00:25:24] She pours out her heart. It was real. It was raw, and she has a boy, and she dedicates him back to the house of God to be a servant in God's house who literally changed a generation. Thank God she
[00:25:40] was a praying mother. Thank God she was a mother that even though her heart was breaking, she still was able to believe simultaneously, even though she looked like a mess, crying out and broken.
[00:25:56] Did you know that God is not intimidated by your breakdown? He responds to honest faith.
[00:26:02] And sometimes we think that if we fall apart, that we'll simply lose it all together. So sometimes we try to hold ourselves together and we have a bit of a poker face because we want everybody to
[00:26:18] think that it's all together when it's not did you know that when you're just honest and real not only do I think that honors the Lord I think it honors other moms too so we don't have to feel
[00:26:37] like we've always got it together because none of us do. We try our darndest, but none of us are that good. That's why we need a savior. And his name is Jesus. You with me? Hannah teaches us
[00:26:58] that sometimes your breakthrough is on the other side of your breakdown. And some mothers in the room today, you have struggled with conceiving and you've had multiple miscarriages and God sees you. You may have been misunderstood like Hannah was, but you kept on believing. People
[00:27:21] told Hannah that it was because of her sin that she couldn't conceive. And God said, no, no, no, just because culture is telling you one thing, you have found favor in my sight.
[00:27:34] You may have been injured, but you didn't fold. You went all in. You may have had questions, but you stayed surrendered. You see, it's not about the cards in your hand, but it's about the condition of your heart. Why? Because if the heart is right, the hand can be redeemed.
[00:28:02] Mothers are the queen of hearts because mothers have a heart that persists. There was a Canaanite woman, obviously from the land of Canaan, she wasn't a Jew, but yet she came to Jesus wanting help because she had a child that had been afflicted, possessed by demons. And she came
[00:28:30] to Jesus again, not even a Jew. And she requests and asks something of him. Says in Matthew 15, starting in verse 22, a Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, came to Jesus, crying out,
[00:28:50] Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. How can she call on a covenant that wasn't even hers?
[00:29:00] Because she knew she had heard about Jesus. She'd heard about his reputation and she believed and started identifying with who he was, even when a lot of Jewish people hadn't.
[00:29:13] even when the Jewish leaders never called him the son of David, which was equivalent to saying, you are the Messiah. And I acknowledge that you are the Messiah because the Messiah was coming down through the lineage, the kingship of David. So she's acknowledging that she is saying,
[00:29:36] Hey, I, and I know just like blind Bartimaeus, he said, you're, you're the son of David.
[00:29:46] he couldn't see. He was completely blind. And the ones that could see, the Pharisees, couldn't acknowledge who Jesus was. But here's this woman. She says, Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is demon possessed and suffering terribly. And then it says something
[00:30:10] crazy. Jesus did not answer a word. Do you know how many people would have been offended right there. Well, I'm leaving this church. I'm not believing in you anymore. God, I thought you were something else other than you are. So many people would have turned and walked away out of
[00:30:36] offense. They'd have been offended, but she didn't do that. And then it kind of seems like it piles on because his disciples saw what she was doing and they knew she was not a Jew. It says, so his
[00:30:54] disciples came to him and urged him, send her away for she keeps crying out after us. She's like that faucet that drips at night when you're laying in the bed. You know what I'm talking about?
[00:31:06] And it is so annoying that you cannot ignore it. You're half asleep, but that drip, that constant drip makes you get up and have to address that faucet and turn it off. Y'all know what I'm
[00:31:20] talking about? And they say, send her away. But Jesus answers. And he says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. The woman came and knelt before him. Not only to say he didn't answer her,
[00:31:43] then you've got the disciples piling on. Then he says, I have come to the Jews, the lost sheep of Israel and you're not a Jew. Okay, fine. I'm bailing. I am so offended right now. But that's
[00:31:59] not what the Bible says that she did. She never got caught up in offense. And I'm convinced when we don't get offended, even when we feel like we have the right to, that's really when our prayers
[00:32:14] get answered. So the woman, after she could have been offended, she came and she doubled down and she knelt before him and she identified who he was yet again and said, Lord, help me. Jesus replied,
[00:32:40] it's not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs. All right. She had every right now to be offended, to walk away, but he was after something. I'm going to show you in a
[00:32:55] minute what he was after. Here's her response. She said, yes, it is Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. Then Jesus said to her woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed at that moment.
[00:33:21] That's what happens when mamas persist, even when things don't look good, when the situation is hard or difficult, and we have the opportunity to want to get offended. This woman came with a legitimate need. She had a legitimate need. She was desperate and she knew there was only one place that answer
[00:33:48] was going to come from. And she didn't stop come hell or high water. She kept persisting and persisting and persisting. When heaven seemed silent, she kept persisting. When she felt like she was being rejected or talked about or misunderstood, she kept persisting. She kept
[00:34:07] pushing. She kept pushing. When those around her were gone, Jesus was not rejecting her, but he was trying to explain to her about missional order. Jesus was not rejecting her.
[00:34:29] He was actually saying, listen, I'm here for you, but I've been called on this journey first to reach Israel. And then I'm going to get to you. But Jesus went out of her way because this woman's
[00:34:45] heart was right. She did not argue theology with him. She's agrees. And she's like, I hear you.
[00:34:54] But she's like, you know what? Even the dogs can get a crumb left behind. And all I'm asking for you right now, Jesus, is just to give me a crumb because a crumb from your table is better than a
[00:35:07] thousand days elsewhere, just a crumb from your table. That's all I need. And her daughter's restored. There's no way she asked for that hand. There's no way she asked for a daughter in that condition, but she persisted no matter what hand she got dealt. Maybe there are areas today
[00:35:34] where you've been dealt a hand and you were asking God, why this hand?
[00:35:42] Can I get a better one?
[00:35:45] I've asked that too.
[00:35:47] I've had scenarios in my life.
[00:35:50] My oldest is 29.
[00:35:52] My youngest is 26.
[00:35:55] So I've got 26, 27, 29.
[00:35:59] In those years, everything has not been a piece of cake.
[00:36:03] There have been times where I stood when nothing made sense. When there were nothing but tears in my eyes and a prayer on my pillow.
[00:36:16] There was a moment I got a call when my son was 17 years old and it said, hurry, come quick. Your son's been in an accident and it doesn't look good. And I remember racing to the scene and
[00:36:29] traffic was backed up for miles and miles and miles. And so I threw my car into four wheel drive And I started driving down the shoulders of the road, just trying to get as close as I could to
[00:36:41] the accident. My heart was pounding. I was praying in the Holy Spirit the whole way. And I saw fire trucks and the rescue squads and police officers everywhere. And when I walked up on the scene of
[00:36:57] the crime. I saw my son's burgundy four-wheel drive flipped upside down. My heart sank. I was devastated. I saw other cars that were demolished and totaled. And I was looking around the wreckage for that blonde boy. Where is my boy? And out of the corner of my eye, he was standing up on a
[00:37:26] a little hill and he had airbag bruises on his body, but he was okay. There were people that had to be rushed to the hospital, but no life was lost. When I was talking to the police officers
[00:37:43] and the rescue workers, they said, we call this area dead man's curve because whenever we get a call to come here, we're usually having to call the coroner. And they said, you don't know how
[00:37:59] lucky your son is. And I said, I'm going to use the word blessed. I said, because I trust the Lord.
[00:38:07] I trust the Lord and I pray over my children. Now, I didn't want to walk through that.
[00:38:13] As a matter of fact, the Lord told me that I couldn't leave that little grassy knoll until I let fear stay in its place because I knew in my heart that every time that my kids left the
[00:38:29] house after that, there would be this little seed of fear that would try to rest in my heart. And the Lord said, don't leave this ground. Do not leave this ground unless you are willing to leave
[00:38:41] fear here and let your children be released. Release them to me. And I did that that day.
[00:38:54] I released my children when fear wanted to wrap itself around me. And instead of saying, God, why this hand? I've learned to say, God, will I trust you no matter what hand?
[00:39:11] Will I? You see, the greatest transformation does not happen when the hand changes, but when the heart surrenders and that's what I've learned as a mom. Will you stand on your feet with me today? Today is not about bluffing with the hand that you've been dealt. It's not
[00:39:34] about trying to have a poker face or make it like everything's perfect. I want to say this and I'm not just speaking to the moms. I'm speaking to everyone in the room today. You may have been
[00:39:51] dealt things you may have been given things you can take this podium that have been very hard that have been very difficult you may have felt yourself shut down emotionally you may have felt overwhelmed you may have felt heavy again this is for everyone in the room and everyone who's
[00:40:30] watching online we go through moments in life that we just we just don't think we can carry the weight anymore. And the good thing is that you don't have to. You have a savior that died
[00:40:55] on the cross and he felt the weight and the burden. So you don't have to. If you would close your eyes and bow your head today, I want to ask you this question. Every man, every woman,
[00:41:17] young, old, this is for everyone in the room and everyone watching online. You've been carrying burdens, holding onto things that you need to be releasing. And that's the opportunity we have today is to release things, to let things go. You see, sometimes we take our heart to God in pieces,
[00:41:49] but he never hands it back in pieces. He hands it back restored and whole. And God never gives his heart in pieces. When he gives you his heart, he gives it to you fully and completely.
[00:42:08] And I want to ask you this today. I want to ask you, no matter your age, no matter who you are, a man, a woman, a child, I want to ask you today, as we sing this song, if you've been carrying
[00:42:28] things, weights on your life, I want to ask you to come and grab a heart out of this basket.
[00:42:34] it. And I want you to place it upon the cross. This is a point where you are saying, and you are declaring, this is a touch point of, I'm not going to carry this anymore. I'm going to let this
[00:42:47] go. And I'm going to trust. And I'm going to believe God because there is no reason I need to be carrying what God has redeemed. So as we sing, I want you to get out of your seat. I want
[00:43:00] you to grab a heart and I want you just to place it on the cross and know that he doesn't give you his heart in pieces and yours doesn't have to be. Amen.
[00:00:01] Mom is in the house and we're going to welcome everybody that is joining us online. Sometimes people don't realize how actually large this church is. Not only do we have multiple campuses, but we have people from all over the world joining us. And we say this, we say we're a small church with a whole lot of people because we care about every single person. So we're small in that aspect, but there's just a lot of people that attend and a
[00:01:09] a lot of people that join us all over the world right now. We have North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Connecticut, Colorado, California, Pakistan, South Africa, Cyprus. Where is Cyprus?
[00:01:24] Is that in the middle? It's your mother. Oh my gosh. What's her name? Jenny. Happy Mother's Day, Jenny from the block, Cyprus. We are so glad that you're joining us. We also have London, Germany, Sweden, and Dubai. Wow. Welcome to everyone that is joining us and welcome to
[00:01:53] everyone in the room. If you were not aware, we have been in a series called Poker Face.
[00:01:59] y'all know that can't read my can't read my polka face I've been singing that like all week but the name of this particular message what we wanted to do is we wanted to take that same message and just incorporate it for mamas and this one's called queen of hearts
[00:02:20] thus like I'm in character today and all week I've been singing playing with the queen of hearts No, no, no, really. Like one person. Got it. We're going to try that again.
[00:02:34] Playing with the queen of hearts. No, no, no, really. The joker is the only fool to keep me.
[00:02:43] Okay. Do we have just like a lot of young people that don't know? Is that what it is?
[00:02:49] So we've got like one old person with me. Okay. All right. Has anybody heard that song before?
[00:02:58] Raise your hand. Did you just not know the words? You didn't want to lip sync it? Is that what it is? You don't know the words? Okay. Well, we have been in that series and today we're going to talk
[00:03:11] about all the mamas who are queen of hearts. And you know, there are moments in mothering where you feel like you've been dealt a hand that you didn't ask for, quite honestly. Not the diagnosis
[00:03:24] that you wanted, maybe not the marriage you had anticipated or the child that you thought you had raised, not the sleepless nights that sometimes seem to never end, not the comparison that you can feel at times as a mom looking at other people and comparing yourself to them,
[00:03:48] not the emotional exhaustion that you can often feel or the guilt that will sometimes try and come and tap you on the shoulder and whisper in your ear, making you question whether you're doing enough, all that you can. Not the anxiety that sometimes will show up uninvited when you
[00:04:09] did not ask for it. Or for some of you, you never anticipated that you would be doing it alone.
[00:04:17] And your heart has been broken over that. Yet, right here in the midst of a hand, you did not choose, that you did not ask for, there is still purpose, there is still calling and grace for exactly what you are carrying. You've had moments where you wanted to fold,
[00:04:36] if you were truly honest, where you wanted to just walk away, maybe even run, emotionally shut down, spiritually shut down, stop believing or in all truthfulness, let the overwhelm of the moment set in, but we know that God doesn't call us to fold when it gets hard. He calls us to stay
[00:05:01] in the hand. And I've learned that motherhood is not just about getting the perfect hand, but stewarding the one that you do have. Stewarding the hand that we've been dealt. We have to steward ourself as long as we're also stewarding our children simultaneously. Their struggles,
[00:05:26] their little personalities, their hard wiring, their paths. You may not have chosen the hand that you've been dealt, but here's what I want to say. You do get to choose how you play it.
[00:05:40] Your response matters, your faith, your consistency, and your unwavering love.
[00:05:48] Mothers are the queen of hearts. Why? Why are mothers the queen of hearts? Well, because mothers have a heart that carries what others cannot see. I think about Mary, who was the mother of Jesus. All the different things that she was carrying and the pain and excitement,
[00:06:07] both simultaneously, that she was feeling. She accepted the call, no matter what the season.
[00:06:16] And there were seasons for her that were extremely difficult. In Luke 2, 19, it says, but Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. What things was she pondering at that moment? The reality that she just gave birth to a child through
[00:06:34] immaculate conception. That's a pretty phenomenal and overwhelming thing to experience.
[00:06:41] The fact that the angels are at the birth proclaiming his deity and calling him the son of God. The humble reality of his birth. Here he is a king, but he doesn't have a royal setting.
[00:06:57] He was born in a manger and he was laid in a feeding trough for animals. The Bible says she was pondering those things in her heart. The shepherds who were appearing to her and prophesying
[00:07:11] over her and the baby. The fact that the sky was lighting up. Man, what she must have felt in those moments, the tension between the promise that she had and the reality that she was facing.
[00:07:28] And then we see later in his life, when he was around 12 years old, she again was pondering.
[00:07:38] It says his mother kept all these things in her heart. Well, what things at that moment?
[00:07:44] Well, when he was 12 years old, she lost him for three days. I've had lots of mothering moments, but I've never lost my 12 year old for three days. I may have left him in a car seat in the car.
[00:07:58] Anybody ever done that? That was one of the worst moments ever. I thought my husband took her in the house and she was left in the car. I also had moments where when we were in the setup and
[00:08:12] breakdown days of Freedom House, Pastor Troy and I would drive separately because our cars, we had to load everything in and out and I thought he had the kids one Sunday he thought I had the
[00:08:25] kids and here we are driving off and I see my son in slow-mo in the mirror chasing going it wasn't the only time we did that one time I got a call we were at a restaurant from an usher saying hey
[00:08:42] did you forget anything at church I said no he's like well your son is sitting here said you forgot him. I've forgotten a few things, but never for three days. Okay. It was just momentarily here.
[00:08:57] She is, she's lost her son for three days. And when she finds him, he's like, did you not know I would be about my father's business? It's like, Oh, sorry. He was at the house of God
[00:09:12] worshiping. Did you know, even Jesus went to the house of God. Do you know what a big deal?
[00:09:20] we just dedicated a lot of children today. I don't know how many at this campus, but a lot of children. Do you know how important it is that we raise our children in the house of God? And do you
[00:09:35] know how important it is for you as a parent to be in the house of God? Jesus understood that.
[00:09:44] Mary, she expected obedience and normalcy, but she was also operating in a divine calling.
[00:09:52] one that nobody had a playbook for.
[00:09:57] She was raising him, but he wasn't hers.
[00:10:02] Mary's faith matured through the years from holding onto what God said to trusting him when it didn't make any sense to her at all.
[00:10:12] Mary carried more than a child.
[00:10:13] She carried a prophetic word in her heart.
[00:10:19] She carried pressure and she carried pain as well.
[00:10:22] raising a son that you know will eventually die violently as a sacrifice for sins for humanity watching him be persecuted and spit on holding moments that no one else could possibly know but her that greek word for pondered is a really big word that is in the greek called symbolusa
[00:10:49] and it connects the pieces like a puzzle.
[00:10:54] It's like Mary getting all of these different pieces through the life of her son and she begins to start to connect the dots, put the pieces of the puzzle together to understand that there was a bigger picture
[00:11:08] than just what she might have seen in the moment.
[00:11:13] She was connecting to something bigger, way bigger that she was doing by stewarding his life. She understood the gravity and the weight of what she carried and it was no small thing. Pondering here means that Mary had a faith that
[00:11:31] she could hold mystery without needing every single thing explained. Mary knew how to sit with God even when she didn't fully understand what he was doing. She didn't dismiss what she didn't understand. Instead, Mary protected it. And some of us here, moms, some of us,
[00:11:55] we have burdens that no one knows about, only heaven. We have prayers that have been said out loud when no one was around, or tears that we've cried on our pillows that no one understood,
[00:12:11] questions that we just didn't have the answers to. But you know what we didn't do, moms? We didn't fold. We didn't fold because the hand we were dealt looked difficult. We carried it and we
[00:12:26] continue to carry it. And just because no one sees what you are carrying doesn't mean that God isn't counting it. Mothers are queens of hearts because mothers have a heart that refuses to let go. There was a decree in ancient Egypt that was declared where the Pharaoh said that
[00:12:50] all of the Hebrew boys are to be taken and they are to be discarded and killed and thrown in the Nile River. Why was that? Well, because the Jews, no matter how hard they got persecuted,
[00:13:03] they always would rise. And the Pharaoh noticed this. So he thought at first, well, let me just, because they're our slaves. Let me just make things a lot harder on them. Let me double their
[00:13:16] workload, but it didn't work. They still kept rising much like today, no matter how the Jews get persecuted, no matter how much people want to come at them. This has been their history ever since they've been on planet earth. They keep rising. They are not victims. They've never been,
[00:13:40] you've never heard a Jewish person become a victim. They rise no matter what comes at them and they come back owning the companies, owning the land because there was a promise made to the Jewish people. But what we see here in the scripture is that the midwives were told in Exodus
[00:14:01] to take the babies that were Hebrew and they were to discard them and to get rid of them. But the midwives said, the Bible says that they feared God and they would not do it. So the rulers in
[00:14:16] Egypt would come and they would tear the little baby boys away from their mothers. They would discard them and throw them in the Nile. But there was one mother named Jacob bed and she hid her
[00:14:29] baby boy. And the Bible said that she hid him for three months until she could no longer hide him anymore because his cries were heard. And let's pick up in Exodus and read where this story
[00:14:43] continues. It says, but when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the
[00:14:56] bank of the Nile. His sister, her name was Miriam, stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Now, when you read this story, it looks like she just carelessly put her son into a very
[00:15:14] violent, raging river. It may have seemed that she was letting go of him, but she wasn't letting go.
[00:15:21] She was releasing him into his destiny. And she does like any good mother would do. She planned it. She purposefully planned this event. It says she prepared a basket of papyrus. And that papyrus or papyrus, what would happen is it was a reed that was waterproof. And what's interesting,
[00:15:47] if you actually study this in the Hebrew, that word for basket actually is the same word used when it describes Noah's ark. Why is that? Because it means that there was this persecution that decided to float on the waters of judgment and this perseverance
[00:16:17] and this preservation that now came into its place. And so now there's preservation despite the waters of persecution, despite the waters of judgment. The exact same word that's used for ark.
[00:16:38] I love reading the word of God because it's so revelatory. There's so much revelation in it.
[00:16:45] I love digging into it and just seeing all that it beholds. We also see that that papyrus, it was laid in the bottom of the ark because it was waterproof, but also they treated this basket
[00:17:02] the same way that they did with the ark. They coated it in tar and pitch so it would be buoyant, so it would float, so water could not get in. She placed him in the reeds. She didn't just
[00:17:17] toss him out into the current, she positioned him where she knew he would be safe. Even when the waters were raging and things were happening all around, she positioned her baby boy.
[00:17:36] And even when it looked like she had abandoned him, she still had watchful eyes. His sister kept watch over him while he was in the reeds. Please understand that there are times in life in mothers where it looks like we have let go, but we haven't actually let go. We've released.
[00:18:01] You see, letting go means I'm done, but releasing means I'm entrusting God. And there are times as mothers where we have to release our children on the river of life and just pray because there's
[00:18:21] nothing else we can do in the natural but point them in the right direction and pray to God they get where their destiny is and in this scenario what I see is I see who bumps into their destiny
[00:18:39] shows up maybe at the dock of the palace, but he's still to the palace, even though it wasn't to the front door. And I think sometimes we don't like the way that our kids show up in their
[00:19:02] destiny because we envision them showing up in the front of the palace and living and staying in the palace the entire time. But sometimes they bump up against the jet ski out back and they get brought in and drawn from the water. That's what his name, Moses. That was Moses.
[00:19:28] His name means drawn out. And you would think that was the end of the story for his mother, but Pharaoh's daughter was bathing out back and she sees this little Hebrew boy and her heart is
[00:19:44] moved and she decides to keep him, but she's not a lactating mother. So she needed to find someone who could feed her baby. And Miriam is right there in the reeds and says, wait, I know someone. I know a Hebrew woman that could take care of this for you. And Moses has returned
[00:20:09] to his mother until he's finished weaning. Now in those times in ancient Egypt, because of the quality of water and things not being safe like they are today. They would nurse their children from three to five years old. So she got to pour into her son in those most formidable years.
[00:20:30] Those years of early learning, she got to pray over him and love him. What an incredible testament to just using your faith when you don't know what else to do, because the mother must often
[00:20:50] release her children, but she never lets them go. It is hard to release what you love the most into the river of life because moms, we like to control things. We do, but it's a different kind
[00:21:07] of faith when you have to let them go. He showed up at the palace and fulfilled the call of God on his life, even though there were some bumps in the road. And that's what we focus on as mothers.
[00:21:25] Some mothers in the room, you've had to release your child, not let go, but release. And it's been painful at times. You've had to believe for a child who wandered down the river and maybe your
[00:21:37] child hasn't come back yet. Maybe they haven't bumped into the palace yet, but you're still using your faith. You're still trusting and you are still believing and you, you've released, but you haven't let go. Maybe you've had to split nights and weekends and share visitation.
[00:22:01] Wasn't the way that you thought it would go, but you've held on to prayers when that's all that you've had. Your refusal to quit is your faith actually speaking. Mothers are queens of hearts because mothers have a heart that breaks, yet still believes. There's a woman named
[00:22:24] Hannah in the book of Samuel, and she's believing to have a child, but she was declared barren.
[00:22:34] and she's watching all of these other women who are birthing and having children and this was not her story.
[00:22:43] She shows up at church because that's where you go when you need a miracle is you show up at church and she shows up there and she's on her face, she's wailing, she's crying, she's believing God for this child, praying.
[00:23:02] so much so that her wailing gets the attention of one of the priests and he actually thinks she's drunk because she's flailing about so much and she lets him know that she's not drunk that she's actually grieving she's praying she's believing for a baby and in first Samuel
[00:23:28] chapter one, verse 17, it says, Eli, who is the priest answers her, well, go in peace and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him. And she said, may your servant find favor
[00:23:45] in your eyes. Then she went her way and ate something. Now it's so important when we see things like that in the Bible because paper, which they actually wrote on papyrus and pen, which they use, it was a costly ink that they used. It was so expensive. So for them to write
[00:24:08] this down, they didn't waste words. So for it to say, and she ate something and her face was no longer downcast. That meant something big. It's saying that because when you grieve, you often are
[00:24:24] not hungry. You're sick. You feel just overtaken. And often when you're believing for something, you're fasting. You're believing for your situation to change and to turn around. And it's when you feel something break in the spirit that you have this turnaround. You have this release
[00:24:46] and you know that it's done, even if you haven't seen it in the natural, you know in the spiritual, it's already shown up. You see, the natural realm comes after the spiritual realm.
[00:25:01] Things happen in the spiritual realm, and then we see it show up in the natural.
[00:25:07] So spiritually, something in her broke, and she knew she could now eat. There was something that shifted internally in this mother, this soon-to-be mother, and her request was granted.
[00:25:24] She pours out her heart. It was real. It was raw, and she has a boy, and she dedicates him back to the house of God to be a servant in God's house who literally changed a generation. Thank God she
[00:25:40] was a praying mother. Thank God she was a mother that even though her heart was breaking, she still was able to believe simultaneously, even though she looked like a mess, crying out and broken.
[00:25:56] Did you know that God is not intimidated by your breakdown? He responds to honest faith.
[00:26:02] And sometimes we think that if we fall apart, that we'll simply lose it all together. So sometimes we try to hold ourselves together and we have a bit of a poker face because we want everybody to
[00:26:18] think that it's all together when it's not did you know that when you're just honest and real not only do I think that honors the Lord I think it honors other moms too so we don't have to feel
[00:26:37] like we've always got it together because none of us do. We try our darndest, but none of us are that good. That's why we need a savior. And his name is Jesus. You with me? Hannah teaches us
[00:26:58] that sometimes your breakthrough is on the other side of your breakdown. And some mothers in the room today, you have struggled with conceiving and you've had multiple miscarriages and God sees you. You may have been misunderstood like Hannah was, but you kept on believing. People
[00:27:21] told Hannah that it was because of her sin that she couldn't conceive. And God said, no, no, no, just because culture is telling you one thing, you have found favor in my sight.
[00:27:34] You may have been injured, but you didn't fold. You went all in. You may have had questions, but you stayed surrendered. You see, it's not about the cards in your hand, but it's about the condition of your heart. Why? Because if the heart is right, the hand can be redeemed.
[00:28:02] Mothers are the queen of hearts because mothers have a heart that persists. There was a Canaanite woman, obviously from the land of Canaan, she wasn't a Jew, but yet she came to Jesus wanting help because she had a child that had been afflicted, possessed by demons. And she came
[00:28:30] to Jesus again, not even a Jew. And she requests and asks something of him. Says in Matthew 15, starting in verse 22, a Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, came to Jesus, crying out,
[00:28:50] Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. How can she call on a covenant that wasn't even hers?
[00:29:00] Because she knew she had heard about Jesus. She'd heard about his reputation and she believed and started identifying with who he was, even when a lot of Jewish people hadn't.
[00:29:13] even when the Jewish leaders never called him the son of David, which was equivalent to saying, you are the Messiah. And I acknowledge that you are the Messiah because the Messiah was coming down through the lineage, the kingship of David. So she's acknowledging that she is saying,
[00:29:36] Hey, I, and I know just like blind Bartimaeus, he said, you're, you're the son of David.
[00:29:46] he couldn't see. He was completely blind. And the ones that could see, the Pharisees, couldn't acknowledge who Jesus was. But here's this woman. She says, Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is demon possessed and suffering terribly. And then it says something
[00:30:10] crazy. Jesus did not answer a word. Do you know how many people would have been offended right there. Well, I'm leaving this church. I'm not believing in you anymore. God, I thought you were something else other than you are. So many people would have turned and walked away out of
[00:30:36] offense. They'd have been offended, but she didn't do that. And then it kind of seems like it piles on because his disciples saw what she was doing and they knew she was not a Jew. It says, so his
[00:30:54] disciples came to him and urged him, send her away for she keeps crying out after us. She's like that faucet that drips at night when you're laying in the bed. You know what I'm talking about?
[00:31:06] And it is so annoying that you cannot ignore it. You're half asleep, but that drip, that constant drip makes you get up and have to address that faucet and turn it off. Y'all know what I'm
[00:31:20] talking about? And they say, send her away. But Jesus answers. And he says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. The woman came and knelt before him. Not only to say he didn't answer her,
[00:31:43] then you've got the disciples piling on. Then he says, I have come to the Jews, the lost sheep of Israel and you're not a Jew. Okay, fine. I'm bailing. I am so offended right now. But that's
[00:31:59] not what the Bible says that she did. She never got caught up in offense. And I'm convinced when we don't get offended, even when we feel like we have the right to, that's really when our prayers
[00:32:14] get answered. So the woman, after she could have been offended, she came and she doubled down and she knelt before him and she identified who he was yet again and said, Lord, help me. Jesus replied,
[00:32:40] it's not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs. All right. She had every right now to be offended, to walk away, but he was after something. I'm going to show you in a
[00:32:55] minute what he was after. Here's her response. She said, yes, it is Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. Then Jesus said to her woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed at that moment.
[00:33:21] That's what happens when mamas persist, even when things don't look good, when the situation is hard or difficult, and we have the opportunity to want to get offended. This woman came with a legitimate need. She had a legitimate need. She was desperate and she knew there was only one place that answer
[00:33:48] was going to come from. And she didn't stop come hell or high water. She kept persisting and persisting and persisting. When heaven seemed silent, she kept persisting. When she felt like she was being rejected or talked about or misunderstood, she kept persisting. She kept
[00:34:07] pushing. She kept pushing. When those around her were gone, Jesus was not rejecting her, but he was trying to explain to her about missional order. Jesus was not rejecting her.
[00:34:29] He was actually saying, listen, I'm here for you, but I've been called on this journey first to reach Israel. And then I'm going to get to you. But Jesus went out of her way because this woman's
[00:34:45] heart was right. She did not argue theology with him. She's agrees. And she's like, I hear you.
[00:34:54] But she's like, you know what? Even the dogs can get a crumb left behind. And all I'm asking for you right now, Jesus, is just to give me a crumb because a crumb from your table is better than a
[00:35:07] thousand days elsewhere, just a crumb from your table. That's all I need. And her daughter's restored. There's no way she asked for that hand. There's no way she asked for a daughter in that condition, but she persisted no matter what hand she got dealt. Maybe there are areas today
[00:35:34] where you've been dealt a hand and you were asking God, why this hand?
[00:35:42] Can I get a better one?
[00:35:45] I've asked that too.
[00:35:47] I've had scenarios in my life.
[00:35:50] My oldest is 29.
[00:35:52] My youngest is 26.
[00:35:55] So I've got 26, 27, 29.
[00:35:59] In those years, everything has not been a piece of cake.
[00:36:03] There have been times where I stood when nothing made sense. When there were nothing but tears in my eyes and a prayer on my pillow.
[00:36:16] There was a moment I got a call when my son was 17 years old and it said, hurry, come quick. Your son's been in an accident and it doesn't look good. And I remember racing to the scene and
[00:36:29] traffic was backed up for miles and miles and miles. And so I threw my car into four wheel drive And I started driving down the shoulders of the road, just trying to get as close as I could to
[00:36:41] the accident. My heart was pounding. I was praying in the Holy Spirit the whole way. And I saw fire trucks and the rescue squads and police officers everywhere. And when I walked up on the scene of
[00:36:57] the crime. I saw my son's burgundy four-wheel drive flipped upside down. My heart sank. I was devastated. I saw other cars that were demolished and totaled. And I was looking around the wreckage for that blonde boy. Where is my boy? And out of the corner of my eye, he was standing up on a
[00:37:26] a little hill and he had airbag bruises on his body, but he was okay. There were people that had to be rushed to the hospital, but no life was lost. When I was talking to the police officers
[00:37:43] and the rescue workers, they said, we call this area dead man's curve because whenever we get a call to come here, we're usually having to call the coroner. And they said, you don't know how
[00:37:59] lucky your son is. And I said, I'm going to use the word blessed. I said, because I trust the Lord.
[00:38:07] I trust the Lord and I pray over my children. Now, I didn't want to walk through that.
[00:38:13] As a matter of fact, the Lord told me that I couldn't leave that little grassy knoll until I let fear stay in its place because I knew in my heart that every time that my kids left the
[00:38:29] house after that, there would be this little seed of fear that would try to rest in my heart. And the Lord said, don't leave this ground. Do not leave this ground unless you are willing to leave
[00:38:41] fear here and let your children be released. Release them to me. And I did that that day.
[00:38:54] I released my children when fear wanted to wrap itself around me. And instead of saying, God, why this hand? I've learned to say, God, will I trust you no matter what hand?
[00:39:11] Will I? You see, the greatest transformation does not happen when the hand changes, but when the heart surrenders and that's what I've learned as a mom. Will you stand on your feet with me today? Today is not about bluffing with the hand that you've been dealt. It's not
[00:39:34] about trying to have a poker face or make it like everything's perfect. I want to say this and I'm not just speaking to the moms. I'm speaking to everyone in the room today. You may have been
[00:39:51] dealt things you may have been given things you can take this podium that have been very hard that have been very difficult you may have felt yourself shut down emotionally you may have felt overwhelmed you may have felt heavy again this is for everyone in the room and everyone who's
[00:40:30] watching online we go through moments in life that we just we just don't think we can carry the weight anymore. And the good thing is that you don't have to. You have a savior that died
[00:40:55] on the cross and he felt the weight and the burden. So you don't have to. If you would close your eyes and bow your head today, I want to ask you this question. Every man, every woman,
[00:41:17] young, old, this is for everyone in the room and everyone watching online. You've been carrying burdens, holding onto things that you need to be releasing. And that's the opportunity we have today is to release things, to let things go. You see, sometimes we take our heart to God in pieces,
[00:41:49] but he never hands it back in pieces. He hands it back restored and whole. And God never gives his heart in pieces. When he gives you his heart, he gives it to you fully and completely.
[00:42:08] And I want to ask you this today. I want to ask you, no matter your age, no matter who you are, a man, a woman, a child, I want to ask you today, as we sing this song, if you've been carrying
[00:42:28] things, weights on your life, I want to ask you to come and grab a heart out of this basket.
[00:42:34] it. And I want you to place it upon the cross. This is a point where you are saying, and you are declaring, this is a touch point of, I'm not going to carry this anymore. I'm going to let this
[00:42:47] go. And I'm going to trust. And I'm going to believe God because there is no reason I need to be carrying what God has redeemed. So as we sing, I want you to get out of your seat. I want
[00:43:00] you to grab a heart and I want you just to place it on the cross and know that he doesn't give you his heart in pieces and yours doesn't have to be. Amen.
