Erin Davis

Erin Davis: You’d better not look like one, and you’d better not drive a car that says you’re a mom. You should somehow manage to keep this image of a non-mom life because “children are a burden.”

Leslie Basham: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Monday, May 7.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: One of the great joys we’re experiencing at Revive Our Hearts is seeing God raising up a whole generation of younger women who are enthusiastically embracing God’s calling on their lives as women. That looks different for different women in different stages and seasons of life.

I’m really delighted to welcome to Revive Our Hearts today, again, a dear friend of mine. You’ve heard her before on Revive Our Hearts, and now she’s written a new book. We’re going to be talking about that book and her life and God’s calling, especially for moms. Erin Davis is with us, and Erin, welcome to Revive Our Hearts. Thanks so much for being a part of this series.

Erin: Thanks for having me back.

Nancy: Erin’s husband, Jason, is the marketing manager for Revive Our Hearts—that’s news since the last time we were together in this studio—a former youth pastor. We’re really delighted for your family to now be a part of team “ROH.”

Erin: We’re pretty excited, too.

Nancy: And I love this new book that you’ve written. We’ll talk about that in a moment, but first let me reference several other books that you’ve written. Your first one, Graffiti: Learning to See the Art in Ourselves is a book on beauty and body image, targeting teenage girls in particular. And you were involved in helping to write the Lies Young Women Believe study guide, companion guide, along with Dannah Gresh and myself, and—Wow!—how God is using that resource in so many young women’s lives. You see that because you are the primary blogger at the Lies Young Women Believe blog. So you’re getting to see a lot of glimpses into the lives of those young women.

Erin: God continues to use the content from that book to expose lies and replace them with God’s truth. Yes, I get to see it every day, and it’s pretty exciting to see how He’s still working through that book.

Nancy: And you’ve been so brave to step into those topics “where angels fear to tread” with those young women. There are some really raw, difficult subjects you’ve dealing with on that blog. Some subjects, some stations would really not even want us to deal with on the air. But those young girls are dealing with some really rough and raw issues, and you’ve jumped right into the fray on that.

Erin: And our prayer, those of us in leadership for that blog, has been that that blog would become a beacon of truth online. So we do tend to draw in some pretty gritty questions, thoughts from some girls in pretty dire situations, and we don’t shy away from them. We use God’s truth as our sword, and it’s been really exciting to see how He’s been changing the lives of young women across the country and really, around the world.

Nancy: I love your heart for mentoring and discipling those young women as you’ve been mentored and discipled by older women. It’s just neat to see that baton of truth being passed down to you, and from you, to the next generation. And now you’ve stepped into another subject, which is really not all that different, because it’s still about discipleship and mentoring. Your newest book is called Beyond Bath Time: Embracing Motherhood as a Sacred Role.

Erin: I feared to write a motherhood book, because those who know me and know my family know that I don’t have motherhood all figured out. I’m not a perfect mom raising perfect kids.

Nancy: So you did not write this as an expert?

Erin: I did not write this as a mothering expert—certainly not! I wrote it through my own journey and what the Lord is using motherhood to teach me, and there’s a lot to be learned through the journey of motherhood.

Nancy: And your book is a huge encouragement to mothers to think beyond the details—the nuts and bolts—of getting kids clothed and fed, and to piano lessons, or whatever the season of life is. You’re saying there is a mission and a vision beyond that for women to embrace.

Erin: There is a lot of nitty-gritty that comes with motherhood, no matter what age your kids are. If you get so focused on that nitty- gritty and can’t see the big picture, it can sure feel burdensome. But if you can turn to God’s Word for a bigger vision of motherhood, you’re still going to have to make a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but you can find more purpose in it. It makes it a whole lot more bearable, and a whole lot more fun, because you’re doing a really important job.

Nancy: What I love about you, Erin, is that you’re so honest and transparent. In this book you share a lot about your own journey and the fact that motherhood wasn’t something you just fell into naturally, or easily, or joyfully initially, but God used an incident when you were twelve weeks pregnant with your first child to really start a whole paradigm shift in your life.

That’s the point where you got the news from your doctor that this baby you were carrying probably wouldn’t survive the pregnancy and that doctor had some counsel that you probably weren’t really ready to hear.

Erin: That’s right. I wasn’t very far along in my pregnancy and we decided to have an ultrasound. The doctor called me. I was getting ready to leave for a three-week business trip. She said, “I’ve seen your ultrasound results, and there’s a problem with your pregnancy.” I said, “Well, it’s going to have to wait; I’m getting ready to go on a business trip,” which is sort of indicative of where my heart was before all of this happened.

She said, “You’re going to have to make a decision about this pregnancy before three weeks is up.

I said, “A decision about this pregnancy? I decided. I got pregnant, that’s what I already decided.” But she was subtly trying to tell me that the situation was dire.

My little boy, I didn’t know it was a boy at the time, had a blockage in his bladder. That really doesn’t sound all that serious, except that babies when they’re in the womb, they process amniotic fluid through their plumbing and that is how their lungs develop. If my baby was unable to process his amniotic fluid, then he would be unable to develop his lungs.

We had a really difficult prayerful weekend, and that Monday we went and saw a specialist and had another ultrasound. She barged into the room with a clipboard in her hand (I was actually laying on the ultrasound table still), my husband was there beside me and our moms were in the room.

This doctor said, with no bedside manner at all, “Your baby probably isn’t going to survive this pregnancy. If he does, he’s going to be very handicapped. I suggest you abort him.” The room sort of went fuzzy, and I remember just deferring to my husband to handle her questions from there. I was really stunned.

Nancy: And how did your husband handle the question?

Erin: Calmly and wisely. I’m not sure how he avoided expressing how angry he must have felt. He just calmly said, “We won’t be aborting this baby, so you need to tell us what our other options are.” So I had a series of tests in the doctor’s office that day and continued to have tests the whole pregnancy.

I went every week for an ultrasound, and so that meant seven months of ultrasounds. As I look back on that season, I remember that we were never undone. We were calm . . . and that baby we were going to name Truett.

One day my husband said, “I’ve changed the baby’s name.”

“The baby’s name that’s in my tummy? You’ve changed his name?”

And he said, “I want to name him Elisha because it means ‘God saves,’ or ‘God is my salvation.’”

At that point, it was so uncertain. I said, “Honey, God might not save him.”

And Jason said, “That’s okay. God still saves. So I want his name to be a testimony of that.”

So, from then on the baby in my belly became Elisha. And from early on we were able to use that trial to testify . . . and those passages about God being your strength when you’re weak and being able to depend on Him. They were life; they were bread to us during that season, as I continued to carry that baby in my tummy and wait to see what was going to happen.

Nancy: I want to step back a minute and talk about some of the things that led up to that pregnancy, but for those who are holding their breath, wanting to know what happened to Elisha, tell us.

Erin: Elisha is the cutest, rowdiest, funniest four-year-old boy I’ve ever been around in a long time. He loves baseball, and he loves cowboy things, and he’s totally fine.

We had an ultrasound every week, and his little bladder was just a little black spot. It got bigger and bigger with every ultrasound because his plumbing flawed, and it was filling with fluid.

The day he was born, we were still having ultrasounds, and his bladder filled his entire abdomen. There was a specialist team waiting in the wings to whisk him away to emergency surgery. We were prepared. We delivered in a different city from our home. We were prepared to live there for weeks while he was recovering from whatever they needed to do him.

Let me just say, it was clear to everyone in the room that his plumbing was working just fine. The surgeon who was waiting to take him laughed and said, “You just bought yourself a ticket out of the NICU.” He never went to the NICU; he never had surgery . . . he’s a healthy boy.

He has a little bit of residual hydronephrosis in his plumbing, and he has one kidney that’s a little bit small. I continue to pray that he would be fully healed, but he was healed on the day of his birth. He’s happy and does great.

Nancy: Elisha . . .

Erin: Elisha.

Nancy: God saves . . .

Erin: God saves, that’s right.

Nancy: Let me back up to when you found out you were expecting your first child, this child we’re talking about. I’ve heard you say that the stick turned pink sooner than you expected.

Erin: That’s right. You’d have to get a little bit of background on who I am and who I was at that point. I had everything that the world told me a young woman should have. I’d gone to college and then graduate school. I always like to refer to myself as “type double A.” I got undergraduate school done in under three years and then went on to graduate school. I had the husband, had the house, had the career, and getting pregnant was the next thing on the list, the script, that the world had written for me.

So we decided, okay, that’s the next thing. But yes, the stick turned pink much sooner than we expected, and I broke the news to my husband, Jason, that a baby was on the way by sitting on our bed in my bathrobe and sobbing uncontrollably. I just felt like a bomb had gone off in my life.

Nancy: Not because you were not going to, at some point, have children in your thinking . . . so what made it so traumatic at the moment?

Erin: I think that I planned to have children because that was on the to-do list, but when children were suddenly a reality, I was very, very aware of all the ways it was going to interrupt the life that I wanted for myself. I couldn’t fathom how I could continue down the career path that I wanted and be a mom. I couldn’t fathom how I could continue to have the marriage I wanted and be a mom . . . to have the friendships, and even the ministry.

My husband and I have been student ministers for twelve years, and I just didn’t know how we could continue to pour our lives into teenagers and have a baby around. So when it was real, I suddenly realized all the ways it was going to disrupt my life, and that was unpleasant to me.

Nancy: So were you feeling, “I just don’t have time to be a mom?”

Erin: Absolutely. My feeling was, “I don’t know how a baby will fit into any of the corners of my life,” and I had every corner of my life well mapped out.

Nancy: So in that sense, were you viewing children as more of a burden than a blessing?

Erin: Absolutely. I think the burden or blessing question is where so many women, moms included, are still really hung up. I have a really good friend, and she’s quoted often in the book, and she says how she feels our culture has a real split personality toward mothers.

We go to their baby showers and we think “Oh, isn’t that cute?” and we admire their pregnant tummies. But inside we feel sorry for them and we think, “Oh, man, what is she is getting ready to have to go through?” So we sort of love the idea of pregnancy, motherhood, families, but in reality we think of it as drudgery.

That is certainly the way that I felt about motherhood, and the way I sometimes still feel about motherhood. I still very much have to fight an inner battle to believe what God says, which is that children are a blessing, rather than to believe what my flesh says, which is they’re a burden. I have to resist the urge to sometimes call my, two children now, “speed bumps,” because they’re slowing me down from so many things. That’s really a choice, to see them as either a blessing or a burden.

Nancy: It’s a choice that a lot of women in our culture are being faced with, and our culture hasn’t really helped people to see those children as a blessing.

Erin: Our culture is very anti-mom in a lot of ways. You want proof? Buy a minivan. People will feel so sorry for you if you tell them you’re getting a minivan. It’s as if you’re trading away any semblance of a normal life for cruise control and built-in DVD players. That is like the ultimate, “your life is over,” if you have a minivan.

“Mom jeans” is another example. Every fashion show you ever are going to watch, before and after, in the “after” it’s, “She used to wear mom jeans.” It is the ultimate fashion faux pas. So you might be a mom, but you’d better not look like one. And you’d better not drive a car that says you’re a mom. You should somehow manage to keep this image of a non-mom life, because “children are a burden.”

Nancy: Then you were holding in your hands that precious little Elisha, who was a gift from God, a miracle child that God healed in the womb. Did you just instantly, once you held that little bundle of life, immediately embrace motherhood as this great calling?

Erin: No, I did not. Of course I loved him, and the miracle of it all was not lost on me, but it wasn’t as natural as I thought. I think that’s true with a lot of things in motherhood. I know a lot of friends who have something similar to post-traumatic stress over breastfeeding. They can’t figure it out, and they’re traumatized about it for years after their baby is well grown.

There are a lot of areas of motherhood like that. We think discipline is going to happen naturally, and it doesn’t. We think the bond is going to be natural or always there, and it isn’t. We think our marriages are going to know how to adapt to children, and they don’t easily.

That was true with me and Elisha. I loved him very, very much from the moment saw him, but motherhood did not come naturally. My first year as a mom was really, really difficult.

Nancy: Tell me more.

Erin: I just didn’t adjust well for all of the reasons that I told you. I was afraid to become a mom. Those were real concerns, and they really happened. Suddenly, my whole life revolved around this little thing who had no concept of a schedule. He didn’t know night from day, and whenever he was hungry or sleepy or whatever he needed, I had to adapt to it.

I stayed home with him and I really isolated myself at first because I didn’t have any mom friends. All of my friends were in the same season of life that I was, before baby, and I suddenly realized I hadn’t diversified my friendships very well because unless it was a woman that was in the exact same season of life as I was, I didn’t have a lot in common . . . scheduling became really difficult.

I was home with this baby who had no semblance of a schedule and was extremely needy and my work life got put on hold, and it was hard on my marriage—just as I suspected.

We couldn’t go have sushi anytime we wanted. When they say having a baby changes everything, that’s not just a cute Hallmark card notion. Having a baby changes everything, and I didn’t have a biblical framework to understand it.

I didn’t understand that it was more than changing a gajillion diapers every day. I didn’t understand that it was more than just establishing a sleeping pattern. To me, the mundane-ness of it all, the boredom of it all, the repetition of it all . . . I didn’t have any framework from God or from the Bible because I hadn’t studied it to have a bigger picture.

So I got really caught up in the small things, and it was a difficult year.

Nancy: We’re going to talk more about your journey and what God has taught you since having that first child, and we’re going to look at God’s Word and get some, what I think will be liberating and encouraging insights for moms and those who encourage moms, but give us a glimpse. What is something that God used early on in your parenting to give you a sense of hope or joy or purpose, to help you persevere through that first year?

Erin: I think the story that’s been most impactful from the Word comes from the book of Nehemiah. They were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, and Nehemiah said to the Israelites, “I want you to fight with your families, and fight for your families.” The enemies of Israel had come to see what was going on, and Nehemiah’s charge was, “Stand side by side.”

So there’s this description in the Bible, husbands, wives, children, with sword in one hand, shovel in the other hand, and they’re building their wall. And they built the wall miraculously quickly, and the enemies of God were very afraid. (see Neh. 4:13-14)

When I started to see motherhood as more than endless feedings, diaper changes, discipline, all of the things, the routine . . . and as my part of building the wall, as doing something for my family and doing something with my family because I couldn’t do it any other way, I started to get that bigger vision of family and kingdom work and that God could use me as a mom to do kingdom work. (I felt really sidelined from kingdom work as a mom, from what I thought kingdom work was.)

When God started to use that passage in Nehemiah to help me understand that building the kingdom with my family and for my family was something that would make the enemies of God afraid, that’s something that really began to re-cast my vision of motherhood and ministry, and what God wanted to do through me and my children.

Leslie: Erin Davis and Nancy Leigh DeMoss are talking about the impact moms have when they invest in their children. Nancy will tell you how to get a copy of Erin’s book, Beyond Bath Time, in just a minute.

What did you think about today’s program? You can let us and Erin Davis know by visiting the Revive Our Hearts listener blog. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com and scroll to the end of the transcript. You can ask a question or leave a comment there.

Erin Davis is participating, so you may get a response from her. We’re able to bring you the radio program, transcript and listener blog, thanks to listeners who support Revive Our Hearts. Your support will be multiplied as it changes women who need to hear it. Nancy’s here with an example.

Nancy: When God speaks to women through His Word, it not only affects them, it also affects their children and the generations that follow. That’s why I loved getting an email from a woman who described much of what God is doing in her life. She says,

Revive Our Hearts has been a major blessing to me. The past few weeks I’ve been going through a re-programming season. I grew up in a family with unsaved parents and never had an example of what biblical womanhood looked like. Since I’ve become an adult and gotten married I’ve struggled to find what a godly woman should be.

Thanks be to God, my parents have come to Christ in the past few years. However, it’s been difficult mentoring my own mother. I wasn’t the perfect picture of biblical womanhood, and I had no model or mentor to show me.

She goes on to describe being exhausted after she and her husband took on some intense ministry opportunities. Then she said,

I heard about Revive Our Hearts through the Internet. Revive Our Hearts was exactly what my tired, hungry heart needed. Your teaching is helping me to re-learn what it means to be a godly woman. I thank God for His grace and for using you to help me. Thank you for being obedient to the Father’s work.

This listener has two small children at home. Imagine the impact that God’s Word is having on those little ones, as they grow up with a mother who is committed to learning how to be a woman of God.

When you support Revive Our Hearts, you’re part of making biblical teaching available to women like this one. You’re part of impacting her children, her parents, her friends, generations that follow. If you’ve never supported Revive Our Hearts before, I want to let you know that your gift will be doubled this month, as some friends of the ministry are matching the gift of everyone who’s giving for the first time, up to a matching challenge amount of $100,000. Meeting or exceeding this goal will be an important part of meeting our overall expenses, in May, of $350,000.

When you support Revive Our Hearts with a gift of any size, we want to say “thank you” by sending you the book we’ve been hearing about on today’s program, Beyond Bath Time by Erin Davis. Just ask for the book when you make your donation. If you want to give us a call, the number is 1-800-569-5959. Or if you wish, visit us online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Leslie: Do you ever feel like you have to delay motherhood because you’re too busy in ministry? Erin Davis felt that way.

Erin: We chose childlessness for seven years of marriage, and many people pressed us on it in those seven years. Our response was that we didn’t want to have children because we felt so passionate about student ministry. We felt like that was part of the sacrifice we needed to make to be great student ministers.

I think we came up with that idea from lots of different sources. I think we were wrong, but I feel like there are a lot of young people who feel like it’s the right thing to do to not have children so that they can have a ministry. That was really the tug-of-war in my heart. I didn’t want to have children because I didn’t want to give up a ministry.

What I didn’t understand is that having children is a ministry. I wasn’t giving up doing something important for the Lord by having children.

Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts

Leslie Basham: Erin Davis and her husband delayed having children while busy in youth ministry.

Erin Davis: I feel like there are lots of young people who feel like it’s the right thing to do to not have children so that they can have a ministry.

Leslie: But she’s had a change of heart.

Erin: Having children is a ministry.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Tuesday, May 8.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Our guest this week on Revive Our Hearts is my good friend Erin Davis. She’s been a part of the Revive Our Hearts/True Woman Movement for a number of years, and she loves the Lord. She loves her husband. She loves her children. She’s a gifted writer, and I’m so thrilled she’s written this latest book called, Beyond Bath Time: Embracing Motherhood as a Sacred Role.

Welcome back to Revive Our Hearts, Erin.

Erin: Thank you.

Nancy: What I love about the way you write about this subject, you’re doing it as a younger woman speaking into this culture, and you’re saying the issue isn’t really: Do you have a job? Do you not have a job? It’s not that those things don’t matter, but you’re asking us to look at it from a bigger picture and say: What are the motivations? What are my priorities? What am I living for? And to think in a more cosmic sense of how my choices today impact my life down the road, impact others’ lives, and impact generations to come.

Erin: Sure, and the focus of this book is for moms because my friends are moms, many of them stay-at-home moms. Because they don’t have God’s vision for motherhood, they’re drowning. They’re in a tailspin. They are bitter. They are angry. They are stressed. They are sleep deprived, or they’re sleeping all the time. They are really, really struggling.

They are moms, but they don’t understand the kingdom mindset of motherhood. And so bath time and peanut butter sandwiches and car pools and chore charts and all of those things are just sucking the life out of them.

Nancy: You said that you wrote this book because you needed to find out for yourself why motherhood really matters.

Erin: That’s right. Any book I’ve ever written has been born out of my own personal experience and the work that God has done in me.

I’m not trying to establish myself as an expert mother. I certainly am not. But I can say, “Look, I’ve been there, and I was struggling, too, and I went to the Word, and I said, ‘God, what do You have to say about motherhood?’”

That well was so much deeper than I ever could have imagined. My expectation was that I could find the Proverbs 31 woman, and that would be about all I’d find in the Bible about motherhood, and that is so not true. He speaks about motherhood over and over and over in these passages of Scripture where you wouldn’t really expect there to be a message about motherhood, but God has a heart for motherhood.

He has a heart for mothers. He has a heart for families, and He doesn’t think it’s little. He thinks it’s really, really big. Go to the Word and ask Him to show you His vision, His plan for what you’re doing. I think you’ll be so encouraged, so strengthened for the journey.

Nancy: And it has been a journey for you because the things you’re saying now, you weren’t talking that way when we first met. In fact, I was with you when you were expecting that first child, and you were still a little tentative about . . . You were saying the right things, but it was a challenge for you to really embrace motherhood as a sacred calling.

In fact, you and Jason made a choice in the early years of your marriage not to have children. Tell us a little bit about that season.

Erin: We chose childlessness for seven years of marriage, and many people pressed us on it in those seven years, and our response was that we didn’t want to have children because we felt so passionate about student ministry. We felt like that was part of the sacrifice we needed to make to be great student ministers. I think we came up with that idea from lots of different sources. I think we were wrong, but I feel like there are lots of young people who feel like it’s the right thing to do to not have children so that they can have a ministry.

That was really the tug-of-war in my heart. I didn’t want to have children because I didn’t want to give up a ministry. What I didn’t understand is that having children is a ministry, and I wasn’t giving up doing something important for the Lord by having children.

Nancy: I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve had women come up to me and say, “I want to have a ministry. I want to have a ministry like yours. I want to be teaching. I want to be writing,” just different things that are on their hearts to do.

I think many of those desires may have been placed there by God, but what I’ve really tried to help them understand is what you are doing in that home as a helper to your husband, as a mom to your kids, that is nothing less than ministry. It’s a huge ministry, and be careful not to just put that in a box, like, “That’s my family, but then, I’m, like, dying for the day when I can get free to really do ministry.”

There is no greater higher calling to ministry, in the will and timing of God, than what you’re doing right now with those two little ones God’s put in your home.

Erin: And that’s the lesson I’ve learned. My husband and I have been student pastors for a really long time, and I have a writing and speaking ministry, and teenagers were my ministry. So I’ve impacted, I hope, hundreds of teenagers over the years. But none of that even holds a candle to these children who I pour into day in and day out.

If those children—my children—go on to raise Christian children, and my grandchildren go on to share faith with their children, that impact is so much greater than a girl who is impacted by a lesson I give at a retreat or someone who reads a book that I wrote. It impacts their thinking for a little while. It certainly is a ministry, but motherhood is counter-cultural, and not a lot of people are saying that.

Nancy: And the thing with motherhood is you don’t see the fruit and the rewards or the gain of it right away.

Erin: That’s right. Right.

Nancy: You’re still tied up with bath time and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You have to be in it for the long haul and have a vision for the long haul to see it as being really purposeful.

Erin: And I think, those things that are common, we assume are not holy or are not sacred or are not of God or not blessed by God. So it’s very easy for mothers to feel like they are the lowest rung in the church because they are not doing something new, innovative, exciting. But that’s not true.

I think of the hall of faith in Hebrews and those people who are listed and commended for their great faith. I love at the end of that long list it talks about how they persevered without seeing their fruits. They just had great faith.

Motherhood is like that. It’s definitely like that. There’s not a lot of fruit for a really long time, but just because motherhood is common doesn’t mean God isn’t using it.

Nancy: Don’t you think it’s like the enemy to want to dismantle and undermine the whole concept of motherhood, which is so involved in passing the baton of faith from one generation to the next. I can see how, if Satan were just masterminding how to take over a culture, how to stop the gospel from going forward, one big weapon in his arsenal would be to make people think that motherhood is insignificant.

Erin: Absolutely. I mean, Satan is crafty, but he’s not all that original. This is very similar to the original lie that he whispered to Eve: “Did God really say that you can’t do that? Did God really say that?” The undertone is, “Who you are is not enough. You need to be something else, girl. You need to be doing something else with your life. He’s holding back from you.”

It’s the same lie that mothers are chewing on left and right: Motherhood isn’t enough. I’m not enough if I’m just a mom.

I can’t tell you how many people that I’m around, when they are asked, “What do you?” Reply, “Oh, I’m just a mom.” As if they’re apologizing for it. It’s huge, so absolutely, it’s under attack by the enemy. And we know that if Satan can undermine families, then he’s winning a lot of battles on a lot of fronts. And if he can undermine motherhood, he can undermine a lot of families.

Nancy: Even the way that Eve got her name is a really gracious and precious tribute to the value of motherhood.

Erin: That’s right.

Nancy: You think of Adam and Eve sinning, making the wrong choice to eat the forbidden fruit, and then God comes to the garden and gives them the consequences, to the man, to the woman, to the serpent, and clothed them. You go through this whole scene of grace back there with the fallen man and woman.

And then comes that point at the end of Genesis 3 where Adam actually names his wife. Just talk about the selection of the name in that context.

Erin: This was my favorite thing that I discovered in Scripture when I was researching this concept of motherhood. The curse had just been handed out, and Adam’s first words out of his mouth are to rename his wife Eve because she would be the mother of many; she would give life to many.

So at first it’s like, “What? She just blew it big time, and you’re going to rename her Life Giver?” But Adam knew that there would be some redemption. Yes, she sinned, but she was going to be the mother of all the living.

As I continued to study that, I said that sin is one song we should be singing about Eve, but her children were her opus because she went on to have children after that. We know the story of Cain and Abel. We know that it wasn’t perfect. But at the birth of those children, Eve every time says, “With the help of God, I have brought forth a man.” You can hear the wonder in her voice. “Yes, I sinned, but God is helping me to give birth to a child.”

And after the birth of Seth it says that “at that time, the people of earth came to call on the name of the Lord.” So yes, Eve sinned, but Eve also talked about the Lord with her children. There were no Vacation Bible Schools. There were no youth pastors, no outreach events. Adam and Eve were responsible to teach their children about God, and because of that, because they faithfully told their children about God and told the stories of God and shared the importance of following God, the people of earth began to call on the name of the Lord.

She made a mistake, but her name, Life Giver, is a reminder. She lost so much in the garden, but she didn’t lose her husband, and she didn’t lose her children, and she didn’t lose God. So there’s some redemption there in that role of being a life giver.

Nancy: And it’s grace restoring what Satan intended to strip away.

Erin: Absolutely.

Nancy: I think he intended to leave her without any of that.

Erin: Right.

Nancy: He would have wanted to trash her marriage, trash her whole life, and trash everybody else’s life from that point on.

Erin: Sure.

Nancy: But this where grace comes in, and part of that gracious redeeming provision right there in the garden is the fact that she is still called and enabled by God to be a bearer and nurturer of life.

Erin: And it didn’t come easy for Eve. Part of the curse for Eve was that child bearing would come with pain. And her toddlers probably acted a lot like my toddlers. And so child rearing probably came with its own share of frustrations. But every little face was a reminder that redemption was possible and that God had a plan for redemption. Everything didn’t stop there in the garden with that bite of the apple, her family would go on.

And we’re still talking about Eve today. For generations and generations and generations, her story is still being told. Why? Because she sinned? Yes. But also because she gave life.

Nancy: Not to speak of the fact that through that line of her third child Seth ultimately came Christ . . .

Erin: That’s right.

Nancy: . . . the Messiah, the one who would deal a fatal wound to the serpent and purchase our salvation.

So it was through her willingness to give life, to embrace that calling of motherhood, that ultimately, we’re sitting here today being followers and lovers of Christ. It is through that line that God made a provision for salvation in the Person of Christ.

Erin: And that’s how it is with motherhood. I think so many moms think the goal of motherhood is just to raise kids who are good, who behave well. If you have that close-up view of motherhood, I got news for you: They’re not always going to behave well, and that doesn’t mean you’re a failure as a mother. You’re not always going to behalf well, and that doesn’t mean you’re a failure as a mother. You’ve got to have a long-range vision.

What will happen if your kids call on the name of the Lord? And then what will happen if their kids call on the name of the Lord? And what will happen if their kids call on the name of the Lord? How many people will be impacted by all of those children that you’ve poured wisdom into, that you’ve been a life giver to, and they go on to be salt and light in this dark world?

You can’t just think of it as: “Can I get through the day without losing my cool?” You have to think of it as: “What is my long-term ministry potential?” That’s what Eve was able to do, and it is a really beautiful story of redemption and restoration and the beauty of giving life.

Nancy: And yet it’s not an over-romanticized story.

Erin: Sure.

Nancy: Because, as you pointed out, early on there in Genesis we see the pain of child bearing, child rearing, and know that motherhood does involve suffering.

Erin: Eve was the first woman to ever bury her child. So Eve knew the pain of motherhood that many of us will not know. To a greater degree, Eve knew the pain of motherhood, but the story doesn’t stop there.

Nancy: And I think it’s also a reminder that, even when motherhood is not that traumatic, that it’s still difficult, and that it doesn’t come naturally to fallen human creatures. It reminds me of the passage in Titus chapter 2 that says that part of the mentoring, discipling process of older women to younger women, is to teach the younger women to love their children. Now that implies to me that it doesn’t come naturally, that it’s something that has to be learned and can be learned.

Erin: I take so much comfort in that passage. In fact, I lead a mom’s group at my church, and we have been focusing on that passage now for months and months and months.

I was so relieved to learn, “Oh, this is supposed to be taught to me? I’m not just supposed to know how to love my children? I’m not just supposed to know how to love my husband?”

It also says to be happy at home. I’m not just supposed to leave the hospital and suddenly know how to be happy about everything that’s happening in my world. Those are things I should be taught.

And what should be my curriculum? The Word of God through older women who are willing to teach it to me.

This is a tremendous relief, that I’m not just supposed to automatically know how to be a great mom, how to feel wonderful about it, how to maintain my marriage during motherhood, but that those are things that can be taught to me through God’s Word.

Nancy: And what are some of the things that God has used in your early mothering experience (and your book really focuses especially on moms with little ones), what are some of the things God has used to encourage and give you grace in that journey and to help you embrace motherhood as a sacred calling?

Erin: Well, I got involved almost immediately with MOPS, which is an acronym for Mothers of Preschoolers. It’s a national ministry that really focuses on training and equipping moms. And I got really plugged in there, and those women have made a huge in my life. Also, I started a mom’s group at my own church, and those women have really been a huge influence in my life.

But also, having children made me realize my need to spend time with people who are not just like me. I love to spend time with my mom friends, pushing our strollers around, but we all have the same issues, and none of us are any further down the path. So I’ve been really intentional about spending time with moms whose kids are a little bit older, and then also inviting moms whose kids are a little bit younger, to come to my home.

One of my favorite things to do is to invite a family over to our house for pancakes on any given morning—“Come in your jammies”—and we just spend time. So it’s really deepened my relationships in a lot of ways.

Now, it’s taken effort on my part because those things don’t happen as naturally now as maybe they did a few generations ago when moms and grandmas and aunts and cousins were all in close proximity. I have to make the effort.

I literally got online and googled moms’ groups, found several of them, called them, and that takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to maintain friendships and to start new friendships and all of that. But it’s been my life raft in these mothering seasons to just spend time with other people who are also mothering and to glean whatever I can from them.

Nancy: So I’m thinking about a young mom who’s listening to this program, and she’s thinking, “Okay, I’m not a speaker. I’m not a writer. I’m not as talented or bright or something as Erin—she must be superwoman. I’m here drowning. I’m struggling. I’m sleep deprived. I can hardly remember my name. The thought of getting up and getting out and doing one more thing in that intensive—labor intensive season of mothering—just seems overwhelming.”

Erin: Sure, it does.

Nancy: Help her out. Encourage her.

Erin: She has to put one foot in front of the other, and she has to find a way to connect with—maybe it’s just one other mom—but, absolutely, it takes effort. When you’re in the little years, just getting out of the house is a lot of effort. It’s a lot of effort for my family, but it is worth it.

Mothering can be very, very isolating. There’s that season when the baby is first born, when people drop off casseroles, and then that all kind of goes away, and you’re on your own. Our culture tends to think, “That baby business is so private that we should not call, we should give them their space, and we should not intrude.” So the mom is going to have to do it.

So she needs to find one step that she can take. Maybe it’s calling one friend. Maybe it is joining a moms group at a local church, asking a friend if you can get together and walk once a week.

But I understand; it takes work. It takes a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of diaper bag packing and all of that, but you can’t do it well without having other moms to be connected to.

Nancy: And there’s some ways of getting connected that don’t require even getting out of the house.

Erin: Certainly.

Nancy: And what a use for Facebook, for the phone, for email—do people still do email?

Erin: Yeah, I do. It’s snail mail we don’t do anymore.

Nancy: Right. And it’s fun for me to watch some of my friends who are young moms, how they’re encouraging one another on Facebook.

Erin: Sure.

Nancy: Just reminding each other that you’re not doing this alone. You do have a cheerleader.

Erin: That’s right. And I just encourage moms online to really communicate, “My children are a blessing.” It’s very easy on Twitter or your Facebook status, or whatever, to complain about, “Oh, I’m so tired.” “Ugh, another soccer practice. Oh this, oh that.” But whatever you’re communicating online, communicate, “My children are a blessing. My kids . . . look at this, isn’t this cute. Look at what we did in our family devotions today. We’re going outside. We’re collecting leaves.”

Communicate the delighting things about motherhood—and they’re there if you’re willing to look for them—and other moms will come to you like moths to a flame because they don’t want to talk about the drudgery anymore. They don’t want to complain about it anymore, but they don’t really know how to get off the hamster wheel. So maybe it starts with you.

Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts

Leslie Basham: Erin Davis says sometimes moms can be tempted to be discontented.

Erin Davis: Here are the ways that it comes out in my own life. A lot of huffing and puffing. “Ugh. Do I have to do this again?” A lot of throwing up my hands, losing my cool, also using the word overwhelmed to describe my life more often than I use words like, “blessed, happy, fulfilled.” “If I didn’t have these children, I wouldn’t be so overwhelmed.” Well, if I didn’t have these children, I also wouldn’t have a lot of really wonderful things.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday, May 9.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: One of the core commitments of Revive Our Hearts and the True Woman Movement is to encourage women to be intentional about passing on the baton of truth to the next generation. So I think about the True Woman Manifesto for example which we have talked about a number of times in recent years on Revive Our Hearts. One of the tenants of that True Woman Manifesto is:

Children are a blessing from God and women are uniquely designed to be bearers and nurturers of life whether it be their own biological or adopted children or other children in their sphere of influence.

So this week we are talking about that whole aspect of motherhood, receiving children as a blessing from the Lord and the calling that we as women have to be bearers and nurturers of life. I’m so thrilled about a book that a dear friend of mine has written. The friend’s name is Erin Davis. Her husband is on the staff here at Revive Our Hearts. Their family is a part of our ministry. Erin is the primary blogger at LiesYoungWomenBelieve.com and has a very fruitful ministry there with teenagers. She has written this terrific new book called, Beyond Bath Time: Embracing Motherhood as a Sacred Role.

Erin, all that I just said was a big mouthful. It makes you sound like you are one very busy woman, and you are. But the joy and focus of your life in this season is those two little boys, so far, that God has entrusted to you and Jason. In this book and on our program this week, you have been sharing really transparently about the journey that it has been for you to embrace motherhood—not just to endure it—but to embrace it as a sacred calling, as a sacred role. I know there are points of your journey that a lot of women listening, or the daughters of women listening, relate to.

That’s why I want to encourage grandmoms to get this book, women who have grown daughters who are now mothering themselves, to get this book and to help spread a whole revolution about the way that we think about motherhood. So thanks for writing the book. Thanks for your commitment to live it out—not perfectly—as you’ve been quick to say. But it’s the commitment of your heart to see motherhood from God’s point of view. And I’m just so grateful that God is helping you to do that and is helping you now to help others who want to do that.

Erin: Thank you.

Nancy: I think in order to see motherhood from God’s point of view, as is true with other areas of life, we have to address the things we believe that aren’t true. We’re bombarded in this culture with wrong ways of thinking. In fact, I wrote a book called, Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Set Them Free. You pick up on that same concept by talking about some of the lies that women believe about motherhood. There are false ways of thinking. There are things that can really put people in bondage who want to be good mothers. For example, one of the big lies that you address is that motherhood is a roadblock to my happiness. Do you think a lot of women really feel that?

Erin: I absolutely do. In fact, this chapter in our book is from real moms that I really know and they are real stories. Now I didn’t go to them and say, “What lies do you believe about motherhood?” because of the nature of lies, they don’t know. But I just spent a lot of time with them, hearing their stories, and hearing them talk about motherhood. I spent a lot of time praying about that and tried to expose the lies that were the undercurrent of the areas that they were wrestling. I think a lot of moms feel that motherhood is a roadblock to my happiness.

Now, they’re not saying that. If you would go to them and say, “Is motherhood a roadblock to your happiness?” they would say, “No.” But they are living like it is, and they lament these things in their lives that they think would make their life so much better if they could have those things.

For example, one girl in the book is Victoria. She talks about, “Before I had a baby, I could go on weekend trips. I could be more spontaneous. I could go on vacations, and now I can’t do that.” So she was thinking, “Oh, I would be so much happier if I could go on a vacation. I would be so much happier if I could be more spontaneous, but this baby is keeping from doing that.”

Another girl in the book is my friend, Jordan, who miscarried very early on. She is very honest about the fact that her primary feeling was relief because she felt like, “Whew! That was a near miss. I about had my life as I wanted it to be train-wrecked.”

Nancy: And then she probably felt guilty.

Erin: She felt guilty about feeling relief. Absolutely. And then she went on to get pregnant and to have a healthy baby girl. But her first year of mothering was a lot like my first year of mothering. She was miserable, and she felt like, “Oh, if I hadn’t had this baby, I would be so much happier.”

Well, I think a lot of moms feel a version of that. “If I didn’t have these children, I would be happier because I could _____.” Fill in the blank.

Nancy: As you look around you see a lot of moms who do wrestle with the outcome of that in terms of discontentment or disillusionment or bitterness or just kind of a pervasive unhappiness that is the fruit of this way of thinking.

Erin: Sure. It’s not a new problem. In Ezekiel 16:45 and 48, we find God chastising the moms of Jerusalem for the same sort of feelings. The verse says, “You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children. . . . As I live, declares the Lord GOD, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done.”

He’s saying these women are worse than the women of Sodom. We remember Sodom. They got a punishment of fire and brimstone because of their sin. And what is these women’s sin? Bitterness and hatred toward their husbands and toward their children.

Nancy: And that doesn’t always come out in this big, obvious way.

Erin: Absolutely. It rarely does.

Nancy: It can be just an undercurrent of discontent or resentment. These people in my life, my husband, my children, have made my life more restrictive; they’ve made my life more difficult.

Erin: Here are the ways that it comes out in my own life. A lot of huffing and puffing. “Ugh. Do I have to do this again?” A lot of kind of throwing up my hands, losing my cool, also using the word overwhelmed to describe my life more often than I use words like, “blessed, happy, fulfilled.” “If I didn’t have these children, I wouldn’t be so overwhelmed.” Well, if I didn’t have these children, I also wouldn’t have a lot of really wonderful things.

So I’m choosing to focus on that. Something that used to happen at my house a lot more often (and I try not to let it happen as much anymore) is that as soon as my husband walks in the door, I announce, “I am off-duty. I can’t handle these children one more minute.” And the message is, “Oh, these children are wearing me down. I am miserable in this parenting role.”

But if someone would come to me and say, “Do your children make you happy?” I would say, “Yes, of course! Do you want to see their picture?” But in reality, I am living like if I didn’t have these children I would be less stressed; I would be happier; my body would return to its eighteen-year-old version of itself; all of those things that I think would make me happy.

Nancy: But the fact is there is a lot about parenting that is challenging. And depending what the season of life is, there may be sleepless nights or screaming kids or sick kids or restricted schedules. So we are not saying that if you embrace motherhood as a sacred role, that all that stuff goes away and life becomes easy.

Erin: That’s right. Life isn’t easy as a parent. Life isn’t easy if you’re not a parent. There are those elements of parenthood that are always going to be there, and they can be cumbersome. But 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 says:

But [God] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Nancy: Okay, hold on. I want to read that verse again because it is so huge, for not just mothers, but it spoke to me as I was reading this book. I’m single. I don’t have children. And it was encouraging to me in my calling which can also feel burdensome at times and has its challenges. So whatever your calling, whatever your season of life, here is a core truth of God’s Word if you want to be a true woman of God.

God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Sleepless nights, sick kids, restricted schedules, whatever is going on at that season, never can keep the house picked up for more than eight minutes or less. “My grace is sufficient for you.” Right now in this season.

Erin: And Paul says, “I’m content with weaknesses, hardships, persecutions, calamities. For where I am weak, then I am strong.” He’s not saying, “God took all that way from me and clouds parted and birds started singing and everything was wonderful.” But the thing about God and His Word that is so strange and hard to understand, it’s such a great mystery, is that those things are a blessing in that they force us to depend on God. They reveal our need for Him. They reveal His goodness to us and His grace toward us.

So if you want a formula for how to make your baby sleep through the night, I don’t have it. My son, Noble, didn’t sleep through the night until he was a year-and-a-half old. And if you want to make your toddler behave, I don’t know how to tell you how to do it. But I do know that when that baby wasn’t sleeping through the night, I was pressed into prayer in a way that I never had been before because I couldn’t do it in my own strength. I was exhausted. And when Eli, my toddler, pushes against me and presses against me and I am at my wits end and there’s no way I can have self-control on my own, it presses me into God in new ways.

So am I always happy as a mom? No, I’m not. But the lesson is that happiness really isn’t the end goal. Easy street never leads us anywhere we want to go anyway. Easy street just takes us to boring places. But happiness . . .

Nancy: Some of us are thinking, “I would like to try it.”

Erin: She’d like to try it out for her own. I understand that. I’d like to walk down easy street every once in a while. But that child may make your life more difficult. But stop focusing on that. Are they a hindrance to your happiness? Maybe, but they are the way to so many other things that are so much richer than happiness. So the lie is: My children are a hindrance to my happiness. Okay. Get over it. Focus on all the things that they do to enrich your life.

Nancy: And Erin, what you shared there is so crucial, not just for young moms but for women, for men, for every one of us in every season of our lives.  As I often say here on Revive Our Hearts, anything that makes me need God is a blessing. It’s a blessing. I latch onto His grace in a way that I wouldn’t otherwise do if I didn’t feel so desperate and so needy and so overwhelmed.

That’s where we see the power of God displayed in such great ways when it’s our weakness matched up to His grace, then we see it, the kids see it, the people around us see it. They know we are weak, but they see that He is strong. It becomes a way of displaying the greatness and the power of God which is really what our calling is all about.

Erin: We teach our children that song from very early on. “Yes, Jesus loves me. We are weak, but He is strong.” And as moms, that is so true. We are weak to mother well. But He is strong. He is faithful. If your children are a daily, or sometimes at my house, minute by minute reminder of God’s strength in light of my weakness, how can I complain about that?

Nancy: I’ll tell you, in order to counter the lies, we need to learn to counsel our hearts according to the Truth. I think there’s a mom listening right now who just needs to say it out loud. The kids may be there, somebody else may be around, they may think you’re nuts, but just say, “His grace is sufficient for me. His grace is sufficient for me.”

Erin: At my house, we frequently pray for fruits of the Spirit. I will say to my children, “Mommy is struggling. We’re going to ask Him for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control.” And when my children are struggling, I’m able to say to them, and they’ve seen it, “You can’t do this on your own, buddies.” So Mom, when you feel like you are going to blow your top, it’s a teachable moment not a burden.

Nancy: Okay, there is another lie, which I think a lot of women wrestle with, mothers or not mothers, but particularly when it comes to motherhood. And that is that the ultimate goal of motherhood is perfectionism—the pressure to mother perfectly. Is there a woman who doesn’t feel that?

Erin: I don’t know or I’ve never met her. This is a huge lie and the friend of mine who revealed it to me is a great mom. She’s like a poster child for a great mom. She has four kids plus foster children. She home schools them. She’s always calm. She has great hair. I mean, she is a perfect mom. When I interviewed her for this book, I had no idea that this would be an area that she would hone in on.

She talked about that she gets two messages from the culture about motherhood. The first is that her children are a distraction for her and what she wants. And the second is, but if you’re going to mother, you better raise great kids that are perfectly behaved and do perfectly in school. You need to have a perfectly clean home. You need to be instilling this, this, and this. You need to be piping Mozart in to your room. You’ve got to be doing flash cards when they are in their high chair. And on and on and on.

And so she is a mom, and she sees the kingdom value of it. But she’s in this pressure cooker where she feels like she has to do it perfectly. And she’s not doing it perfectly. And so she continues to struggle in her role.

Nancy: So what do you say to that mom?

Erin: I think we just have to realize how unrealistic it is. The culture is sending us that message across the board. It always bothers me, those celebrity moms who are on the cover of magazines. “She gave birth three days ago, and now look at her in this bikini.” It’s so completely unrealistic. And so to some degree, we have to just shut those messages out and not let them filter in.

But Paul, again, encourages us with some great words in Scripture. Philippians 3:12 says: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own” why? “because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

So the beauty of exposing lies is that once you are aware of it, you have the power to do something about it. But that’s not enough. You’re going to have to replace it with God’s Truth. God’s Truth is, “Yep. You’re not perfect. But press on because the perfect one has already redeemed you. And He who has started a good work in you is going to carry it on to completion. He’s not interested in perfection from you.”

So be faithful to walk through your calling and to depend on Him. Jesus isn’t asking you to do it perfectly. He’s asking you to do it well and to depend on Him, and that’s all that you can do. And so when you start to feel that pressure to have a perfect house, perfect body, perfect marriage, perfect children, just call it out as a lie—that’s what it is—and replace it with God’s Truth.

Nancy: I think that a cousin to that lie is another one that you address which is that motherhood will make you holy.

Erin: That’s right.

Nancy: You either have to be perfect or motherhood will make you a godly woman. And that’s a lie, too.

Erin: It seems counter-intuitive to place that lie in the same chapter with these other lies about mothering perfectly or motherhood being a hindrance to your happiness, but I think it is just as dangerous. We are in danger of swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. You don’t get any more holy with each baby that you bring home. It doesn’t give you preferred parking in Heaven to have a bunch of children. There’s no automatic sanctification that happens just by being a mom.

I think it really boils down to entitlement for a lot of moms. They feel like this is hard work. And doesn’t God see what I’m doing? And they feel entitled to whatever—fill in the blank because they are working hard as mothers. Or maybe it’s not directed at God. Maybe it’s directed at their husbands, that’s probably more often the case. “Doesn’t he know how hard I’m working as a mom? I deserve ‘me-time.’ I deserve girls’ nights out. I deserve a bigger house to contain this. I deserve on and on and on.” Or, “I deserve from my children because of all I do for them.”

And certainly they should be grateful, and that’s something you are going to have to teach them. But this attitude of, “I deserve something,” or “I’m holier than you are because I am a mom,” or “I’m a better Christian because I’m a mom.” It doesn’t really hold water when we hold it up to God’s Word. There’s nothing in Scripture that tells us being a mom is going to make us more holy.

Nancy: In fact, to the contrary, we aren’t holy. Only God can make us holy. Our only righteousness or value or worth comes through Christ. That’s where I think the humbling that takes place by not being perfect as a mom is actually the very thing that can press a woman to God’s grace and can sanctify her. It’s realizing, “I’m not holy. I’m not perfect. I’m far from it.” If you think you are perfect, once you have children, you will surely realize that you aren’t because they bring out all the imperfections, right?

Erin: I think motherhood is the hottest refiner’s fire I’ve ever been in. I think I’ve thought more highly of myself than I should have before I had children. And those babies and their neediness just exposed a selfishness in me. When my children are disobedient and act up, it reveals the ugliness of my own disobedience in new ways. So they’re not making me holy just by proxy of being my children. But the process of mothering, if I will use it as a refiner’s fire and if I will use it to push me toward God and not away from Him, does have a way of making my heart more like His.

Nancy: Purifies.

Erin: True.

Nancy: Well I want to encourage our listeners to get a copy of your new book, Erin, Beyond Bath Time: Embracing Motherhood as a Sacred Role. It’s a great book for young moms, moms with little kids, but also one for those who want to be moms and older moms who want to be an encouragement to younger moms and then single women, like me, who also want to be an encouragement to younger moms. But also for all of us who need to be reminded of God’s grace and His sufficiency and that when we are weak, He is strong.

And in fact, if I had a takeaway, personally, from our conversation today, I would take it back to that verse, 2 Corinthians 12:9 which I think needs to be not only a mantra for mothers, but for all of us. “My grace, God says, is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

And O Father, how I pray that You would encourage moms, women, Your children in our roles, our calling, whatever that looks like. We give to You, we lift up to You our weaknesses, our need, our failures, all the areas where we realize we are not measuring up. We thank You that we can’t be perfect, we know that, but that Christ is perfect. If He lives in us, then we are pleasing to You and Your grace is sufficient for us at every point of need.

So Lord, would You just pour out, I pray, a baptism of grace on many, many listeners today as together we say, “Lord, we are weak, but You are strong.” We are so grateful. We pray it in Jesus name, amen.

Used with  Permission. Revive Our Hearts.

Used with permission. www.truewoman.com

Erin Davis