Hey, welcome to One and All.

We have a special Mother's Day service to share with you guys today.

We are excited to get into the Word with Pastor Jeff, so make sure you have your Bible, grab the One and All app so you can follow along with sermon notes, and let's get started.

Breakfast is ready.

You're going to be great.

Thanks, Mom.

I love you.

I love you, too.

Hey, this is a special weekend, and it's actually Mother's Day, so I don't really have one scripture that we're going to go through, but we're going to involve many of the themes of the New Testament and Old Testament in the message.

But I don't know if you know this, and I don't think most people do, but Mother's Day actually started in the medieval world in Britain and much of Europe.

It was known originally as Mothering Sunday, and the idea was to give Christ followers an opportunity to return.

to what was called the mother church, to go to the church where you first heard the gospel, where you were first baptized, where you were raised, where you're educated in the scriptures and the ways of the Lord.

So the idea would be that you would return to your mother's church.

That's where you would see your mother because it was taken for granted.

She was still there.

And you would give thanks to all that you had received from your mother church.

And naturally, you would also celebrate your own mother and you would shower her with gifts of appreciation and affection.

And the whole idea was that you would show gratitude to your mother and to your mother church for the reality or the fact that they pointed you toward true north.

That they, they.

helped explain to you this passion or pursuit that you had and understanding even from a very young age of God and how God had revealed himself through the person of Jesus Christ and how it was possible to have a personal relationship with him.

So that being the most important decision that you'll ever make in your life and how basically what you believe about God determines the rest of your life, then you would return on Mothering Sunday to the mother church to express appreciation and gratitude.

Now, the modern version of Mother's Day was founded by a lady by the name of Anna Jarvis in the aftermath of the Civil War.

So Anna was profoundly impacted by all the work that her mother did to help the soldiers during the war, how she would bind their wounds and cook their meals and pray for them and comfort them, especially those in pain.

Anna remembered hearing her mother pray a prayer one time where that someday there would be a way to honor all mothers for their thankless work.

So when her mother passed away in 1905, Anna began constructing the idea of a public holiday honoring all mothers.

So in cooperation with the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, which is in a place called Grafton, West Virginia, that is known today as the Mother's Day Shrine.

Anna decided that she would declare a specific day to remember mothers, and she handed out white carnations because that was her mother's favorite.

This grassroots movement began to pick up steam rather quickly, and by 1910, West Virginia became the first state to celebrate Mother's Day.

And then in 1914, a joint resolution from Congress was supported by Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, to make the second Sunday in May officially Mother's Day.

Now the question is, why do we celebrate a secular holiday, somebody might ask, in church?

The answer is, because honoring mothers is something that we as Christ followers are actually commanded and instructed to do.

It's even one of the Ten Commandments, right?

Honor your father and your mother, and it's one of the commandments that is connected with a promise.

In fact, let me read it to you in Exodus 20, verse 12.

Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land of the Lord your God and the land He's giving you.

I've always wondered if this verse is somehow related to my mother's warning.

Jeffrey Allen Vines, get over here right now.

I brought you into this world.

I can take you out.

Mothers, seriously, mothers are a gift from God.

That's the way the Bible sees it.

Abraham Lincoln said, everything I am I owe to my mother.

They're also great teachers.

I can remember numerous times my mother saying, come over here, Jeffrey.

I want to teach you a lesson.

I also remember hearing someone say that if at first you don't succeed, try doing it the way your mother told you to do it in the first place.

Mothers are also great cooks.

My mother's menu says Buddy Hackett, consistent of two choices, take it or leave it.

Mothers are also sacrificial.

A mother is a person who, and I quote, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never really cared for pie in the first place.

Somebody else said the quickest way for a parent to get a child's attention is to sit down and look comfortable.

Mothers are always busy.

They're always sacrificial.

They, motherhood is relentless.

Mothers are influencers.

I heard one woman say, sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out.

And of course, mothers are, again, relentless.

Reese Witherspoon says, if you're not yelling at your kids, you're not spending enough time with them.

Motherhood is exhausting.

It's relentless.

It requires generosity.

It requires sacrifice.

And amazingly enough.

God uses the metaphor of motherhood to describe the measure of care that he has for his people.

When I think about that, I mean, wow, God chose the metaphor of motherhood.

In Isaiah 49 verse 15, can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has born?

Now this is rhetorical.

God says typically, usually the mother will never forget.

But he understands sometimes there will be moms who forget.

So he says, though she may, which is doubtful, though she might forget.

I will never forget you.

Now what I want to do in this message, I want to be very honest for a moment, or I guess a better word would be, I want to be transparent.

Mothers are a gift from God.

They are to be celebrated.

They are sacrificial, generous, compassionate.

They gave you probably more than you can ever recognize or realize.

They still probably worry about you, even today.

And yes, Mothers like you are flawed.

They can be overbearing, opinionated, harsh, and a royal pain in the backside.

But they are often the glue that holds the family together.

There's a Jewish proverb that says, God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers.

There are three groups of people in the room right now and listening to my voice.

Group one, you had a great mother, flawed but great.

They introduced you to Jesus.

She tried her best to provide for you, nurture you, love you.

She was a good wife to your father.

She tried her very best to give you what you wanted and what you needed at the same time.

And if that's you, my goodness, praise God, call your mother this weekend and tell her that you love her.

My mother was definitely in this category, and my mother still, though, was flawed.

She was a crazy lady.

I remember a couple occasions.

On one occasion, my younger brother, Jody, had disobeyed my mom.

and had agreed to ride the motorbike of a neighborhood bully by the name of Butch.

It was a hot summer in July.

He rides the motorcycle.

He didn't know how to ride it, disobeyed my mom, ends up getting in an accident.

He walks into the building where we were all located, and I'm telling you, it was terrible.

He had been thrown off the motorbike.

He had no skin.

on his, from his neck to his navel.

It all been rubbed off by the hot asphalt.

You can actually see his chin bones sticking out where the, where he had landed on his chin and his, in the front of his body and all that skin was gone.

And my mother saw him.

We had told my mom to be very calm, and she promised that she would, but as soon as she saw him, she said, oh my God, he's going to die.

And we get in a car, and she's going to the hospital.

She's driving on the medium in the highway.

She was the best ambulance driver ever.

I mean, we all thought we were going to die on the way, but she was determined to get him to the hospital.

That's my mom.

On another occasion, we were playing a little league baseball championship.

and it came down to the last inning.

And I was pitching, my brother Tony was catching, and all we had to do was get one more out, and we were the city champions, and their best hitter came to bat.

Struck the ball, went all the way out into right field.

The right fielder picked it up.

He's not used to seeing baseball, so he just throws it into the infield.

Finally, the runner comes around third base.

He's so happy that he's about to score the winning run.

This is peewee baseball rather than Little League.

Probably six, seven years old that he runs straight into the dugout without touching home plate.

my mother in the stands notices this.

She comes onto the field.

She grabs the baseball from the first baseman, puts it in my glove, the pitcher, and tells me to go and tag him out.

I went over to the dugout, tagged out the batter, the umpire.

To this day, I don't know why he said this, but he called him out.

And then there was pandemonium.

My mother was right in the middle of everything.

That's moms, man.

They're ambulance drivers.

They're doctors.

They're lawyers.

They're sports fans.

They're coaches.

They're everything.

Some of you in the room.

had the second type of mother.

She was not a great mother, but she was a good mother.

Flawed, but still good.

She did introduce you to Jesus.

She provided for your needs, but she did have significant issues.

She probably yelled far too much.

She was probably not a great wife to your father, her husband.

Anger, bitter, yelling, belittling.

There was great tension in the home that you grew up in.

Now, if that's you, I've got a question for you.

What was your mother's home life like?

Now, I'm not making excuses for your mother.

I'm simply asking you to stop and think for a moment.

What examples of motherhood did your mother have from her mother and her father?

Then there's a third group.

This is a group with a mother with few redeeming qualities.

She was religious but not Christian, which is the worst kind.

She held you to a legalistic standard but had no relationship with God or in Christ or no religion for that matter.

She was totally flawed.

When you present your difficulties with her, she is unrepentant and defensive.

She will tell you things like, this is just the way that I am.

This is the way God made me and you have to accept me.

She was probably a burden to your father.

She was probably verbally abusive to everyone in the home.

There's little to no humility or admission of guilt.

Everything is always somebody else's fault.

There's still today no talking to her.

Now, if that's you, believe it or not, I have the same question for group two.

What was her home life like?

Again, I am not making excuses.

We'll talk about this momentarily.

But what examples did she have in her life that taught her how to be a good godly mother?

and usually the answer is not very many.

Now listen to me, please.

My mother is no longer here.

She passed away at the age of 61 many years ago, and I still think about her every day, especially on Mother's Day, which is usually why I don't bring the message on Mother's Day.

I try to get a guest speaker, but from time to time, I decide for those of you who don't know this story, it's time for you to know it.

My mother...

was definitely flawed.

And yet, I understood her.

My mother had an alcoholic, gambling father.

Every time she or her sister would need something for school, just basic things, food, clothing, pencils, paper, and ask her father, he would scream and yell.

And the reason he would scream and yell was because of the guilt.

because he drank so much and he gambled so much that all the money went out the door to his coping mechanisms and he knew it.

So when his children asked him for something, the guilt just intensified and he responded in anger.

My own grandfather's life was incredibly tragic.

The older I got, the more questions I asked.

And I discovered that as far as I can tell, my grandfather, my mother's father, had no sense of love anywhere in his family.

His birth was accidental.

He was unwanted.

His father actually spent time in prison for killing another man.

His marriage to my grandmother was an attempt to rescue himself out of this horrific situation.

all of his issues came into the marriage, crashing into this new relationship that was doomed from the beginning.

I never, ever, not even one time, remember my grandparents showing any expression of love whatsoever toward one another, and definitely never toward my mother.

Okay, now let me pause for a second here.

Be careful of thinking you know where I'm going, because everybody has a choice in life.

There are others who've experienced this type of life and have indeed found their way out of it.

In my experience, you can respond one of two ways to the type of family in which you reared.

One, you can take the victim mentality, and that never does anyone any good.

Or you can take the victor mentality.

You can decide, you know what?

I lived in unfortunate circumstances, but I'm going to rise above these circumstances, and with will and determination, I'm going to overcome.

because you realize that everybody in life has some kind of burden to bear.

You're not alone in that.

I have a very good friend that had everything against him growing up.

Horrible father, average mother at best, alcoholic father, abusive father.

Same thing could be said about his mother.

She would actually just leave him at the age of 10, 11, 12 years old and say, I'll be back in a couple of weeks.

This is the kind of family he grew up in, wrong side of the tracks.

But today he's extremely successful.

He has an incredible family.

He's a great father and great grandfather.

Why?

Because he refused to play the role of victim and instead decided to be a victor.

If you're not careful.

You can actually become addicted to victimhood.

And that's why we see people spending most of their lives in counseling.

Now, don't go away and say, Pastor Jeff, say counseling is not good.

Counseling is great when it comes from a Christian worldview.

But if you spend 10, 15, 20 years dealing with the same issues, chances are you've moved from one addiction to another.

Sooner or later, there's got to be some healing.

And you've got to go over to the victim mentality that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

Even my grandfather, my grandfather, even though growing up in a home like that knew very well what he was doing, he understood later in his life that his gambling and alcoholism became coping mechanism.

I was in church numerous times with my grandfather.

I saw him have an experience with Jesus, but it never lasted very long.

Sooner or later, he would harden his heart.

He felt more comfortable living in the victim mentality than the victor mentality, and it impacted everyone in his household.

However, You and I are called to realize that for some people, and sometimes even a mother or father, their lives can be extremely difficult and trying because of the baggage they brought into motherhood and fatherhood.

One of my favorite examples that I've used numerous times, one of the great Broadway plays called Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry.

It's about an African-American family in Harlem.

The father dies and leaves the family $10,000.

Not a lot today, but a lot back then.

And the mother says, this is great.

Not that the husband died, but that now we'll be able to fulfill our dream and we can purchase a little house in North Jersey.

But the son comes to the mother and begs for the money.

The young man growing up in Harlem has never had a chance, never had a break, never had a job.

And he has this friend, by the way, because of the color of his skin.

And he has this friend.

and his friend convinces him to go into business together as partners, but he needs the $10,000 that his father left him to start this new business, and then in his argument, in his mind, it would create more wealth for his family.

But the mother doesn't want to do it.

It's too risky.

Doesn't want to give up the money.

Doesn't want to give up her dream.

But her son comes and begs and pleads and says, Mother, this is my chance.

I've never been given a chance.

Please don't deny me this.

And the mother decides, how can I deny my son?

And if you know the play, it's tragic because she gives him the money.

In turn, he gives it to the friend and the friend leaves town, takes the money with him, never to be seen again.

And the son is battered, beaten and destroyed.

When he comes home, After having experienced this, his sister Beritha tears into him, rifts him apart in great disdain and contempt.

And she says to her brother, how can you be so stupid?

And that's when the mother gets involved in speaking to the daughter.

And this is what she says.

Beritha, I thought I told you to love him.

Love him?

There's nothing left to love.

There's always something to love.

And if you haven't learned that, then you ain't learned nothing.

Have you cried for that boy today?

I don't mean for yourself and for your family because we lost the money.

I mean for him and what he's been through, what it's done to him.

Child, when do you think it's time to love somebody the most?

When they've done good and made things easy for everybody?

Then you ain't learned nothing.

Then you ain't through learning because that ain't the time at all.

It's when he's at his lowest and he can't believe in himself, she says, because the world unwipped him so.

When you start measuring somebody, child, measure him right.

Be sure you know what hills and valleys he's been through to get wherever he is.

Now here's the question.

Have you ever considered the valleys and the hills your mother had to climb in order to arrive where she is?

Again, I'm not making excuses.

I'm simply saying that we all have baggage that we bring into every relationship.

and the Christ-following way seems to be that we extend mercy and grace to those who offend us, even mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, maybe especially.

This is called agape.

It's called unconditional love.

It doesn't mean that there is love without boundaries.

We'll get to that, but it does mean that we honestly, willingly wish them well.

Now here is the miracle in my own family.

My mother forgave her father and it was astounding.

Even though she never received any kind of love and verbal and even physical abuse from her father throughout her entire childhood.

When my mother...

was older and had children of her own.

I saw her not only forgive her father, she delivered medicine to him.

She would take him and sit with him at the doctor's office.

She sat beside his hospital bed when he died, when he passed away.

When he passed away, she wept.

She served him all of her life with nothing in return.

Now, how was she able to do that?

I asked my mother that later in life.

I said, mom, how could you do that?

Because I became angry with my grandfather the older I got because I realized the abuse that my mother had suffered under his hand.

And I asked her, how could you do that?

And she said, because my father never knew what love was.

He never learned how to love.

How could he express it to me when it had never been expressed to him?

So I gave him grace.

And she also said, I learned later that God's love for me is unconditional.

Can it not be unconditional for my father?

Now for me in my mind, I wanted to say no.

I mean, yeah, God gives unconditional love, but that's God.

We're just mere human.

But if you remember in the marriage series, we said that there will be seasons even in your marriage where you feel like that you're loving without getting little love, little to no love in return.

And we said the only way, we said, first of all, how you respond in that moment is what marriage is.

And the only way you can respond with love when you're getting little to no love is if you have a reservoir of love somewhere else.

And the only other reservoir of love that will sustain you is not without, without offending or without betraying the marriage is if you get that love that you're looking for from somewhere else.

And that is God found in a personal relationship with Jesus.

Remember we agreed on that.

My mother said the absence of her father's love caused her to search for that love somewhere else.

At first with my father when they were married, but then she realized that would never meet ultimately her need.

And she ends up finding it in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I remember going to church with my mother and she would just start crying in the service.

And I was a little boy and I look up and think, what's wrong with mom?

I don't want to go to church.

Every time I go to church, she cries.

And I would say, why are you crying?

She goes, because I'm happy, which made no sense to me.

Well, if you're happy, why are you crying?

Later on, I began to understand the love and relationship she had developed with Jesus overwhelmed her.

And when she would sing worship songs in church, she would feel that love and realize she had always been loved, always.

Even in those moments, she didn't feel loved by her father or by her husband.

Now, here's my action point to you.

You may never be able to completely restore your relationship with your mom.

But I'm asking you to consider a few things.

What kind of example did your mother have to be the mother to you?

And what baggage does she carry that made it extremely difficult for her to relate to others in a healthy way?

And as a Christ follower, can I ask you, can you forgive your mother because of the way Jesus forgives you?

So can you give her grace and mercy?

Now, I'm not saying you're still probably going to have to draw some boundaries depending on how harmful your relationship or your mother can be to your new family.

I got that.

But can you at least forgive her in the way the Bible says to forgive her?

And that means you no longer hold her sins against her and you legitimately, authentically, genuinely wish her well.

Because one day you're going to get the call that I got.

On January 2002, while I was vacationing in New Zealand, I got a cell phone call.

I knew immediately by the code that it was from the U.S., and I knew it was from one of my brothers because of the area code.

My brother told me that my mother had suffered a cardiac myopathy and that I had better come home as fast as I could.

That plane ride was the worst plane ride of my life.

Everybody around me was going on with their life, and I was hurting, and I was worried that I would not make it in time to speak to my mother.

By the time I did arrive, first sight of my mom, I knew it was over.

She was non-responsive.

She was breathing with the help of a machine.

But suddenly, hours and hours just seated next to her.

And as I've said before, I did not know it was possible to hurt that much and still be alive.

And I remember going back home that night.

waiting for what was going to happen, what the doctors were going to tell us, wrestling with God.

And I remember honestly saying to God, God, I don't get it.

There's plenty of bad people that you could remove from this planet.

Look at my next-door neighbor.

I mean, we had a next-door neighbor called Mrs.

Stover, and we're convinced she killed all of our animals.

She poisoned them.

She was just a mean old lady, mean, bitter old lady.

We're all terrified of her.

God, take Mrs.

Stover out.

The guy across the street was a drug addict, an alcoholic that my dad was so frustrated with because we'd hear the cries and the screams of his little toddlers as they were screaming when he was slapping them around.

Take that guy out.

And then I remember going to the graveside of my mother and God revealing to me the message that Jeff, you got it all wrong.

Don't you think people?

who have lived the good life that you say your mother has lived, don't you think they deserve to be with me first?

And that just changed my whole attitude and my mind about how things were going, but I was still hurting because of the loss of my mother.

And for one specific reason that we'll get to, but...

It was only after the death of my mom, and I hope this helps you, it was only after the death of my mom that I began to truly understand who my mom was.

And I've shared this before, because a couple of weeks later, my father found her prayer journal in a Charles Stanley devotional.

And in that prayer journal, she had listed four things that she had been praying for that were most important to her.

Now, I've shared the one.

I'm not going to share that again.

It had to do with me.

That's an old story.

But there were three others that were listed.

And the first prayer that my mom had been praying that was at the top of her list is that dad's death would not proceed her own.

My mother loved my father.

By the way, can I just tell you?

PDA, public display of affection, is the key to love and security with the children in the family.

Your children need to know and they need to see you demonstrate love and emotion for one another.

That creates a sense of security and stability in the family.

So if you think you can be a good mother and a good father without showing any kind of public display of affection toward the husband or the wife, you're mistaken.

That goes a long way to give hope and security and stability to the family.

But in the early days of my mom's marriage to my father, because my mother saw my father as Savior and Rescuer, she failed to realize that my father was also bringing in significant issues into the marriage.

My dad's...

When I think about this again every Mother's Day, when I start going through this in my head, I am amazed at the miracle of my parents.

Because my mother is abused by an alcoholic gambling father.

My dad was abused by a horrible father who actually beat him with a shovel.

Who would take him and beat my father.

My father never beat us.

Now, he did take us behind the woodshed and give us a verbal lashing.

Sometimes I'd rather had a shovel, I think.

But my dad was beaten by his father so much so that for most of the...

My dad's life, he walked with a bent back because of the damage it had done to his spine.

So dad brings those issues into his marriage with my mother.

My mother needs love more than anything else because she didn't get it from her father.

My dad has no idea how to communicate that love because it's never been communicated to him.

Let me tell you something.

That's when my dad became my hero.

Because my dad did something that dads did not do in those days.

He decided that he needed to go to counseling and learn how to love my mother.

And that's where he learned about the love languages.

That's where it's passed down to generation after generation.

He broke the cycle, folks, because of his relationship with Jesus and because of his love for my mother.

My mom and my dad were great parents.

Were they flawed?

Absolutely.

But because my dad was willing to go to counseling and learn the love language of my mother, my mother fell in love with my father all over again.

Her prayer in her journal was that she would go to be with Jesus before my father, because she believed that dad would do better without her than her without him.

Now she was wrong, but I can tell you this, because God answered that prayer in a roundabout way, my father, after the death of my mother, became...

Pastor extraordinaire.

He missed my mother so much, but my father decided that all that he had learned in his marriage, he should now put into practice.

So for the last 10, 12 years of my father's life, he constantly visited the widows.

He went around our small town.

Our pastor at our church at First Christian in Elizabethan loved my father because my father did all the hard work.

He would go and sit with people who had nobody to sit and talk with.

The sick and the shut-in, they called him.

He would take communion every Sunday afternoon to all those who were not able to be at church.

And the city, that little town, fell in love with my father because my mother had taught him the love and because Christ had taught my mother the deepest love of all.

The second prayer request my mother had, and this is where we get to the nitty-gritty, is that my brother Tony would forgive her.

Now, any tendency to think that my mother was super mom will be scratched right here.

We're all going to come back down to earth.

I brag about my mother and I had definitely had a good relationship, but she was flawed.

Of course she's flawed.

All mothers are.

My mother, when she was growing up, What made it even worse that she did not have the love and acceptance of her father was the reality that she was very, very thin.

She was constantly called names.

Now in today's culture, she would be a supermodel.

Back then, it wasn't the thing.

So they called her names like String Bean and Beanpole and Skeleton Girl and Gumby.

Those were horrible names.

It's kind of funny now, but back then those were horrible, horrible names.

The problem is, when my brother Tony came along, My mother saw herself in him and it was a reminder that she did not want.

It was very clear that she struggled with my younger brother.

because he wouldn't eat healthy.

He wasn't like the rest of us.

He was, in her mind, lazy in school.

He got poor grades.

He didn't have a great, well, he never combed his hair.

He didn't like taking showers or baths.

When she looked at him, she saw something that gave her disdain because it reminded her of the ridicule that she had suffered.

But let me tell you, that did great damage to my younger brother.

Flawed or not, it did great damage because my younger brother now is growing up feeling unloved by his own mother.

and that became a lifelong struggle for him.

In fact, my brother and I are very close.

We're the closest of all our brothers, and if you were to talk to him today, he would tell you it caused him to struggle all of his life because lack of love breeds insecurity, and insecurity breeds this type of anger, and then anger breeds this kind of self-hate, and self-hate breeds this kind of porcupine spirit.

You ever tried to hug a porcupine?

So when somebody feels unloved, they almost become unlovable.

So he had trouble in his first marriage, in his second marriage, in every relationship that he's ever had.

Because you can't love someone that doesn't love themselves.

And it's hard to love yourself if you did not receive that love from your mother.

What's ironic is my brother Tony was the most talented brother in the Vines family.

But my brother will also tell you that for the first 20 years of life, after the death of my mom, or sorry, the first 20 years of his life after he left home, he will tell you that he chose clearly the road of victim over victor.

There have been other young men not loved by their mothers in the way that they needed, who rose above.

I'm not saying that it's easy.

I'm just saying that it's doable.

Because then he changed later on in life, and it's unfortunate what caused or catalyzed that change.

It devastated.

the early part of his life.

His coping mechanisms were drinking, eating, and self-loathing, sometimes drug addiction.

By the time my mother realized what she had done to my brother Tony, she was devastated.

She couldn't see it.

And then through the help of Christian counseling, she saw what she had done.

And while my brother was still in his late 20s, early 30s, she went to him and begged desperately for his forgiveness.

I mean, she begged for it.

My brother enjoyed being in that position and refused to give it to her.

In his way, this is his chance to hurt her the way that she was.

that she had hurt him.

My mother prayed for it every day.

His brothers encouraged him, look, she's recognized it.

She's asking you for forgiveness.

Can you find it in your heart to forgive?

And there's no way he was going to do it.

He loved playing the role of victim, and he loved having that kind of power.

Forgiveness never came.

And then mom died.

When mom died, I did show up to the emergency room or the ICU unit.

And I noticed all the brothers were there, but I could not find Tony.

But I had heard that he was there, but he was nowhere to be seen.

So I kept asking everyone, where's Tony?

We don't know.

So I started, it was very early in the morning because this had been all night.

Now we're like 1 or 2 a.m.

So I'm walking through the halls of the hospital, eerie feeling because nobody's there really.

And I find him.

He's rolled up in a ball as if he was in his mother's womb.

And he's crying.

And I said, Tony.

What's wrong?

Here's his words.

My mommy.

is dead.

Here's a 30-some-year-old man saying, my mommy is dead.

In one fell swoop, the cost of refusing to forgive his mother became a price too high to pay.

And he had to live the rest of his life knowing that he had something to give my mother that would have eased her pain, but now it's a gift he can no longer give.

However, ironically, what was not accomplished in life was accomplished in death.

When my mom died, something happened to my brother Tony.

There's no doubt about it.

Almost overnight, it's like the click occurred and he realized what he had done.

Now, some of you are going to say, well, it's too late now.

Well, not for him, it's not.

Because something happened in that moment that even though my mom was no longer around, he forgave her.

He created, I mean he's artistic.

Like I said, he's the most talented of all the Vines boys.

He actually makes homemade guitars and when he was in his early 20s, he said, I think I'm going to start making guitars.

He got a video, learned how to make them and now he's one of the top five luthiers in the country.

Amazing website called Vines Guitars, amazing craftsmanship.

He writes music that you can find on Spotify.

He's just extremely talented.

Tony Vines.

Never.

Something happened to him.

When my mother passed away, he creates this incredible montage of her life.

He starts writing music dedicated to her.

We all saw this incredible, drastic change in him.

To this day, he remembers with great joy and acceptance.

Anything he held against mom is gone.

Yes, it is sad that her death catalyzed the forgiveness.

but some people never forgive even after the death of their mother.

And not a day goes by that my brother Tony will not tell you that he thinks about that, that he thinks about his unwillingness and the bitterness that aided him and destroyed his life.

That's the problem when you don't forgive your mom, it doesn't hurt her, it destroys you.

But if you were to speak to him today, I think he would say to you, man, if your mother asks you for forgiveness in heaven's name, grant it.

Your unforgiveness will only destroy you and all your relationships, not her.

Recognize the baggage of her past and give her grace.

And while you may have drawn some boundaries, make every attempt to restore and reconcile while your mother is still alive.

Mothers.

if your sons or daughters come to you and they have to get off their chest and their heart, their feelings in heaven's name, listen to them.

Don't get defensive.

Just listen to them.

Don't bring up the past.

Ask just for forgiveness.

If they bring it up, ask for forgiveness and just start new.

Just start all over.

My mom had a third prayer that her sons would be reconciled to one another.

This is kind of a sad part of the story because this is typical in families.

I have three brothers, so we've got four boys in this household.

My mom's doing the best she can.

My dad's trying to forge out a living to supply and take care of our needs.

And they both did a great job at that.

They were flawed, absolutely.

They brought their own baggage, absolutely.

But I saw two parents overwhelmed with the love of Jesus that changed the family dynamic.

Growing up in this house, we were very close to each other.

But as we got older, what happens typically in families?

As we got older, we started to separate a little because suddenly we started to have massive disagreements about child rearing ideas.

Does that sound familiar?

We're not so pleased with the way you're raising your children and our ideas are the right ideas.

And then the political views started to fluctuate and change.

And then even religious views.

And of course, there's always one brother in the family that's the know-it-all.

And so all this together.

Just started creating tension.

I remember coming home one day to visit my mom after having furloughed from Africa, from Zimbabwe, and my mom was crying one evening.

I said, Mom, what's wrong?

And here's what she said.

She said, I just want my kids to love each other.

Now I think about the sacrifices my mom made because she saw this happening and she was working a full-time job.

You know, my parents were not wealthy, both worked.

and my mother would continue to make these huge Thanksgiving dinners, these huge Christmas Eve meals, these huge Sunday lunches, even while she was so tired and weary from an entire week of work, but she did it because she knew if she did, all the boys would continue to come together, and perhaps one day, one day all these disagreements and heated arguments and discussions would dissipate, and we would be that family again.

Well, her plan worked.

because when my mom died, we all looked around at each other, and the first thing we remembered...

is all those times we had together, Sunday lunch, Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving, and all of a sudden, let me tell you what happened.

Our issues seemed pretty petty and pathetic.

And from that day forward, after the death of my mom, we boys came back together.

Actually, I just went back to Tennessee last year and had lunch at Smokey Bones Barbecue, my favorite barbecue restaurant in the South.

We had lunch together and talked about life.

What mom did not accomplish in life, she accomplished in death.

Now, why would I mention that?

Well, I mention that because I was trying to make my own peace with God at the death of my mom.

I just couldn't fathom how this woman who had tried so hard and loved her family and her husband and her children and overcome so much and was a great little evangelist.

I just couldn't get my head around it.

And God continued to show me how God often uses the tragedies of our lives to shape us, including your challenging relationship with your mother.

It's amazing.

Somehow in God's scheme of things, your relationship with your mom and dad, although you may not see it now, is all part of the shaping and molding you into the person that God needs you to become.

And maybe the thing that you need to learn is forgiveness and mercy.

I'm not saying that God gave you bad parents to shape and mold you.

What the Bible tells us is God is not the first cause of every event, but God is able to take everything and work it together for good.

You know, I asked my brother once that was the know-it-all, and he would laugh about this now.

He was complaining about things of my mother and my father, and I looked at him and I said, can I ask you a question?

He said, sure.

I said, you think mom and dad were flawed?

Absolutely.

And I said, so that means you were the perfect son, right?

You had no flaws.

Boy, that stopped him in his tracks.

And I often say, maybe your mom would have been the perfect mom had you been the perfect daughter.

Always flawed.

It's what we do with how we understand people are flawed and how much grace we give them.

Now, I'm not saying we're going to get into this later in the year when I do an entire series on forgiveness and what that means.

But for now, I just want to leave you with three challenges quickly.

Number one, your mom has been involved in the ministry of reconciliation most of her life.

She has.

Trying to keep peace with everybody, even if she didn't know how to do it because it was important to her.

trying to encourage her children to forgive each other, trying to forgive her own parents for their failures, while at the same time not repeating all those failures.

She wasn't perfect at it.

She was flawed.

But I can tell you way down deep in the heart of your mother, she wishes for relationship with her kids.

Can I give you challenge one?

Forgive her.

Forgive her.

Just forgive her.

Wish her well and put the past behind.

Number two, your mom is going to die someday.

if you don't forgive her, you, listen, you yourself will become unlovable.

This is what people don't get.

If you, listen now, if you find it difficult to love your mother, your children are going to find it difficult to love you.

That's right.

It's amazing thing about life.

It has a way of coming around and they will hear how you talk and how you relate to your parents.

And that pattern will start to develop in their lives.

It is essential that you learn to forgive your mom so that one day your children will learn to forgive you.

Don't wait until your mother dies to shower her with love and appreciation and forgiveness.

Start now.

And remember, it's not easy being a mother.

It's not easy.

One of my greatest regrets is that when my mother died, I was there by her bedside.

I had come all the way from New Zealand back to Elizabethan, Tennessee.

I never got to speak to my mother again where she was cognizant.

And I held her hand as she breathed her last breath and died.

And the first thing that hit me is I never got the chance to just grab my mother's arm or hand and say, Mom, you did great.

Man, you overcame so much.

Thank you for what you did provide.

I love you.

You didn't have a lot to work with, but you made so many good things happen.

Tell your mother now, before she passes away, that you're thankful for the good, that you love her, and where there is a need for forgiveness, you extend it to her.

And statement three, when your mom dies, and some of you know this already, You're going to feel that you've lost your home and your sense of belonging.

Can I just tell you, if you're in the audience and you lost your mom this year, last year, 10 years, 20 years ago, you know what that sense is like.

And I'm going to warn those of you who will lose your mother in the future.

You're not going to believe how you feel.

It's going to be like, it's going to be unlike any other feeling you've experienced.

And it's going to, it's going to give you this incredible sense of lostness.

Can I tell you the third challenge?

When that happens, run to God.

And if you run to God, you will find your home in Him.

You will find your home in Him.

Cherish your mother.

Run to God.

You know, I want to close with this.

There's a song written by Micah Mechanics years ago.

And maybe someday I'll talk to you about my father.

Close to my father, my father lived another 10, 12 years after the death of my mom.

An amazing man.

Every time I used to hear the song after the death of my father, it would crush me.

But I want to read the lyrics to you.

It's by Mike and the Mechanics, but I'm going to change the word.

I'm going to change one word from father to mother.

I want you to listen to this because I don't think anything says it better outside of scripture.

than this song.

Here's what he writes.

He says, Every generation blames the one before, and all of their frustrations come beating on your door.

I know that I'm a prisoner to all my mother held so dear.

I know that I'm a hostage to all her hopes and fears.

I just wish I could have told her in the living years.

All crumbled bits of paper filled with imperfect thought, stilted conversations.

I'm afraid that's all we've got.

You say you just don't see it.

She says it's perfect sense.

You just can't get agreement in the present tense.

We all talk a different language, talking in defense.

And then he says, say it loud, say it clear.

You can listen as well as you hear.

It's too late when we die to admit we don't see eye to eye.

we open up a quarrel between the present and the past we only sacrifice the future it's the bitterness that lasts so don't yield to the fortunes you sometimes see us fate it may have a new perspective on a different day and if you don't give up and don't give in you may just be okay so say it loud say it clear you can listen as well as you hear because it's too late it's too late when we die to admit we don't see eye to eye and then here's the last part And this really brings it home.

I wasn't there that morning when my mother passed away.

I didn't get to tell her all the things I had to say.

I think I caught her spirit later that same year.

I'm sure I heard her echo in my baby's newborn tears.

I just wish I could have told her in the living years.

Say it loud.

Say it clear.

It's too late when we die.

to admit we don't see eye to eye.

I just hope somehow in the midst of all this, the bitterness can dissipate.

You can wish your mother well.

And for those of you who had great moms, my goodness, I hope and pray that you praise the living God for all that he has supplied.

And for those of you who did not have great moms, that you would praise the living God.

for all the things he's teaching you as he shapes and molds you to become the mom that he wants you to be.

Father, thank you for your goodness for Mother's Day.

I pray this would be a day, a week of celebration, a week of restoration, a week of reconciliation, a week of forgiveness, a week of repentance, and ultimately...

a week where families are restored.

In Christ's name, amen.

Thanks for joining us to watch Pastor Jeff's special message on Mother's and Mother's Day.

There is a lot more content.

If you want to go more in depth and hear even more that Pastor Jeff has to say, please check out our Conversations episode on YouTube.

You can find out even more of what Pastor Jeff couldn't get into the message this weekend.

So make sure to check that out.

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And if you're new, go to oneandall.church slash new.

So myself or one of our other pastoral team can reach out and get you connected.

Have a great week.