Mother's Day at BattleCreek Church with Pastor Alex Himaya

Come on, guys. Come on. Let us through. Rabbi is oppressing now. They're up ahead. Please. Let us through. Everyone, make room. Stay back. Stay back, everyone. Teacher! Teacher! A rabbi is oppressing now. They're ahead. Please, let us through. Teacher! Please, be patient. No, no, no. Please, no. No, no. Please, no. No, no. Please, no. No, no. Please, no. No, no. Please, no. No, no. Please, let us through. One threat.

One threat. Just a fringe. One touch. One threat. Just the edge. Only a threat. You. I know you. Get away from him. Stop it. Please. Rabbi Yusif. Rabbi Yusif. This woman bleeds. She is unclean. We removed her. Please. Please. I promise I won't touch him. I just need to... Woman, please. We can help you, but not now. Sorry. Tomorrow. No, please. Just a moment. Just a moment. Just a moment. Just a moment. Just a moment.

Just a moment. Just a moment. Just a moment. Just a moment. Just a moment. Please. More. Please. Just a moment. Just a moment. Go. Go. Go. Go. Give him the flag. Okay. That story in Mark 5 resonates with every woman that I've ever talked to because it's not just a story of healing. It's a story of desperation. And to those of you across all of our campuses this morning who feel like you're hanging on by a thread, my encouragement to you is to make sure that it's Jesus thread that you're hanging on to. And for many of you, Mother's Day is a day of celebration, but it's also very hard. Maybe because you've lost your mom, maybe recently, or maybe because you've been holding onto that thread of becoming a mom. And that prayer has yet to be answered for you. I want to pray for you today. In fact, I want us to pray for you today. And we've seen God answer this prayer many times in this church. And I want to pray for you today.

So would you just bow your heads and close your eyes at all of our campuses? And if you're here today and infertility is your struggle, and you're asking God to give you a baby, would you just raise your hand at all of our campuses as a way to say he's praying for me? And as you slip your hand up, Lord, I just pray right now for these families. And you are the God of life and the author of every story. And on this day that celebrates motherhood, we come to you with honest hearts full of love and full of longing. For every couple under the sound of my voice carrying the ache of infertility, we bring their desire before you today. Not timidly, but boldly. Lord, you're the giver of life. You knit children together and you can open what no one else can open. So today, what we ask clearly and courageously, give them a child. Bring life into their home. Let there be a cry in the night, laughter in the halls, and a story that only you could write. Would you break through every barrier, physical and medical and emotional and spiritual? Guide doctors and strengthen bodies and align every detail. Do miracles that point unmistakably to your power and your goodness and God for every path that you choose to write. I thank you, Lord, that in this place, this church is filled with children that have come through adoption. And I pray today, Lord, that if this child we're praying for today is to come through adoption, make that path clear and lead them to the child that you have set apart for them. Prepare that child's heart, even now, to be received into a home full of love. Turn waiting into purpose and uncertainty into trust, Lord, over this. We pray that you would turn this deep longing into a testimony of your love. Faithfulness, let this journey refine love, not divide it. And in the waiting, remind them,

your kids, you've not forgotten them. You're not withholding goodness, but you're working in their lives, even when they cannot see it. And so we ask boldly of the one who can bring every miracle. And Lord, today, as we look at your word, we pray that you would let the words jump off the page into our hearts and into our lives, and that by the Holy Spirit, you would speak a word to all of us today. In Jesus' name we pray, and together we all say, amen and amen. Let me begin with a question today for all of the moms in the room. When is the last time that someone called you by your name? Not mom, not honey, not hey you, your name, not can you, or I need this by tomorrow morning, but your name. The name that was yours before anyone else needed anything from you. And here's what I've noticed, pastoring a church for multiple generations now, that the moment a woman becomes a mom, she can begin to disappear into that role, and that role is beautiful. So don't hear what I'm not saying today. What I'm saying is somewhere between the diapers and the carpools, and the homework and the heartbreaks, and the giving and the doing and all of the showing up, a lot of moms quietly lose track of who they are. Who they are when no one needs anything,

who they were before they were somebody's mom, and I think one of the reasons that Mother's Day can feel a bit complicated is because being celebrated is not the same thing as being known. And flowers are nice, and brunch is great, but what every mom really wants is to be known, and today I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about names, and I wanna talk about identity, because before you were a mom, you were a daughter. Does that make sense? Before I was a husband, before I was a father, I was someone's son, and all of us were first someone's son or someone's daughter, and there's something about what comes first, and there's sort of a definition or a defining of us, what it means to be us, and I wanna turn to that story in Mark 5, because I think this story explains what I'm talking about, and you heard me say a moment ago, every mom was first a daughter, and you thought, well, that's not all that profound, Alex, but what I want you to know is that if you are in Christ, you are a daughter of your heavenly Father, and this story perfectly explains what I'm talking about today. Let's look at it in verse 21. It says, Jesus got into the boat and went back to the other side of the lake where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived,

and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet, pleading fervently with him, my little daughter is dying. Please come and lay your hands on her and heal her so that she can live. Let me call your attention to this phrase, a leader of the local synagogue. Now, what does that mean? It does not mean that he was a rabbi or a pastor or a preacher or a minister. He was the guy in charge of the business. This guy was known. In fact, he's still known to this day. We know his name thousands of years later. In fact, in this story, we're given two names, Jairus' name and Jesus' name, but the story's not really about them, not really. Really, it's about two females, a woman and a little girl who were both healed, and we don't even know their names. And Jairus has a daughter, a little girl that is 12 years old. She's in pain, she's sick, and she's probably going to die. And if you're here today and you have a daughter, you understand a bit of what he's going through because if you have a daughter, you would move heaven and earth for your daughter. And all the boy moms out there, you would do the exact same thing for your son. But hear me today. If you're a girl mom or a girl dad,

you know this to be true. In fact, I went looking to illustrate this in Meredith's phone and in our photographs to find a photo of Meredith at a little tea table with our little girls, and I couldn't find one. Usually, she was the one taking the picture. I went through my phone, and I found a bunch of scorecards from golf courses. And so, not really a whole lot of tender moments. There were a few tender moments in there, but I can remember being tugged by a little girl's hand over to a table like this table, and that's further down than I remember. I remember walking over and sitting down with my daughters at a tea set like this where we would drink from and pretend to be careful so that we didn't spill imaginary tea from a plastic cup that was actually completely empty. And looking back and thinking back this week over those moments, a couple of points come to mind. Number one, these memories mean more to me today than I ever thought that they would. And number two, this empty teacup symbolizes something of Jairus's absolute desperation. In fact, that word in the Greek for the leader of the synagogue is one word in the Greek. It's archi-synagogos, archi, like arch and synagogue, the one over the synagogue. And what Mark is doing here with this word is doing what we talked about last year

when we spent the whole spring semester walking through the Gospel of Mark, is he's building a Markin sandwich. And what he's doing is he's juxtaposing somebody who is a bigwig in Judaism with someone who we'll see in a moment who is unclean in the Jewish culture. And we'll cover that in a moment, but I wanna read this phrase to you again because I don't want you to miss it. My little daughter is dying. She's dying. Would you please come and lay your hands on her and heal her? And we don't know much about this guy, but we do know that he was probably a big deal, which is probably why his name is included in the text because everybody knew who he was. But let me just tell you something. In that moment, my little daughter is dying. The status and the things and the accomplishments and the possessions, none of that mattered in that moment. What he wanted was another moment to sit and have a tea party with his daughter laughing and having fun. So let's keep reading as the context has now been set. Jesus went with him. And all the people followed behind, crowding around him. A woman in the crowd had suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding.

12 years she's had this condition. In a moment in verse 42, we will be told that the daughter, Jairus' daughter is 12 years old. What Mark is doing is wanting us to make a connection between these two girls. Two females, one older and one younger. They're both suffering, but they're both connected in more ways than one. Now look at what Mark tells us about this woman suffering. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors. That's interesting. And over the years, she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She suffered from the doctors, not in spite of going to the doctor. In many cases, it was the doctors who actually hurt her. Physicians in those days would try some of the strangest cures, but the Bible points out she had suffered for 12 years. 12 years of doctors, 12 years of all of her money gone, 12 years of hoping against hope, 12 years coming up empty, 12 years of getting worse instead of better. But here's what you need to understand about that culture. In that day, a woman with this condition was considered to be unclean, which meant she could never go to the temple. She could never worship with her family. She could never worship with her community.

She could not be touched, and she could not touch anyone else. Never participating in a hug, because if she did, it meant that she would make them unclean, meaning she was invisible and isolated and had been pushed to the outside of everything for 12 long years. She had run out of money. She had run out of options. She had run out of doctors, but she heard about Jesus. She heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him, through the crowd, and touched his robe. It's interesting that Mark points out she came up behind him, meaning that she didn't come in front of him. She didn't come beside him. She wasn't in his peripheral vision. Remember, she had been told for 12 years she is unclean. She is unworthy. She is in the way, and this is the posture of someone weighed down by shame. Her identity had been so scarred by other people's opinions of her, but she did not let that stop her. She knew something. She had heard something about Jesus. She thought to herself, if I can just touch his robe, I will be healed. She let it go. Let faith lead her, she wanted a new identity

and she had heard where she could find it. Look at verse 29, immediately, circle that word in your Bible, immediately the bleeding stopped and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition. Immediately, no more waiting. No, we'll get to you in a moment, immediately. But then something very unexpected happens. Look at verse 30. Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him. So he turned around in the crowd and he asked, who touched my robe? Now you saw it depicted in the clip. The disciples had to be looking at him like, are you serious right now? Everyone is touching you. But Jesus keeps looking, he keeps turning, he keeps asking because he knows someone touched him, not just anyone, someone with intention and someone reached out in faith. And here's what I want you to see. He was not willing to let her stay hidden. He could have slipped away and let her slip away and no one would have ever known she could have stayed invisible, which is exactly what she was used to. Invisible was all she had known for 12 years. Invisible was safe for her, but Jesus stops everything.

He stops the crowd, he stops the entourage on the way to Jairus' house, he stops for her. Now look at this. The frightened woman trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. She's frightened, she's probably ready to be scolded because she had been many times, right? She was waiting to be sent away. She's waiting maybe to hear every name she had been called for 12 years. Unclean, broken, too much, not enough. But Jesus doesn't say any of that to her. Look at what he says. Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, your suffering is over. Daughter, he called her daughter, not woman, not you there, not unclean one. Daughter. By the way, this is the only time in all four of the Gospels that Jesus calls an adult woman daughter. Out of every encounter, every miracle, every conversation he had with a woman, this is the only time he reaches past everything that she had done, everything that had been done to her, and he gave her a name, and what he was saying is, you belong to someone. You are not invisible, you are not unnamed,

you are mine, and I call you daughter. And the story is about two daughters. Jairus's daughter, of course, we already said that, but also this woman, Jesus calls her daughter on purpose to show us that your heavenly father cares for you, with the same love and the same intentionality that Jairus does his daughter. And moms, I want you to hear me today. If you love your son or you love your daughter, know this, God loves you as a daughter even more. Even more. And I wanna stay here for a moment because this is the whole point of the text, that I want every woman and every mom, under the sound of my voice, to hear today, before you were anyone's mother, you were someone's daughter. And I don't just mean an earthly father's daughter, I mean you were and you are a daughter of the heavenly father. That is your first identity. Not mom, not wife, not employee, not boss, not volunteer, not caregiver, not taxi driver, not home chef or homework helper. You are first and foremost, daughter. That's the name God gave you first. And hear me, it doesn't mean those other titles aren't there, and it doesn't mean those other titles don't matter. Listen, in fact, your first identity affects

and makes all your other identities better. Because you are a daughter of the king, you can be a loving mother, a caring wife, an incredible volunteer, an amazing boss. You can do all those things better when you know and embrace your first identity. And the best part of this is, that name is permanent. It's the name that was on you before anyone else needed anything from you. It's the name that doesn't change when your kids grow up. The name doesn't expire when the nest goes empty. It doesn't wear out when the marriage gets hard. It doesn't disappear when you look in the mirror and don't recognize yourself, daughter. The name is foundational and the reason you are better when you know that name is because you can't pour from an empty cup. It's foundational to all of your life. And some of us in the room are empty nesters. Our youngest is gone and flew the coop. But just a few years ago, I do have photos and did find a photo this week of Meredith when we were dropping the kids off at college. And that look on her face is unmistakable. A mom who felt empty and realizes in that moment an emptiness, why? Because she had poured out so much. But here's the truth. Before you pour out, you have to be full. And moms, especially those of you

who are dedicating babies today, listen to me. If you wanna pour into your child, you must first be poured into by your heavenly father. You cannot give your children an identity that you haven't received yourself. I want you to think about that. If you don't know that you are loved unconditionally, you will perform for love instead and you will teach your kids to do the very same thing. And if you don't know that you are seen, you will spend your whole life trying to be noticed and you will raise kids that do the same thing. And if you don't know that you are enough, you will exhaust yourself trying to prove it and your kids will watch you do that and they will believe the lie that they aren't enough either. When a mom knows she's a daughter of God, when she knows her own identity, something changes, not just in her, but in her whole home. Because she stops grasping for an identity that her kids cannot give her. She stops needing her children to validate her because she loves them freely and because she is loved freely. And she sees them clearly because she has been seen. She calls them by their true name because she knows her name. The greatest gift a mother can give her children is not a good school or a clean house

or the right opportunities. It's a mom who knows who she is. And in every room that she walks into, she walks into it already full, already loved, already seen, already named a daughter of God who happens to also be their mom. Now, back to the story, verse 35. While he was still speaking to her, that is the woman with the issue who was healed, messengers arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, and they told him, your daughter is dead. There's no use troubling the teacher now, but Jesus said to Jairus, don't be afraid, just have faith. Jairus watched Jesus heal another woman, not his own daughter, and the delay appeared to be deadly. But as we read the text, Jesus wants him to know and wants us to know that the delay did not mean death. In fact, watching the other woman be healed increased his faith. And it increased his miracle, when you think through it. His miracle got upgraded from a healing to a resurrection. And we'll get there in a moment, but these guys think that since the daughter is dead, that they are troubling Jesus. Hear me, when you know you're a child of God, no request of him is trouble. No matter how small or how big, any time of day or night,

built into the identity as a daughter of the king is your right to come to him and ask for anything at any moment. In fact, look at verse 38. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw much commotion and weeping and wailing, and he went inside and he asked, why all this commotion and weeping? The child isn't dead, she is only asleep. The crowd laughed at him. By the way, you need to know the context. These are hired mourners. In those days, you would pay strangers to come and cry and mourn and wail during all your times of great loss. So you need to understand that these people who are laughing, they're not a part of the family. They're not a part of Jairus's home or identity. They're on the outside with no identity with him. But those who do have identity with him, Jesus actually brings in closer. Look at the rest of verse 40. It says, he made them all leave. He took the girl's father and mother and three disciples into the room. Where the girl was lying. Do you remember what Jesus told Jairus? He said don't be afraid have faith And I want you to hear Jesus speaking to you today in the same way that he said to Jairus that day Don't be afraid have faith Set everything else down Set down fear set down the report

Set down what the messengers have said set down what the crowd Thinks set down all of the guilt and all of the comparison all the feeling that you have failed and hold on to this He said have faith Meaning what he's not done yet, and he's not done with you either Look, look at this holding her hand. He said to her Talitha come Which means little girl get up in other words Jesus is speaking tenderly to her just like a dad would to his daughter, honey It's time to get up And The girl who was 12 years old immediately stood up and walked around They were overwhelmed and totally amazed little girl is not a put-down It's a nickname and it is a term of endearment and he sees her as she is listen not in The way that others saw her and not in the way that others spoke about her Jesus is speaking to her like he's waking her up from a nap like it's the most natural thing in the world and watch this mark 5 gives us two daughters a Little girl who's 12 and another who has suffered for 12 years One is at the beginning of her life. The other feels like her life is completely over Both of them are desperate daughters and for both of them Jesus stops everything for both of them Jesus brings and restores life and there's a bridge between these two women that connects them and connects every mom in this room Today but because every daughter grows up and many of them become mothers and somewhere in that transition the daughter gets lost with the title of mother and the little girl who had dreams gets buried under all of the Responsibility the woman who knew who she was gets defined by what she does But the daughter who was loved just for being who she is starts to believe she has to earn it But our prayer all week for you Is that in this hour Jesus would walk among this crowd today and he would stop And he would turn and he would look at all the ones who reach out in faith

Even the ones reaching out in fear You've come up empty for years and years and years Jesus is walking past all the noise and all the fears past all of the delay And he wants to take your hand and call you daughter Today, let's pray together heads bowed and eyes closed Father I pray today that you would meet Every single mom under the sound of my voice today And that you would touch them Regardless of what stage of life they're in or at And for all those who are reaching out to you and feel that they're hanging on by a thread I Pray today that you would turn Look to the Lord and say father. I pray today that you would meet Them in the eye and speak a tender word to them They would feel somehow in their hearts your embrace They would hear you call them daughter and Know that it's gonna be okay And I pray today for all under the sound of my voice who are Here But can't call you father yet heavenly father They don't know that they're your son and they don't know that they're your daughter I pray today they could settle that and Come into the faith family To know you personally Jesus and If you're here today, and that's you you you want to make him your heavenly father You want to trust Jesus you want to turn your back on your sin and place your faith in him? I want to lead you in a prayer helping you do just that and You're gonna hear people praying all around you to every single campus, but if that's you you want to trust Jesus and give your life To him would you just pray after me and say dear Heavenly Father. I know I'm a sinner

Today, I ask you to forgive me for all of my sin Jesus come into my life To be my Lord my Savior my Father in the best way that I know how I Turn my back on my sin And I trust you alone Jesus To save me. I receive you and I receive your gift of salvation in Jesus name we pray and together we all say amen and amen. Would you thank the Lord for meeting with us? today