Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Pfeiffer. We begin the new week with a question from a young woman named Kate. Dear Pastor John, thank you so much for what your ministry has done for my faith and relationship with God. I can't fully express how much your words have changed my walk with Christ forever.

I was very encouraged by your words in episode 908 about fatherhood directed to the husband of a wife who wanted children. In the episode, you said there are glories of motherhood, too, but that is for another time. I would like to hear about this glory and any other encouragement you would have for me.

I have never taken it lightly to have children. It seems overwhelmingly weighty to me to be responsible for forming another person's character for 18 years and beyond. It has absolutely terrified me in the past, and for a time I decided not to have kids. As I found my identity in Christ, I have also found strength to agree to willingly have children and obey God's call on my life.

But I am still so afraid of perpetuating my own dysfunction and sins into them. Of course, I'm afraid of childbirth, but even more, I'm afraid of ruining their hearts. I would love to hear your advice that you would have for me. Thank you, Pastor John. There are indeed glories in motherhood that every woman should think about and embrace and rejoice in as God calls them to motherhood.

And when I say glories, I don't necessarily mean things that are easy, but things that are profoundly significant and beautiful and precious in God's sight and essential for his purposes in the world. So that's what I want to focus on. So much more could be said about all those other issues she raised, but she asked me to say, what are some of those glories that you said were for another time?

So I'll mention a few, maybe five. One, it is a glorious thing that human life originates in the womb of a woman and is sustained for nine months by the woman's own body and in most cultures is sustained at her breast for another year or two. Both Moses and Paul in the Bible saw this as a glorious thing, a great wonder of the world that a mother should be continually amazed at.

To be sure, all the glories of this life are fallen glories, imperfect glories, corrupted glories, because both our souls and all of nature has fallen into the judgment of God because of sin. But the glories still shine through. And in Christ, we are meant to embrace them and free them as much as we can from the contamination of the fall.

Immediately following the words of God's judgment on the serpent and the woman and the man in Genesis and immediately before God's merciful clothing of the man and the woman with animal skins, right in that little place, Moses records this. The man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all the living.

Now, it seems clear to me that God intends this right where it comes after the curse, before the mercy of those skins. God intends this to be seen as a gift of unspeakable grace. Both Adam and Eve were warned that the day they eat of this fruit, they will die.

In one sense, they did. But instead of only death, not only did they live, but Eve becomes the source of all human life. He could have done it another way. The mother of all the living and every woman after her. And then Paul tries to show how significant this is in 1 Corinthians 11, 11 and 12, where he says, Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man of woman.

For as woman was made for man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. In other words, every man that has ever lived, however small or great, owes his life to a woman, his mother. Number two, then the Psalms multiply the glory and the wonder of all of life originating in the woman by saying explicitly that her womb is no mere natural cocoon, but the sacred place of God's own personal handiwork himself.

Psalm 139. 13. You formed me in my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. God is at work in the womb of every mother and his hands are forming an everlasting human being just as closely as if he were using his fingers and knitting needles.

And that is a great glory. Three, then the Bible describes the glorious ongoing shaping of every human by the influence and teaching of his mother. Proverbs 1 8. Hear my son, your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.

She she has given her sons and daughters life. And now by her teaching, she gives them garlands and pendants for their neck. These are intended to be signs of glorious ministry. In my opinion, the most influential people in the world are mothers. Thousands of of men may rise up to positions of power all over the world or women.

All of them come from the womb and the influence of mothers. Even kings and presidents, it says in this is amazing. It says in Proverbs 31 1, the words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him. So not only do you have scripture, but you have. I mean, I should say it the other way around, I suppose.

Not only do you have the words of a king, but you have scripture as the oracle of his mother that she taught him. For God's design in all of this is that a mother should be duly honored. Or you could say appropriately glorified for her gifts and her sacrifices to her children.

Ephesians. Ephesians 6 1. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. Children are to honor their mothers because their mothers have done an honorable and glorious thing in all that they've birthed and influenced. Five. Lastly, the sorrows that every mother will experience in giving birth and raising her children will be glorious sorrows.

And. What I mean is that when a mother sorrows, even over the forsaking of God, the forsaking of the family by a child, when a mother's sorrows it's a glorious sorrow because it is a partaking in the very sorrows that Jesus himself experienced at the one point where he compared himself to mothering.

Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered you, your children together as a hen, as a hen, as a mother hen. Gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing. So here we have Jesus comparing himself to a hen, a mother longing and aching and crying and praying out for the wayward children in Jerusalem.

And they're not coming. And he's weeping over Jerusalem. Your sorrows as a mother are glorious sorrows because they share in the very sorrows of the son of man when he compared himself to motherhood. And Kate, the list could go on. So take heart. Of course, you and every woman and man bring brokenness.

That's what you emphasize. You bring brokenness as well as faith to the challenge of parenthood. But remember these promises. I'll just give you two. They are daily precious to me. My God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4, 9, that's mothering needs as well as others.

And Second Corinthians 9, 8, God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all mothering sufficiency in all things relating to mothering at all times in your mothering, you may abound in every mothering good deeds. Amen. Thank you, Pastor John, for that hope filled counsel.

And Kate, thank you for the very open and honest self-disclosing question that you send in to us. These are the kinds of questions we are always looking for in the inbox, questions that get into our heart tension, that you're feeling in your life and you're seeking biblical counsel to address it.

If you have a question like that, email it to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. And of course, everything you need to know about this podcast can be found at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. And we are going to return on Wednesday. A listener wants to know if any of the New Testament writers were self-conscious that they were writing down the very words of God.

Were any of the New Testament writers aware that they were inspired in the moment that they were writing? And if so, where is the evidence? Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.