May is a fun month for me with Birthday Celebrations of family and friends, but I am most grateful for the day set aside to honor “Mothers”. I was blessed to have had a godly Mother and Grandmother who deeply influenced my life. In my fifties, God led me to a mission-field of inmates where I met women with very little understanding of that precious relationship.
On Mother’s Day 1987 at CIW, California Institute for Women, I spoke to a Chapel filled with “incarcerated mothers”. Since then, I’ve seen God give women a “second chance” to become a godly mother. They say when a woman gives her life to Jesus Christ inside prison, her family learns to serve God! I’ve personally witnessed His intervention in their families by delivering children from drugs & alcohol, and protecting them from fights, accidents, & death.
I will remember forever that ONE QUESTION they asked me again & again, “Will you please PRAY for my children?” Let us all be encouraged with excerpts from a Word by Bill Yount who was our Prison Ministry Retreat Speaker one year in Long Barn.
“I saw angels standing at attention while names of children & addresses were written on them. Some were prison addresses, some were for homeless children on-the-streets, some were unknown to man, but known to God. Some assignments were given to make phone calls, others to speak to the children’s hearts about things that nobody else knew. Special assignments were given to come down just to strengthen and comfort mothers.
I heard the Lord say:
‘Speak comfortingly to the mothers with My Word. I will save your children. As for Me, this is My covenant with them. My Spirit that is upon YOU, and My words which I have put in YOUR mouth shall not depart out of YOUR mouth, nor out of the mouth of YOUR seed, nor out of the mouth of YOUR seed’s seed from henceforth and forever, says the Lord.’ ” (Isaiah 59:21)