Not just for mothers
Dr. Roberto Miranda
(: )
: In this sermon, the speaker reflects on the love of mothers and how it exemplifies the love of God. He believes that God encompasses both masculine and feminine energies and that motherhood is the ultimate sacrifice. The speaker shares a personal encounter with an African-American mother and her two children, whom he describes as lionesses protecting their children in a dangerous world. He concludes by emphasizing the importance of taking care of adolescents, especially in these times where they are vulnerable to harm. The church is called to give generously to support this cause.
The speaker talks about a woman named Rispa who protected the bodies of her dead children from birds of prey for days. He compares her fierce love to the love of mothers fighting for their children in different cities, neighborhoods, and countries. He encourages the church to become like a lioness and fight against the devil trying to take control of the lives of their children. He blesses those mothers and teenagers and declares victory in the name of Jesus.
The speaker talks about a woman named Rispa who protected the bodies of her dead children from birds of prey for days. He compares her fierce love to the love of mothers fighting for their children in different cities, neighborhoods, and countries. He encourages the church to become like a lioness and fight against the devil trying to take control of the lives of their children. He blesses those mothers and teenagers and declares victory in the name of Jesus.
This morning I just want to take a few minutes to focus on what we're doing and remember this is a day that we choose to honor our mothers, and I hope it's not the only day that we honor our mothers, we have to express love and appreciation, and value our mothers every day of the year, our wives, show them love and appreciation for everything they do.
And when I think of our mothers, I think that they exemplify the most select of feelings that humanity can reflect, above all the love of God. The Bible over and over again compares the love of a mother to the love of God, and many times the word uses the love of a mother to illustrate the love of God. In fact, I have always believed that God, not in the sense that God is man and woman, but I believe that these two energies are enclosed in God, the masculine energy that we associate with men, and the energy that we associate with women. We associate that aggressive energy with man, that goes forward, that energy that watches over, not many things like that, which we associate in general terms, because they are all generalities.
The woman, that tender, tolerant being, that compassionate being, that being that has that sixth sense because she gets in tune with her environment, she gets in tune with the emotions of others, and she sees many things that men don't see because she has that sixth sense that her femininity gives her, and God gathers in her person all those different energies, that is why I believe that when God created man and woman he says that he created them in his image and likeness, he created both man and woman Both male and female reflect elements of God's personality.
God itself includes all the different energies that men and women express in a more concentrated way, and I think that of course, every man also needs the tenderness of a woman, and every woman also needs the aggressiveness and drive of a woman. a man, how many say amen to that, because it is not that we are saying that women are soft and men are hard, none of that, but as there is a greater tonality that the man exemplifies and the woman exemplifies, and together we reflect the complexity and breadth of the personality of God who is both, God is a judge, and he is a lawgiver, and he is just, and he is aggressive, but he is also a warrior, but he is also loving and compassionate, and he has mercy on us, and He has mercy up to the fourth generation and is patient, and in Christ I believe that that energy that we could say, very slightly feminine of God is reflected. Christ Jesus, again reflecting the fact that everything is included in Him.
I was reminded of a verse that this morning was given to me in meditation, it is in Isaiah chapter 66 verse 13, where it says that: "as he who is comforted by his mother, so will I comfort you." What a nice verse. "Like the one whose mother consoles, I am going to console you. Again when the Lord wants to express how He is going to deal with us, He is going to protect us, He is going to keep us, He is going to comfort us, is going to affirm in life, He says remember how when your mother, when you fell and scraped your knee or they laughed at you and made fun of you at school, you came to her, and she consoled you and passed you your hand on your head, and it calmed you down and inspired you with hope and confidence, and it's even more so when we've grown up, and we've had different types of financial or health problems.
I don't know about you, but until my mother passed away, she had that virtue of calming me down just with a look, a smile, and with her mere presence I felt safe, it's something instinctive, because mothers spend months inside from her womb, in an intimate relationship like no other there can ever be, eating from her, and breathing through her, and listening to the sounds of her body inside, the heartbeat, the flow of the waters, and all these things inside the womb of a woman who is uncomfortable and suffers for us and sometimes even disfigures herself, so that we can come to life.
And while we are the most fragile on earth, there inside our mother's womb, God is forming and weaving us together, and preparing us for life, and she communicates her life to us, and it will never be the same again, because after a woman gives birth is never the same, neither physically, nor emotionally, nor in any way, her life is already irrevocably changed, motherhood is the ultimate sacrifice, actually if we drink, it is the most beautiful gift that can be given in life , serve as a mediator for someone to come to life, and as Christ Jesus gave himself for us, he sacrificed himself, so a mother gives herself for her children, not only when she is gestating them inside her womb, but later then the work begins hard, when we suffer for them, not when you suffer for us, and you see us go through everything and do all the imprudence that sons and daughters commit in life, and suffer with us in our marriages, and in our finances s, and in our health, and in our human relationships, and the setbacks of life, and the mother is there watching over all this, and suffering with us and for us and giving us those words of affection and affirmation, listen to me, it is the biggest mystery of all.
That's why God when he wants to illustrate his love, because that's all God does too, even though he is there on his throne, inviolable, and he is the infinite almighty God, and no one can hurt him, but still the suffer for us too. The word says that as the Father pities the children, Jehovah pities them. And when people ask me "well, where was God when this happened to me, where is God when a child dies prematurely, or a young person dies of cancer, or a noble person has a tragedy, where is God". Looking from his sky and suffering with you. Suffering with that person. Because God is affected by what we experience here in life, you know.
He is incredibly tender and merciful and generous with us, and He becomes fragile for a moment, I don't wonder how to explain that theologically, because He is mother and father to us, as the hen covers her chicks, the wings, no ? says the bible. All of these are figures of motherhood, the maternal character of God.
Yesterday when I was in New York, I took a moment of intermission in the congress that we were carrying out, and I had promised some photocopies to the brothers of the workshop, which I had given, and with all the hustle and bustle we couldn't, so I went A young Moisés took me to Staples, and we got there and I left, I went into the Staples store to get the photocopies, and they were very busy and they told me, look, if you want us to make the photocopies for you, you're going to have to wait two or three hours, I didn't have time, if you want, then do it yourself, there were some self-service machines, self-service, so well, things are very complex, they give you a special card, and I looked a bit confused about of what he was going to do.
And an African-American lady came, tall, thin, with clothes like that, African-style, dressed in her suit honoring her cultural heritage, but she was African-American, and she approached me, and she had two children, two little children, one had about seven or eight years old, or nine years old, the other one was a couple younger, both of them skinny, dressed as North American soldiers with their fatigues, they had their little jackets, their pants, their boots, like soldiers but tiny, in miniature, very pretty, It was clear that this mother had taken the time to buy these children their little suits, and the children were very cute, they had glasses on, despite being small it seems that they both needed glasses, they looked very pretty, well cared for, well behaved. But like restless children, running because the space was big, and the mother doing her business, her photocopies, and looked at them from time to time like animals look at children, at babies when they are too far from one to take care of them for protect them, that no one hurt them. A faithful mother, watchful of her children.
And from time to time she yelled at them to sit down and that if they didn't she was going to pull their ears, and threatening them, but what I saw in her was that tenderness of a mother, she was a woman that I am sure had had a difficult life, for reasons that are long to explain, and I imagine that she will have made her mistakes in life, I wondered, Meche tells me that I am the most quarrelsome person she has ever met, and I wondered about the past possible of this woman, I suspect that she had had her children at an advanced age, and that perhaps the romantic in me making novels there with people, I think that this woman perhaps, as I say, made her mistakes in life, when she was young and she had these two sons, and they were her love.
And I saw, while she took out her photocopies again, she went from one side to the other across that large space, but always with her eye on those two boys. And the children I saw that they had been well cared for, and well treated, well trained. And I thought of all that the love of a mother, as this woman still exemplified in her harshness and her evident aggressive force, her tenderness towards her children, her care. And I said wow, whoever wants to come sell drugs to these kids or do them any harm, is going to find a lioness, who is going to fall on top of them and tear them to pieces, but easily, because this woman is not going to tolerate that these children are harmed in any way.
And I was thinking of so many African-American and Hispanic mothers, in our areas of our cities in the United States, Chicago, New York, Boston, our children are like fragile animals in a jungle where there are dinosaurs that want to tear them apart, we are in a very dangerous time of life. humanity, where our children are an endangered species, are fragile. And there are so many single mothers, for example, in Rocksper, and in Spanish Harlem and in Harlem, and in so many getthos in the United States, fighting for their children, afraid that they are going to be taken from them, that they are going to fall into drugs, that they are going to to grow up sexually abused, that teachers sometimes with their strange ideas in schools are going to fill them with inappropriate ideas, that someone out there, a pervert, is going to touch them in a harmful way, and those mothers are like lionesses, trying, doing what possible, sometimes they fail, sometimes they don't know how to do things, because motherhood, fatherhood, was not modeled well for them when they were children, but they do what they can, and they are there fighting for their children, to protect them and to keep them from predators who want to harm them.
And I approached that lady, later, because she helped me, in fact she approached me and said: "hey, what do you need, do you need me to help you with something?" He told me, "oh yes, look, this is the card, you take it there, you enter it, and then, you put yours, later", he taught me how to do it, right? while she ran, attended to her children, did twenty thousand things. And then when I saw her there fighting with the little boys to sit down, to be calm, I told her: "you know I want to tell you that you are doing a great job, you are doing a great job with your kids, you are doing a good job and It can be seen that they are good little boys and that they are well cared for, and I congratulate you on your efforts". She softened for a moment and said "If not me, if they bother me a lot I'll rip their heads off, that's what they need."
But the children, did they see each other? they knew it was their mother's love, they knew she was a lioness and that lionesses sometimes grab little lions by the neck and lead them away, that's part of it. And we talked for a little while, then he told me: "Look, you know that, what I'm doing right now, I'm preparing a workshop for adolescents, because adolescents need help," he says, "in these times there are so many bad things that are affecting them and You have to do something for them." I told him amen, I believe that, and we need to, he tells me "because no one is taking care of them, and that's true.
And one of the things that the Lord spoke to me through that, brothers, as a church, and knows that there is a move of God that is taking place in our congregation, to give and give even more than what we have given them, I give Thank God for what Miguel Prieto has done, for what so many brothers have done over the years for our adolescents, glory to God for that, amen?
And we have to do much more because the need and the burden is great. We need mothers and we need fathers for our children, and I have a commitment to the Lord, I give thanks for Sara Gautier, for Wilson, and for Sandi, this beautiful retreat that we had last Saturday, that the glory of the Lord was manifested there with a hundred young girls, teenagers who came and were blessed and marked by that event, and I am committed that we are going to do many more things, and that with the help of the Lord, and for his glory, we are going to have the best ministry for adolescents in many areas, in the name of Jesus, we are committed and we are going to pray for that, because certainly our young people need support and mothers who cover them with their wings, and who fight for them.
The last thing I say is this brothers, Rispa came to my mind this morning, I was looking for blessed Rispa for about half an hour and I finally found her Rispa, please don't name a daughter Rispa, just in case, but the fact is that I searched in google and finally, not knowing what to do, I put there dead mother takes care of the body of their dead sons, or mother takes care of the body of their dead sons and Rispa finally appeared in google, because I had the story there in my mind more or less, of this woman, I'm not going to read the passage but later look for it in second Samuel chapter 21, but Rispa was a mother, that's why I made the association with this African-American woman in Spanish Harlem.
Rispah was a woman who, due to a tragic moment in the history of Israel, David had to give up, she was Saul's concubine, and had two children, and there was a great famine in Israel because of a serious sin that Saul committed against the Gabaunites , a nation, a people who had affiliated with Israel, Saul violated a covenant promise made to the Gabaunites, not to destroy them, and he tried and killed many of them, and God seems to have been annoyed by the break of the covenant, there was famine in Israel, and David found out through revelation, that it was due to what had happened with the Gabaunites, so there is a lot of cloth to cut there, we are going to leave that for another day.
The fact is that Saul, sorry, David, goes to the Gabaunites and tells them well, what we have to do, to satisfy you, so that this famine in the country stops. And the Gabaunites say well, the only thing we want as if they don't want anything, seven sons of Saul, to be hanged and executed, and with that we are satisfied, seven son of Saul, and with that we are satisfied, and David for At the end of this great slaughter in Israel, he took five sons of Michal, who was one of Saul's wives, and two sons of Saul's concubine, of this woman named Rispah, and they hanged all seven of them, and left them like that. outdoors, to be consumed by the elements.
Rispa loved her children so much, and look at this about what a mother's love is, that's why I thought of her this morning, Rispa sat down, spread a cloth, on the rock, and sat in front of her children. dead children, for days and days so that the birds of prey would not come and eat their bodies, and every time the birds of prey came she would chase them away so that her children would not suffer the final indignity of being eaten by the birds of prey . And day after day, after day, many days passed, Rispa, I imagine this mother, the pain of that mother, seeing the body of her children decomposing, but she, faithful to their memory, a lioness, protecting the body of their children. That is the love of a mother, for me there is nothing that exemplifies it more, she could not do anything for those dead boys, but she could at least defend the dignity of their bodies.
This woman, twenty-four hours a day, sitting out in the open, protecting those bodies of her children, until David listened, that scandalized the region, and they went to David and told him look what this woman is doing, and David He was so moved that he ordered the bodies of these boys to be removed from the elements and given an honorable burial, the love of a mother. And I think that many mothers, in Rocksber and Torchester, Villa Victoria, Spanish Harlem, Harlem, Chicago, different cities in the Southwestern United States, are like Rispa, the birds of prey want to eat their children, the devil is merciless against the childhood, adolescence, and there are the mothers with their cloths scaring the birds of prey so that they do not eat their children, that is a mother.
And I encourage you brothers, let's never stop doing what Rispa did, when the devil wants to come and take control of the lives of our children, the church of Christ has to become like a lioness and tell him, you don't pass through here, amen?. We are going to do everything necessary to prevent the devil from mastering the souls of our children, the church of Christ always has the last word, the devil occupies the place that we allow him to occupy, when the church of Christ says no , is no, because we have the authority of God with us.
So let's fight in the name of Jesus, let's all take hold of that love of a mother, fierce love, love of a lioness, and let's not stop fighting for our children, we take our hats off to those mothers, many of them they are not here, young women, single mothers, wherever they are, we bless them in the name of the Lord, they are in Brazil, they are in Colombia, in Mexico, likewise fighting for their children, fighting for the souls of their children, who the drug does not eat them, that the devil does not get into their hearts, that culture does not poison their souls, and we are going to ask the Lord to give us that heart of lions, of lionesses in this case, to fight for ours , and God is powerful.
We are going to stand up once more, we are going to bless those teenagers wherever they are, we are going to bless those mothers who are battling for their children, and we declare in the name of Jesus grace of the Lord, grace upon grace, in the name of of Jesus, Father, in the streets, in the neighborhoods, in the favelas, Lord, in Latin America, in the ghettos of the United States, Lord, and in many other countries, we bless those women, Lord, who are fighting tooth and nail for their children, and we declare victory, we tie up the works of the devil and declare defeat, in the name of Jesus, and we declare that the church of Christ rises up with power to do its task. Thank my Lord. We adore you, we bless you Lord, hallelujah, to you glory and honor forever and ever. Amen, amen, give the Lord a big round of applause, hallelujah, glory to God.
And when I think of our mothers, I think that they exemplify the most select of feelings that humanity can reflect, above all the love of God. The Bible over and over again compares the love of a mother to the love of God, and many times the word uses the love of a mother to illustrate the love of God. In fact, I have always believed that God, not in the sense that God is man and woman, but I believe that these two energies are enclosed in God, the masculine energy that we associate with men, and the energy that we associate with women. We associate that aggressive energy with man, that goes forward, that energy that watches over, not many things like that, which we associate in general terms, because they are all generalities.
The woman, that tender, tolerant being, that compassionate being, that being that has that sixth sense because she gets in tune with her environment, she gets in tune with the emotions of others, and she sees many things that men don't see because she has that sixth sense that her femininity gives her, and God gathers in her person all those different energies, that is why I believe that when God created man and woman he says that he created them in his image and likeness, he created both man and woman Both male and female reflect elements of God's personality.
God itself includes all the different energies that men and women express in a more concentrated way, and I think that of course, every man also needs the tenderness of a woman, and every woman also needs the aggressiveness and drive of a woman. a man, how many say amen to that, because it is not that we are saying that women are soft and men are hard, none of that, but as there is a greater tonality that the man exemplifies and the woman exemplifies, and together we reflect the complexity and breadth of the personality of God who is both, God is a judge, and he is a lawgiver, and he is just, and he is aggressive, but he is also a warrior, but he is also loving and compassionate, and he has mercy on us, and He has mercy up to the fourth generation and is patient, and in Christ I believe that that energy that we could say, very slightly feminine of God is reflected. Christ Jesus, again reflecting the fact that everything is included in Him.
I was reminded of a verse that this morning was given to me in meditation, it is in Isaiah chapter 66 verse 13, where it says that: "as he who is comforted by his mother, so will I comfort you." What a nice verse. "Like the one whose mother consoles, I am going to console you. Again when the Lord wants to express how He is going to deal with us, He is going to protect us, He is going to keep us, He is going to comfort us, is going to affirm in life, He says remember how when your mother, when you fell and scraped your knee or they laughed at you and made fun of you at school, you came to her, and she consoled you and passed you your hand on your head, and it calmed you down and inspired you with hope and confidence, and it's even more so when we've grown up, and we've had different types of financial or health problems.
I don't know about you, but until my mother passed away, she had that virtue of calming me down just with a look, a smile, and with her mere presence I felt safe, it's something instinctive, because mothers spend months inside from her womb, in an intimate relationship like no other there can ever be, eating from her, and breathing through her, and listening to the sounds of her body inside, the heartbeat, the flow of the waters, and all these things inside the womb of a woman who is uncomfortable and suffers for us and sometimes even disfigures herself, so that we can come to life.
And while we are the most fragile on earth, there inside our mother's womb, God is forming and weaving us together, and preparing us for life, and she communicates her life to us, and it will never be the same again, because after a woman gives birth is never the same, neither physically, nor emotionally, nor in any way, her life is already irrevocably changed, motherhood is the ultimate sacrifice, actually if we drink, it is the most beautiful gift that can be given in life , serve as a mediator for someone to come to life, and as Christ Jesus gave himself for us, he sacrificed himself, so a mother gives herself for her children, not only when she is gestating them inside her womb, but later then the work begins hard, when we suffer for them, not when you suffer for us, and you see us go through everything and do all the imprudence that sons and daughters commit in life, and suffer with us in our marriages, and in our finances s, and in our health, and in our human relationships, and the setbacks of life, and the mother is there watching over all this, and suffering with us and for us and giving us those words of affection and affirmation, listen to me, it is the biggest mystery of all.
That's why God when he wants to illustrate his love, because that's all God does too, even though he is there on his throne, inviolable, and he is the infinite almighty God, and no one can hurt him, but still the suffer for us too. The word says that as the Father pities the children, Jehovah pities them. And when people ask me "well, where was God when this happened to me, where is God when a child dies prematurely, or a young person dies of cancer, or a noble person has a tragedy, where is God". Looking from his sky and suffering with you. Suffering with that person. Because God is affected by what we experience here in life, you know.
He is incredibly tender and merciful and generous with us, and He becomes fragile for a moment, I don't wonder how to explain that theologically, because He is mother and father to us, as the hen covers her chicks, the wings, no ? says the bible. All of these are figures of motherhood, the maternal character of God.
Yesterday when I was in New York, I took a moment of intermission in the congress that we were carrying out, and I had promised some photocopies to the brothers of the workshop, which I had given, and with all the hustle and bustle we couldn't, so I went A young Moisés took me to Staples, and we got there and I left, I went into the Staples store to get the photocopies, and they were very busy and they told me, look, if you want us to make the photocopies for you, you're going to have to wait two or three hours, I didn't have time, if you want, then do it yourself, there were some self-service machines, self-service, so well, things are very complex, they give you a special card, and I looked a bit confused about of what he was going to do.
And an African-American lady came, tall, thin, with clothes like that, African-style, dressed in her suit honoring her cultural heritage, but she was African-American, and she approached me, and she had two children, two little children, one had about seven or eight years old, or nine years old, the other one was a couple younger, both of them skinny, dressed as North American soldiers with their fatigues, they had their little jackets, their pants, their boots, like soldiers but tiny, in miniature, very pretty, It was clear that this mother had taken the time to buy these children their little suits, and the children were very cute, they had glasses on, despite being small it seems that they both needed glasses, they looked very pretty, well cared for, well behaved. But like restless children, running because the space was big, and the mother doing her business, her photocopies, and looked at them from time to time like animals look at children, at babies when they are too far from one to take care of them for protect them, that no one hurt them. A faithful mother, watchful of her children.
And from time to time she yelled at them to sit down and that if they didn't she was going to pull their ears, and threatening them, but what I saw in her was that tenderness of a mother, she was a woman that I am sure had had a difficult life, for reasons that are long to explain, and I imagine that she will have made her mistakes in life, I wondered, Meche tells me that I am the most quarrelsome person she has ever met, and I wondered about the past possible of this woman, I suspect that she had had her children at an advanced age, and that perhaps the romantic in me making novels there with people, I think that this woman perhaps, as I say, made her mistakes in life, when she was young and she had these two sons, and they were her love.
And I saw, while she took out her photocopies again, she went from one side to the other across that large space, but always with her eye on those two boys. And the children I saw that they had been well cared for, and well treated, well trained. And I thought of all that the love of a mother, as this woman still exemplified in her harshness and her evident aggressive force, her tenderness towards her children, her care. And I said wow, whoever wants to come sell drugs to these kids or do them any harm, is going to find a lioness, who is going to fall on top of them and tear them to pieces, but easily, because this woman is not going to tolerate that these children are harmed in any way.
And I was thinking of so many African-American and Hispanic mothers, in our areas of our cities in the United States, Chicago, New York, Boston, our children are like fragile animals in a jungle where there are dinosaurs that want to tear them apart, we are in a very dangerous time of life. humanity, where our children are an endangered species, are fragile. And there are so many single mothers, for example, in Rocksper, and in Spanish Harlem and in Harlem, and in so many getthos in the United States, fighting for their children, afraid that they are going to be taken from them, that they are going to fall into drugs, that they are going to to grow up sexually abused, that teachers sometimes with their strange ideas in schools are going to fill them with inappropriate ideas, that someone out there, a pervert, is going to touch them in a harmful way, and those mothers are like lionesses, trying, doing what possible, sometimes they fail, sometimes they don't know how to do things, because motherhood, fatherhood, was not modeled well for them when they were children, but they do what they can, and they are there fighting for their children, to protect them and to keep them from predators who want to harm them.
And I approached that lady, later, because she helped me, in fact she approached me and said: "hey, what do you need, do you need me to help you with something?" He told me, "oh yes, look, this is the card, you take it there, you enter it, and then, you put yours, later", he taught me how to do it, right? while she ran, attended to her children, did twenty thousand things. And then when I saw her there fighting with the little boys to sit down, to be calm, I told her: "you know I want to tell you that you are doing a great job, you are doing a great job with your kids, you are doing a good job and It can be seen that they are good little boys and that they are well cared for, and I congratulate you on your efforts". She softened for a moment and said "If not me, if they bother me a lot I'll rip their heads off, that's what they need."
But the children, did they see each other? they knew it was their mother's love, they knew she was a lioness and that lionesses sometimes grab little lions by the neck and lead them away, that's part of it. And we talked for a little while, then he told me: "Look, you know that, what I'm doing right now, I'm preparing a workshop for adolescents, because adolescents need help," he says, "in these times there are so many bad things that are affecting them and You have to do something for them." I told him amen, I believe that, and we need to, he tells me "because no one is taking care of them, and that's true.
And one of the things that the Lord spoke to me through that, brothers, as a church, and knows that there is a move of God that is taking place in our congregation, to give and give even more than what we have given them, I give Thank God for what Miguel Prieto has done, for what so many brothers have done over the years for our adolescents, glory to God for that, amen?
And we have to do much more because the need and the burden is great. We need mothers and we need fathers for our children, and I have a commitment to the Lord, I give thanks for Sara Gautier, for Wilson, and for Sandi, this beautiful retreat that we had last Saturday, that the glory of the Lord was manifested there with a hundred young girls, teenagers who came and were blessed and marked by that event, and I am committed that we are going to do many more things, and that with the help of the Lord, and for his glory, we are going to have the best ministry for adolescents in many areas, in the name of Jesus, we are committed and we are going to pray for that, because certainly our young people need support and mothers who cover them with their wings, and who fight for them.
The last thing I say is this brothers, Rispa came to my mind this morning, I was looking for blessed Rispa for about half an hour and I finally found her Rispa, please don't name a daughter Rispa, just in case, but the fact is that I searched in google and finally, not knowing what to do, I put there dead mother takes care of the body of their dead sons, or mother takes care of the body of their dead sons and Rispa finally appeared in google, because I had the story there in my mind more or less, of this woman, I'm not going to read the passage but later look for it in second Samuel chapter 21, but Rispa was a mother, that's why I made the association with this African-American woman in Spanish Harlem.
Rispah was a woman who, due to a tragic moment in the history of Israel, David had to give up, she was Saul's concubine, and had two children, and there was a great famine in Israel because of a serious sin that Saul committed against the Gabaunites , a nation, a people who had affiliated with Israel, Saul violated a covenant promise made to the Gabaunites, not to destroy them, and he tried and killed many of them, and God seems to have been annoyed by the break of the covenant, there was famine in Israel, and David found out through revelation, that it was due to what had happened with the Gabaunites, so there is a lot of cloth to cut there, we are going to leave that for another day.
The fact is that Saul, sorry, David, goes to the Gabaunites and tells them well, what we have to do, to satisfy you, so that this famine in the country stops. And the Gabaunites say well, the only thing we want as if they don't want anything, seven sons of Saul, to be hanged and executed, and with that we are satisfied, seven son of Saul, and with that we are satisfied, and David for At the end of this great slaughter in Israel, he took five sons of Michal, who was one of Saul's wives, and two sons of Saul's concubine, of this woman named Rispah, and they hanged all seven of them, and left them like that. outdoors, to be consumed by the elements.
Rispa loved her children so much, and look at this about what a mother's love is, that's why I thought of her this morning, Rispa sat down, spread a cloth, on the rock, and sat in front of her children. dead children, for days and days so that the birds of prey would not come and eat their bodies, and every time the birds of prey came she would chase them away so that her children would not suffer the final indignity of being eaten by the birds of prey . And day after day, after day, many days passed, Rispa, I imagine this mother, the pain of that mother, seeing the body of her children decomposing, but she, faithful to their memory, a lioness, protecting the body of their children. That is the love of a mother, for me there is nothing that exemplifies it more, she could not do anything for those dead boys, but she could at least defend the dignity of their bodies.
This woman, twenty-four hours a day, sitting out in the open, protecting those bodies of her children, until David listened, that scandalized the region, and they went to David and told him look what this woman is doing, and David He was so moved that he ordered the bodies of these boys to be removed from the elements and given an honorable burial, the love of a mother. And I think that many mothers, in Rocksber and Torchester, Villa Victoria, Spanish Harlem, Harlem, Chicago, different cities in the Southwestern United States, are like Rispa, the birds of prey want to eat their children, the devil is merciless against the childhood, adolescence, and there are the mothers with their cloths scaring the birds of prey so that they do not eat their children, that is a mother.
And I encourage you brothers, let's never stop doing what Rispa did, when the devil wants to come and take control of the lives of our children, the church of Christ has to become like a lioness and tell him, you don't pass through here, amen?. We are going to do everything necessary to prevent the devil from mastering the souls of our children, the church of Christ always has the last word, the devil occupies the place that we allow him to occupy, when the church of Christ says no , is no, because we have the authority of God with us.
So let's fight in the name of Jesus, let's all take hold of that love of a mother, fierce love, love of a lioness, and let's not stop fighting for our children, we take our hats off to those mothers, many of them they are not here, young women, single mothers, wherever they are, we bless them in the name of the Lord, they are in Brazil, they are in Colombia, in Mexico, likewise fighting for their children, fighting for the souls of their children, who the drug does not eat them, that the devil does not get into their hearts, that culture does not poison their souls, and we are going to ask the Lord to give us that heart of lions, of lionesses in this case, to fight for ours , and God is powerful.
We are going to stand up once more, we are going to bless those teenagers wherever they are, we are going to bless those mothers who are battling for their children, and we declare in the name of Jesus grace of the Lord, grace upon grace, in the name of of Jesus, Father, in the streets, in the neighborhoods, in the favelas, Lord, in Latin America, in the ghettos of the United States, Lord, and in many other countries, we bless those women, Lord, who are fighting tooth and nail for their children, and we declare victory, we tie up the works of the devil and declare defeat, in the name of Jesus, and we declare that the church of Christ rises up with power to do its task. Thank my Lord. We adore you, we bless you Lord, hallelujah, to you glory and honor forever and ever. Amen, amen, give the Lord a big round of applause, hallelujah, glory to God.
