Missional Motherhood Quotes

“Mothering or nurturing is not just a calling for women who have biological or adopted children. Mothering is a calling for all women. Every Christian woman is called to the spiritual motherhood of making disciples of all nations.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Home points to a peace that is beyond color schemes and adornments. It points to the fact that the Lord is our refuge. We find the shalom we seek in him. Your house is not your haven; Christ is.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“So let’s be word-dependent moms. Let’s consume God’s word to the hilt and shake the gates of hell with faith. Satan cannot make us trust our stuff (or wish we had stuff to trust). The gnawing pain of wanting stuff cannot destroy us, because Christ crushed the idol of consumerism on his cross. We will suffer no lack when we trust him. Our children will suffer no lack when they trust him. Let’s trust him to be our daily bread. Let’s trust him to be our children and our disciples’ daily bread. When we trust the Bread of Life in this way, we can be prepared for him to take us out into the world so we can start passing out loaves to others. Christ’s mission to glorify himself is our mission, and he delights in freeing moms from idolatrous consumerism so we can show the world that he is enough. God”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Redemptive history teaches us that distinctly Christian nurturing is by grace through faith. This is no mere lifestyle; this is resurrection life. We mother others in a way that is consistent with the fact that Easter really happened. So our missional motherhood is not all about what we do or don’t put into our bodies or homes, but by living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and bearing spiritual fruit that testifies to the reality of the gospel.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“The motherhood to which every Christian woman is called is making disciples of all nations. We all must labor, prayerfully expectant that God will mercifully grant people new birth in Christ. Because Jesus is worthy to receive worship from the image bearers he has created, every human being is worthy of our labor and care in this endeavor of discipleship. In this sense there is no Christian woman who is child-free. We pass on the gospel to the next generation of worshipers, who will pass on the gospel to the next generation, and so on. The aim of our motherhood is to declare the good news to the next generation, “to a people yet unborn” (Ps. 22:31). We pass on the gospel because we know it is the only thing that will give our children the strength and motive to give their own lives in making disciples.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Prayer is the privilege of missional motherhood. Pray for the global church, the church in your country, and the church in your city. Pray for yourself and your family. Pray regularly with other women and don’t cut yourself off from God’s blessing through corporate prayer. We pray because that’s who God made us to be—priests unto him.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“our home is not our refuge; God is our refuge. We nurture life in the face of death and leverage our homes for gospel work. For those whose hope is in the coming kingdom, our homes are less like retreats and more like a network of foxholes for planning and hosting kingdom advances into this present darkness. Our homes are centers of hospitality to show strangers and neighbors the light of Christ. And they are equipping centers for traveling ambassadors to help them on their way to doing the King’s business.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“So never resist, never postpone it, never push it aside because you are busy. Give yourself to it, yield to it; and you will find not only that you have not been wasting time with respect to the matter with which you are dealing but that actually it has helped you greatly in that respect. . . . Such a call to prayer must never be regarded as a distraction; always respond to it immediately, and thank God if it happens to you frequently.28”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“prayerlessness, is an expression of our lack of faith that God is able or willing. We’ve seen how the whole of Scripture testifies to the absolute sovereignty of God, and we hold that truth together with other truths such as, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). So we believe God, and we pray.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“But we don’t roll over and quit when we recognize our weakness. Instead, we see tremendous opportunity for God to demonstrate his strength through weak vessels like us. And this drives us to prayer.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Look for a moment at the unique swirls he imprinted on your thumb. Hold your breath for a second and be conscious of the fact that he made and gives the oxygen that fills your lungs. Why did he create you?”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“we don’t ask him to bless our will; we seek his will. We don’t follow our heart, we follow his heart.26 It flies in the face of our privacy-adoring autonomy. It means we do not make up our own minds to formulate the truth; we submit to his truth.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“need my shortsighted vision of motherhood corrected with an eternal perspective. Otherwise I will not keep my gaze fixed on the horizon of eternity. I will not believe (and live like I believe) that sin—my sin and my children’s sin and my neighbors’ sin—is our biggest problem. I will not hold out the gospel of Jesus Christ to myself or anyone else.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Distinctly Christian mothering is done from a posture of weakness and dependence. We nurture life in the face of death by grace through faith in Jesus. The cross is everything to us—not a bonus prize or safety net. He has given us a cross-shaped, everyday ministry of mothering others, and he has redeemed us out of the futile ways that we used to mother.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“if your neediness is simply because you are a human being (i.e., not omniscient, not omnipresent, not omnipotent, not God), then you have reason to rejoice. You see the love of the second person of the Trinity to inhabit the same earthly frame as the one you have. You see the intentionality of the transcendent God who made you, a creature, to know him. You see how your neediness points you to Christ’s sufficiency. You see the wisdom in God’s design to make you depend on him for everything you need. You say the same thing you teach your children to say when they are given a gift. You say to God in light of your weakness and frailty, “Thank you!” And you glory in his grace.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Jesus Christ has no need to shed his blood for a mother’s need to depend on other women for fellowship. The eternal Son of God did not go to the cross and suffer crucifixion and the wrath of God to atone for a mom’s inability to accomplish everything she wants to do in a day. The Lamb of God was not esteemed stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted for the sake of women who simply don’t know everything there is to know about nutrition, or the Bible, or childhood development, or whatever. Before we call upon the great doctrine of justification by faith alone to redeem us out of our so-called calamity, or before we herald the massive truth that we are counted righteous in Christ by faith in him, we ought to consider the nature of our need.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Word-filled moms who live out their various roles and callings in their homes, churches, and communities know and cherish this fact with their whole, happy hearts: Christ is all, and he is central.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Through the cross, the grace and peace of God flow to us. When our modern ears hear the word peace, we think of the absence of conflict, but the Hebrew word shalom speaks to the presence of wholeness. All the nurturing work we do points to peace, whether it is the peace of a fever cooled down by a cold rag, a meal to calm a rumbling stomach, or a hug to calm an emotional storm.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Mothering women who feast on God’s word show the world that they’ve learned the secret of contentment.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“The remnant Israelites learned that their home was not their refuge. In our modern time, we need to know this too. We need to know that our home is not a projection of our image but a space in which we work to display the image of Christ.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Train the consumer to consume temporary fillers. Tell her to collect the tokens that assure her that she has what she needs. Tell her to seek joy in learning that home remedy, buying that decoration, rearranging that schedule, enrolling her kids in that program, or building herself up into the image that she wants to embody. All of those things are easy enough to do if you have enough money, discipline, time, energy, or earthly resources. But there’s a catch: collecting the tokens and living by the lie that your image will give you the peace you crave will only satisfy you for a moment. And then you need another fix. Idols need dusting and maintaining. They always leave you wanting something more, something better, something new, or something your neighbor has. Consuming, we are consumed. When the gods of this world leverage our needs and redirect our hope away from God himself, they indirectly hinder our obedience to the Great Commission. How many missionaries have been held back by consumerism’s short leash? (We can’t afford to go.) How many of our giving budgets have been strangled by consumerism’s shortsighted vision? (We can’t afford to give.) How many of our families have been capped by consumeristic spending forecasts? (We can’t afford to grow.) We need the promises of Jesus to drown out the siren song of consumerism. He’s given missional moms his anchoring promise to hold us fast: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Will we trust him more than we trust our stuff?”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Consumerism has less to do with how much stuff you have; it has to do with how much affection your heart has for stuff. The basic premise is this: you can own stuff, but does your stuff own you?”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“We are not threatened by the prospect of seeing our sin; we are thrilled by the gospel of grace that says we can repent of our sin because Christ has broken its power over us. We examine our hearts by grace through faith, we identify our sins by grace through faith, we confess our sins to one another by grace through faith, we repent of our sins by grace through faith, and we encourage one another to run the race with endurance by grace through faith.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“God has designed you to serve him in an intentional and necessary way. Of course, he doesn’t need you, but he has designed us to need each other. God is self-sufficient, and he created human beings with a need to know him. He placed them in a world full of things that show his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature (Rom. 1:20).”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“ever since the cosmic collapse in the garden of Eden, when our first parents sinned, we women have been nurturing life in the face of death.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Christ did not create motherhood, then the mission of motherhood devolves into a foolhardy attempt to delay our inevitable death.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“Listen! All who would be taken out of Adam and placed in the last Adam will be living, breathing, walking new creations in him (2 Cor. 5:17). God’s image bearers, newly created in the image of God’s beloved Son, are now walking, talking, serving, living, and dying in Christ’s name. They are the church, that pan-ethnic nation of priests who make living sacrifices acceptable to God in the outer court of the world. Their witness is a light to the nations: you don’t need to come to a temple with a lamb to sacrifice; you need to become part of the sacrificed Lamb’s temple.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“The remnant would have to learn that their home was not their refuge. The Lord was their refuge. We, too, as “aliens and strangers” in a world that is passing away, need to learn that our home is not our refuge; God is our refuge. We nurture life in the face of death and leverage our homes for gospel work. For those whose hope is in the coming kingdom, our homes are less like retreats and more like a network of foxholes for planning and hosting kingdom advances into this present darkness. Our homes are centers of hospitality to show strangers and neighbors the light of Christ. And they are equipping centers for traveling ambassadors to help them on their way to doing the King’s business.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“understand this, dear mothering readers: delight in the Lord is not something that we can give to our children or disciples. We can only help teach it, suggest it, exemplify it, and affirm it. Salvation belongs to the Lord.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God

“As a mom, I often just want sheer conformity from my kids. When I tell them to take responsibility for their chores, I want the chores done. But where does the obedience come from that God is talking about here? God required obedience from the heart. No physical sign (like the sign of circumcision) was ultimately enough. We know what this pattern is pointing us to—the new creation. We need new hearts. For God’s people to truly love and obey him, they needed more than rules. They needed new hearts—hearts with his good law written right on them. God had to transform his people from the inside out.”
― Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God