Mother's Influence Matters

A Mother’s Influence Cannot Be Wiped Away

The last influence a man forgets is the teaching of his mother. I was urging the early conversion of children in a meeting, and a man got up at the close and said, " I want to endorse every word". Sixteen years ago I was a missionary in another country, and my wife died and left three little children. On the Sunday after her death my eldest girl came to me and said, "Papa, shall I take the children into the bedroom and pray with them as mother used to?" The mother was dead, and little Nellie, ten years old, wanted to follow her footsteps. The father agreed and she led them off to the bedroom to pray.

When they came out he noticed that they had been weeping and asked, "what had happened?" "Well, father," said the little girl, "I prayed just as mother taught me, and then" – naming her little brother- "he prayed the prayer that mother taught him; but little Susie, she was too young, mother had not taught her a prayer so she made a prayer of her own, and I couldn’t help but weep to hear her pray." "Why," said the father, "what did she say?"

"Why, she put up her little hands, and closed her eyes, and said, "O God, you have come and taken away my dear mamma, and I have no mamma to pray for me now- won’t you please make me good just as my dear mamma was, for Jesus’ sake. Amen." And God heard that prayer. That little child before she was four years old gave evidence of being a child of God, and for sixteen years she was by her father’s side leading little children to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

I remember blaming my mother for sending me to church on Sunday. On one occasion the preacher had to send someone into the balcony to wake me up. I thought it was hard to have to work in the field all the week, and then be obliged to go to church and hear a sermon, I didn’t understand. I thought I wouldn’t go to church anymore when I got away from home; but I had got so in the habit of going that I couldn’t stay away. After one or two Sundays, back again to the house of God I kept going. There I first found Christ, and I have often said since: "Mother, I thank you for making me go to the house of God when I didn’t want to go."

--D.L. Moody