You cannot offer living water to the mothers in your group if your own spiritual well is not filled up. Taking Motherhood to Hearts can equip you with practical skills to start, lead, and tend a group. However, those skills will not make you a spiritual life-giver. Only the Spirit of God, filling your own spirit, will enable you to encourage and influence other mothers in the Lord. As a mentor mom, you are a faith-forming influence on the moms who come to your Mom Heart group. Your life and faith will influence theirs. That kind of personal ministry needs to come from the overflow of a heart that is filled up with the Spirit of Christ.
The apostle John declared that Jesus is the Word, the logos, the full expression of all that God is. "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14, italics added). John goes on to say, "the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ" (1:17). We're no longer bound to the burdensome regulations of the Law of Moses to know God. Instead, we are now freed by grace and truth in Jesus to know God in our spirits. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2).All that Jesus was "full" of, we can now be filled with- the grace that brings us close to the merciful and loving God, and the truth that keeps us secure in our knowledge of Him. Now that we are, by faith, "in Christ" (see Ephesians 1:3-14), we can live from the inside out-His grace and truth in our spirits working its way out in our lives. But that "inside-out" kind of life will happen only if we stay spiritually nourished by feeding our hearts and minds with His spiritual food- God's grace is food for the heart (or spirit), and God's truth is food for the mind. The more we stay filled up with God's life, the more life we'll have to give to others.Whether you believe you are a mentor or not, you will have a mentoring influence on the women in your Mom Heart group. You don't have to call yourself a "mentor mom," but you will be that to some degree in your group, not because of what the group leadership position brings to you, but because of what you bring to the position- a heart filled and overflowing with the grace and truth of God. How you relate to your moms, and what you share with them from your mom heart, will have a faith-forming influence on their lives. Whether you think you're a mentor or not, that is what a mentor does.Are you prioritizing your own spiritual life? When can you make time for God and His grace and truth? {Excerpt from Taking Motherhood to Hearts.}