“’Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?’” says the LORD. ‘Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?’ says your God.”– Isaiah 66:9
At this time three years, I had become spiritually “pregnant” with a promise that God had whispered to me. The past few months I confessed to God that I was tired of being pregnant. Like a physically pregnant woman, I have grown tired and weary from carrying this growing “baby” in my womb. I am uncomfortable, I am in pain, I am impatient, the symptoms are brutal, and all I want is for this “baby” to come out.
I have even had moments of bitterness and envy of the people who have had their “babies”, even though I have been pregnant way longer than them. It is comparable to the frustration of waiting for your order at a restaurant and the table who sat down after you gets fed before you. Or when you’re waiting in a long line to ride a roller coaster at Six Flags and someone conveniently gets to jump ahead of the line, because they had a line pass. I’ve asked God, “Lord, did those people buy a line pass from you?! And if so, how can I get one??”
In fact, I had even done something very recently to “induce” labor. But God, being the merciful and faithful God He is, did not allow me to give birth to my promise. He stopped me from giving birth, because He knew that this baby was not ready to be born. He saw that if I had succeeded in giving birth to this baby on my own, I would end up losing this baby in the long run, because it could not survive without His blessing. (Consider if a woman were to give birth to her physical baby at 12 weeks… what would happen? She would miscarry because the baby could not survive on its own.) Soon after my failed attempt of inducing labor, God spoke a word to me that He would go before me to fulfill my promise and that I only needed to be still and silent.
My failed attempt to birth my baby on my own demonstrated that there was nothing I could do in my own strength to birth it any sooner; I had to surrender to God and trust that like the nation of Israel, He would leave none of His work unfinished. God would not have led me this far into my spiritual “pregnancy” just to abort it.
What are you pregnant with? You might be pregnant with a promise, a purpose, a calling, or a destiny. And you might be tired of pains and symptoms that come with being pregnant. You might be weary and drained from the fight you’ve been enduring to protect, nurture, and grow your baby. You might be going through spiritual attacks, tests, trials, and perhaps doubts that you’re even pregnant at all. You might be losing faith that God would manifest what He said He would do.
Whatever you are going through in your pregnancy, you must understand that this journey is necessary. Your baby has to grow and develop before God can give birth to it. And you can trust that there is a time and a season for everything under the sun (Ecclesiastes 3:1), and when that time and season comes, God alone will give spiritual birth to your baby, just like He did for the restoration of Israel. The bigger the baby, the longer the gestation period will be and the more painful your symptoms will be. The gestation period for a hamster is only 16-23 days, whereas the gestation period of an elephant is 22 months; yet, the elephant is preparing to give birth to a 230 pound baby. The bigger the baby you are birthing, the more you have to endure in your pregnancy.
I’m honestly not sure when the Lord will release me to go into spiritual “labor” to birth my promise but I do know that when His promise for me begins to manifest, it will be as unstoppable as the birth of a physical baby. And all pain leading up to the birth will be forgotten.
“A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.”– John 16:21
One Response
Good word.