Pregnancy and labor have not only been used of God to teach me much, but each child has mimicked my spiritual state.
When I went into labor with child number three, I was expecting a marathon as in previous births. My first took six hours of pushing to come forth. At that time I was overtaken by the hebrew roots deception and working for righteousness under the guise of obedience. I “kept” the feasts, the laws and sabbath on the “right” day. I was pleased in my righteousness and yet couldn’t deny that the genuine fruits of the Spirit of God were not there. My inner man was not conformed by my outward obedience.
After my son was born, the Lord opened my eyes to the deception I was in and began to teach me about the true gospel. The death, burial and resurrection of Christ and of all who are His. I began to learn about the cross as my second son was born. He was three weeks late. I pushed 2.5 hours before He was born. I worked less but still had put in quite a bit of work. Though I had seen the cross and death to self, that the life of Christ might dwell in me, I had not understood how it was to be. I was still trying to produce fruit on my own. Trying to be patience. Trying to love well. I was still failing no matter how hard I tried to produce fruit of the new man.
About 3 years later, Abigail was born. I had grown a lot in my understanding of the cross of Christ. Was brought to many ends of myself where I admitted I could do nothing good and was brought to utter dependence upon God to do what I came to realize, only He could do. No matter how much I tried to be what Gave me the desire to be, I could not do it. But when I quit trying and began relying, it all started to flow. Fruits began to be produced. My life became about His righteousness and not my own.
So when labor began with my daughter, I was determined to sit at the table of the Lord, where He had been teaching me to go for all my needs. A place not seen with the eye but a place of faith where He supplies all I lack. I was determined to go to Him for rest in my labor. For relief from the pain. For breath in the trials of contractions. For mercy during the pushing stage. So I did. With each contraction I stood at my counter and looked Him in the face. No words. Just a calm faith that drew from Him what I needed. I tell you, I never had a more tranquil night than the night I was in labor with my daughter. He held my hand and supplied my every need as I abided in Him who is my source of every good thing.
Then came delivery. I called my midwife on over and woke up my husband when suddenly my body involuntarily pushed the grandest push ever. I couldn’t have stopped it if I wanted to. It was intense but there was no effort on my part. The next time my body pushed, out came this new little person. Nothing like my other births. No pain, no striving. Just abiding, produced the 7.7lb fruit of my womb. I simply rested through the contractions and out she came apart from my works.
The Lord showed me so well that though the new man comes forth with some travail (all my years of being a Christian, striving to birth the new man or to grow him up… striving to produce the fruit of righteousness) he truly comes forth without effort on my part as I rest in Him. My work is to abide. To rest in His finished work. To have a perpetual Sabbath rest where He rested from all His works so that I could too. It is in the rest of faith that fruit of the Spirit is produced. Just like the branch rests on the vine.. apart from the vine it cannot bear fruit, but resting on the vine produces much fruit!
It takes work in a whole different manner to rest in Him. To abide. To be still and know He is God. But it’s because we are used to doing things ourselves. Having things right away. Knowing the whole plan before we step out. Yet living in the Spirit and walking by faith means that we don’t have the whole plan and that the timing isn’t as quick as we might like and that we have to let God do what only He can. That’s a hard thing to do. It takes utmost faith to believe God to handle your trials. It can seem crazy to wait on Him and not take action in your wisdom, but alas, this is the walk of faith. We move only if He says to. We don’t make sense of it first. Don’t put a time table on it. We don’t murmur. We don’t give God our input on how He should do His work. We just abide and trust.
Our New man came forth apart from works. And He cannot now be made perfect by works (Galatians 3)! He will be perfected in the same way He was birthed. Grace through faith in Jesus and what He did and does. We played no part in receiving salvation but believing by faith. Likewise, we will play no part in sanctification expect by the same part we played to receive salvation… that being FAITH. We are forgiven of sins by faith. We are born again by faith. And we will be made into His image, sanctified, cleansed, made spotless and without wrinkle by faith.
May God teach us how our good works are as He says, filthy rags. That if our works could produce the righteousness of God then Jesus could have remained in heaven from creation until now. May He teach us how to receive the righteousness of Christ by faith. May we find the Way, the Truth and the Life by faith alone. Knowing that it will involve internal and even external suffering but that we learn obedience by that which we suffer. (Hebrews 5:8) May we fellowship with Christ in His sufferings that we may fellowship with Him in His blessings. His table is plentiful and when we meet Him there, we will find that we lack nothing because He is to be our everything.
“I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” Philippians 3: 8-11
Into the Garden of the Lord 