Birthing

I’ve been pregnant four times.  And I was always so anxious for the delivery that I’d end up at the hospital early with false labor pains.  You’d think I would have known the difference by the fourth baby!   But that’s what anticipation does—it creates space for the answer before the answer is there.   

Has God ever birthed a desire or vision in your heart?  The waiting for the fulfillment of that promise can seem to take FOR-EV-ER!  But here’s the promise:  God doesn’t begin a birthing process and abort it.  Never!!  What He puts in motion, He completes.  It WILL be birthed.  We can try to make it happen sooner, but it’s actually going to come in God’s appointed time.  

Peter found that out in John 20.  They had stayed in the upper room until Jesus breathed on them and they received the Holy Spirit. After Jesus left, and because nothing else was happening, Peter said, “I’m going fishing!” It had been his livelihood.   It’s what he knew to do. And the others went with him. He’d been told he’d fish for men, but it wasn’t happening—yet.  Jesus met them at their fishing spot and it became the birthing room of their ministry.  Jesus restored Peter by asking him, “Do you love me?   Feed my sheep.”   Three times.  (Just like Peter had denied Jesus three times.)  Peter was completely restored when he saw his own heart the way Jesus did—and was broken and humbled. He was then ready to fish for men.  

Jack Hayford, in his book, The Mary Miracle, says that we can all be Mary—pregnant with God’s purposes and promises.  And His purposes and promises are always birthed—and birthed in God’s perfect timing.  

And you know what?  Just like I did in physical birth, I still go to that spiritual birthing room early—in hopes today could be the day!