I started to feel like I was going into labour.  I was surprised because I did not even know I was pregnant.  A midwife led me to a bed and scanned my tummy and told me that the baby had not survived.  I did not believe her and after a few pushes, out came a smaller-than-newborn, but good-sized baby boy.  He wasn’t moving, but I knew he was not dead.  I breathed on him and he started breathing.  Precious, surprising, awe-inspiring life. I had so much certainty that that little life was going to be.  I could feel my mother instinct-faith rising up, and there was no way anyone was going to tell me otherwise.  I was fighting for that child, and although obviously premature, that baby was going to be fine, and there was no way anyone else was going to take him away from me. 

Shortly after giving birth I was handed another baby to adopt.  I looked at the baby and did not recognize it.  I could see the boy had already had the newborn vaccines as a little band-aid covered his shoulder, and he had clearly already been cared for in the nursery.  I was asked if I would accept this baby.  I said I would.  Because who else would take it?  Because I could. Because I was willing.  But I felt no connection with this baby. If someone else had shown up at that moment and offered to take the baby, I probably would not have minded.  

That was the dream I had on Thursday morning around dawn.  

And it made me reflect on the importance of the spiritual birthing process.  

How often do I want a breakthrough without the pain? How often do I want the product without the process?

But it is the pain of the process, the fighting, the endurance that grows our faith, gives us perspective and makes us take responsibility for the breakthrough. 

The adopted baby I was offered, I knew I could love.  Logically, practically I could do it.  But I didn’t have the same feelings of ownership and responsibility for that child.  I wasn’t willing to fight for him like I was for the one I had birthed.  Even though I did not even know about him before I birthed him, and even though I was first told about him when he was supposedly already dead, I refused to let go.  I refused to accept anything but life from that body.  That baby had been given to me and I was going to take full responsibility for him.  In the dream I knew that if God had given me that child, he was going to live. 

If we don’t go through a birthing process for our breakthroughs, then maybe we are less willing to fight in prayer for them when things look bleak. 

If we have no assurance that God has given us responsibility for a gift, talent, breakthrough, change in direction, etc, then when the enemy comes against us, how willing are we to fight? How much more quickly does doubt about God’s will come? How much more quickly are we willing to let things go? If the adopted baby had started looking unhealthy, I would honestly probably had felt relief a lot more quickly, not having taken on the responsibility in my heart for that child. 

And so that lead me to look at the areas where there are growing pains, birthing pains going on at the moment in my life: an overflowing, overwhelming house; my personal struggles for joy and gratitude; struggles in our team with sickness; our bank balance struggling to provide for the extra costs a growing household requires.

What if we used those difficulties to alert us to that breakthrough is coming?

What if we took hold of those struggles by the collar and looked at them straight and began thanking God for the life that is coming?  That we began to allow those birthing cries to be lifted up to God and call out to Him for things to come into alignment.  If we begin to trust that those pains are not indigestion but birthing pains.  That the baby is not dead, despite what others may say, but that our belief, our holding fast to the promise God has given us, will be rewarded and that the more intense the pain, the nearer the breakthrough. 

So I am asking God to show me His perspective this week.  I am asking Him to tell me about the babies we are birthing, the gifts He is releasing, the transitions He is orchestrating, the shifts that are happening, the areas where the enemy is getting nervous and acting out and kicking and screaming because he knows his time is short.  If only we will hold on.  Persevere.  Pray.  Hold on fast to Him.  If only we will stand on the Rock and trust that what He promised will be.  

So where are the struggles in your life this week? Be encouraged.  Breakthrough is coming.  If you will only hold on.  And cry out to Him. 

I waited patiently for the Lord;

    he turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit,

    out of the mud and mire;

he set my feet on a rock

    and gave me a firm place to stand.

He put a new song in my mouth,

    a hymn of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear the Lord

    and put their trust in him.

- Psalm 40