Have you ever wondered why a small idea can turn into a burning desire in your heart? Why a
dream moves you to believe, and your belief in it one day results in a reality? What if conception,
pregnancy, and birth aren't just physical processes that can happen in the female body. What if
these things could actually occur spiritually, in our hearts. And, why do our dreams sometimes die
and never come to fruition? These are questions we began to explore one morning in our midwifery
class, unaware of how much revelation the Lord was about to pour out amongst us and how it would
change the way we viewed our dreams and aspirations.
“When you spend intimate time with the Lord, be careful. He doesn't believe in birth control, and
you very well could get pregnant with a dream of His heart.”
This quote by one of our guest speakers in Midwifery school may possibly offend you. I can tell
you, it shocked us! But is it not true? When we open our hearts to the Lord, when we come before
Him barren with nothing to give but our surrendered will, He joyfully shares His heart and desires
with us and may even place a seed within us that becomes a dream. When we are willing, He is
pleased to impregnate us (spiritually) with the realities of heaven. Think, the greatest dream of
God’s heart became a reality through the physical pregnancy of a teenage girl, so is it not too far
fetched to believe we can become pregnant spiritually with His desires as well?
They start small, but are undeniably there, growing, demanding our attention, and pleading to be nurtured. He entrusts us with His dreams so that we would grow them and one day give birth to them.
Now let's talk about physical pregnancy. For a child to grow in the womb, it needs nourishment, oxygen, protection, and it needs attention. God has designed women in such a way that they don't have to consciously do all these things for their baby. The body He gave women miraculously becomes
a home for this new life, providing for all its needs, doing all the work it can to grow a healthy baby. Most of the time, women aren't even aware they are pregnant for weeks. God is so committed to
birthing new life through humans that we could not even know we are pregnant and we could still grow a healthy baby. Now most of the time, we know when we are carrying a baby, or back to our spiritual analogy, a dream of God’s heart. He desires that we would co-labor with Him to bring forth this life. Once we are aware of what is inside of us we must respond. Our response or lack thereof, will determine the outcome. Like physical pregnancy, when we are pregnant spiritually it is
important to nurture the delicate life inside of us. What are we doing to keep it alive? Are we praying for it, are we feeding it and giving it spiritual food, are we protecting it? Or, perhaps
it's a dream we really didn't
intend to take on. We can chose to neglect it, to give it away, or to even abort it. But we must remember
it was us who went before the Lord willing and surrendered in the first place.
Usually spiritual pregnancy is on a whole different time frame than a physical one. Nine months
isn’t the standard in this case. When a dream is brought to maturity in the eyes of the Lord, then
will the labor begin. Now, it is very possible to become impatient and induce our dreams out of a
lack of faith and trust in the Lord’s timing. It is not by the strength of our own hands alone that
a healthy baby will be born. Only God knows when the timing is right for this dream to become a
reality and when it is time, there is no stopping it. We must continually surrender it to the Lord
and relinquish control over how it is to come forth. Sometimes, He tells us to move, to induce,
that it is overdue for us to give birth, and in that case, we may need to intervene. Until He
speaks, wait, and trust that it will happen because He spoke it.
A question was posed, what happens when dreams never come to pass? Can we miscarry? As
we talked and discussed, miscarriage was the best explanation for why sometimes we don't see
something that we knew was a real inside of us never become reality. I don't know if we can
ever fully know or comprehend why this happens and you can’t continually ask “what if?” questions,
but like physical pregnancy, miscarriage can be prevented and explained sometimes. It is indeed our
job to steward what God has given us and to nurture it to the best of our abilities, but even
amidst the best of care sometimes our dreams still die. We may never know why, and this can cause
us to mourn deeply. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of
life.” Proverbs 13:12. When we are convinced of something and pour our hearts into seeing the
fulfillment of a word, our hearts are invested and hope to one day see it come to be. When that
hope is deferred it can feel as though we heard wrong or, maybe God wasn't faithful to His word.
Though sometimes the first is true the later can never be, which makes me believe that it is
possible to miscarry a dream. Death is not something God desires to happen. Our dreams can die
because we lacked the ability to care for them, or we might mistreated them and neglected them, but
they can also pass away without an explanation as to why. The only thing left to do after a dream
has passed is to respond in worship and trust. When our response ceases to be worship, a seed of
bitterness and mistrust may take place where the seed of life once resided. It is imperative to
mourn the loss of a child, but in the same sense it is imperative that that mourning ultimately
turns into a offering of worship, for all things were created by and for God alone.
When a mother carries a baby girl within her, that baby contains all the eggs that she will ever
have for the rest of her life. In a sense that mother is potentially carrying two generations
within her. Being pregnant, whether it be physical or spiritual, effects far more than just the one
with the belly. The promises and blessings of the Lord go from generation to generation. Within us
there is potential that goes beyond our lifetime. We are born with all the potential “babies” (dreams)
inside of us, but it is up to the Lord and our yielding to Him when and what dreams will be fertilized.
We won't carry to fruition all the potential inside of us for if we did we wouldn't be able to handle
all that would entail, but we may birth a handful of dreams in our lifetime. Some people carry more
than others, but no one can birth what each individual can. No one can bring forth the thing that
God has put within you but you alone, for it contains your very DNA now as well.
It is a privilege and honor to carry a piece of God’s heart within us and help labor to see it come
forth. We all contain potential, we all contain seeds inside ourselves that the Lord is willing to
water. It is our response in faith to allow Him to do so. Our prayer should be that God would give
us the grace to cherish, to ponder upon, to wait for, and to fearlessly carry the life He has put
inside of us until it is time to give birth.