Awhile back, I wrote a brief post titled, Guidance: “I figure that a lot of life’s problems could be solved simply by putting ourselves at the mercy of God, giving ourselves wholly to Him. We have to settle once and for all that there is nothing ‘off limits’ to God, and then we have to do it again each day.”

I received an email in response, which I’ve been given permission to share:

I so struggle in the area you wrote about in Guidance … the short version is that I’m so afraid that if I completely let go, something bad will happen ~ especially health-wise ~ to me, my husband or my children. I know I shouldn’t care, so to speak (to live is Christ …), but I’m just not at that point. Any thoughts about how I can get past this fear?

The emailer and I have something in common, as I’ve struggled with these same thoughts. What if God asks something of me that I’m not ready to give? We already know that oftentimes He supplies grace when it is necessary and not before then. That makes things simple, but not necessarily easy. What then, in the meantime?

Some of you might remember this exchange in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

“Is — is he a man?” asked Lucy.

“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion — the Lion, the great Lion.”

“Ooh,” said Susan, “I thought he was a man. Is he — quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver, “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

As Christians, we must trust God not only for our salvation but also for the very details of our lives. He is good–and not just in a Sunday School sort of way.

Sometime in November I will face one of my biggest fears—the fear of pain in transition. During my last labor, transition lasted an hour without a break between contractions. I do not dread the pain; it’s so much more than that. Whenever I talk about it, my voice shakes, my stomach knots up, and I tighten my fists and curl my toes. I am afraid.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 10:28, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

In the next couple months, I hope to keep an update on my progress of trusting God for the thing that I fear. Reading positive birth stories, educating myself on the fear-tension-pain cycle, and exploring all my options are some of the things that I’m doing to take responsibility.

In the end, it is my goal to be able to say that I fear God and nothing else. It is a journey and I’m not there yet. There is a lot more to say, and so I’ll keep these posts organized under the category of “Fear.”

For the last several weeks, I’ve stayed up way-too-late (past 11 p.m. is late) trolling the internet reading birth stories. Now, I’m not sure that minivan driving moms who bake cookies can actually be considered “trolling” the internet, but really, I’m not sure what else to call it. Isn’t trolling what weird people in basements do? It’s somewhat obsessive, and it’s time for me to get a life.

A hundred or so birth stories later, I’ve seen it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I didn’t even have to leave my home for the ER, a birth center, or someone’s living room floor to see it. Technology is great.

But I’m birth story-ed out. I mean, it’s the same stuff over and over: she’s not sure she’s in labor, she decides she’s in labor, she knows she’s in labor, and right when she wants to quit the whole thing altogether—a baby is born. (Or in one case I read, two babies were born!) Lather, rinse, repeat.

We still have this obsessive need to tell our stories though. The urge is stronger than my good sense to go to bed. I just want to know that one of those good stories could happen to me. It’s possible. Seeing how I’ve done it five times already, I figure it’s my turn for one of those “lovely, peaceful” births. The kind where I don’t yell that I’m dying.

I’ve decided that since it happens to other people, it could theoretically happen to me. Other people find diamonds on deserted sidewalks, inherit millions, and get picked for Wheel of Fortune. Yes, I can almost taste it.

It’s my turn, do you hear me?!

My first four births didn’t leave me terribly excited to do it again. They were typical medically-managed hospital births with all the IV potions, ice chips, and monitors that come with it. My fifth hospital birth, however, left me fearful of childbirth. This birth was medically uneventful; psychologically, it was a disaster.

My Christian faith doesn’t allow for this kind of fear. Since it is not grounded in faith, it does not please God. (Hebrews 11:6) Therefore, I understand that I have two options: overcome fear or displease God. I’m choosing the former, though this leaves me with much work to do.

As part of my commitment to overcoming fear in childbirth, I’ve been educating myself with books on the subject as much as time will allow. Though I don’t buy into the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves,” there is a certain aspect in which God works while we work. Sometimes God steps in and changes everything, and sometimes He enables us to walk confidently on the path He’s called us to take. This is what the verse means when it says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (Phil. 2:12) We work and God works.

There is one particular book, Supernatural Childbirth, I avoided reading because I didn’t buy into the concept of “painless childbirth.” I’d heard about women who had painless deliveries, but I kept my thoughts about the matter to myself. Upon a recent recommendation, however, I finally read it.

It was only a few pages into the book, and it was easy to tell where all the controversy surrounding the book came from. Author Jackie Mize makes some pretty bold claims, which I will address next. Before that, we need to understand the title, Supernatural Childbirth. We all know what “childbirth” means, her husband Terry Mize describes what is meant by “supernatural” in the book’s forward:

Something that Jackie and I want people to understand is that to us, supernatural childbirth is being able to believe God to get pregnant, carry that baby to full term, and have a healthy mommy deliver a healthy baby.

Yet, just a few pages later (p. 22), Jackie elaborates on what she really means with the concept:

When I refer to supernatural childbirth, I’m talking strictly about being able to conceive and to have babies with a pregnancy free from nausea, morning sickness, pain, moodiness, depression and without fear of any kind; then going through the entire labor without pain, and through the delivery without stitches and anesthetic. I’m talking about using the Word of God to overcome, change and make things better.

There are so many foundational doctrinal disagreements between the author and I that it is incredibly difficult to know where to begin. The author is coming from a “word of faith” perspective on Scripture. Some people refer to this as a “name it and claim it” theology, and my foundational disagreement with this hermeneutic is not merely traditional—as in, I’m a frozen chosen Presbyterian and therefore intolerant of the unknown—but substantive.

I began my childhood in the Assemblies of God, moved onto non-denominational churches, and then finally attended home churches as a teenager where everyone had secret names, prophesied, and waited for orders to move to the mountains for the end times. I’ve been “healed” by Benny Hinn, made faith promises to Robert Tilton, been prophesied over by a few of the big names, and received all my theological training as a child by these folks. I’m not a stranger.

One of the reasons I’m forever indebted to Elisabeth Elliot is because I locked myself in my room when I turned 16 and read all her books. This is how real faith took root and grew. She taught me that God is interested in me offering myself wholly to Him to use at His disposal. This is what He requires of me. The message I received from my childhood training was that God wanted to bless me with money, wealth, and happiness, and if He wasn’t (which He wasn’t), the problem was my lack of faith.

Hogwash.

Supernatural Childbirth is based on the erroneous presupposition that God exists to make us happy. There are Scriptures that we can pull out of context to support this belief, but it is not in line with the Bible’s whole counsel. Many of the great heroes of the faith, according to this logic, were terribly in want of faith: Job (who lost all his wealth and children), Stephen (who was stoned to death), and the apostle Paul (who suffered imprisonment, shipwrecks, and beatings)—just to name a few. Instead, when we understand that God exists for His glory, and that the chief end of God is to Glorify God, and God told us that working all things for our good is His good pleasure, we are able to endure these “light and momentary” trials, knowing that He has our good and His glory in mind.

If you remember the story of Joseph, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery, he is imprisoned, and eventually he becomes a ruler over Egypt. Then the Bible gives us the punch line in Genesis 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

Where was Joseph’s deliverance? Could not God have prevented this? Was Joseph’s faith to blame? No, God did not merely use the events for good, but He ordained them. John Piper notes, “The word ‘it’ is a feminine singular suffix that can only agree with the antecedent feminine singular noun, ‘evil.’… Psalm 105:17 says about Joseph’s coming to Egypt, ‘[God] sent a man before them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.’ God sent him. God did not find him there owing to evil choices, and then try to make something good come of it. Therefore this text stands as a kind of paradigm for how to understand the evil will of man within the sovereign will of God.”

Consider how the Scriptures teach us that God ordains all things:

In Deuteronomy 32:39 God says, “There is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.”

In Exodus 4:11, God says to Moses, when he was fearful about speaking, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?”

When Job’s wife urges him to curse God for his calamities, he replies, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity” (Job 2:10). And then the author of the book commends Job by saying, “In all this, Job did not sin with his lips.”

Amos 3:6 says, “If a calamity occurs in a city has not the LORD done it?”

Satan is real but never, ever out of God’s control. Mark 1:27 says of Jesus, “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.” And Luke 4:36 says, “With authority and power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out.”

Isaiah 45:7 says God is the “The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.”

Jackie Mize believes all infertility is not of God and is something to be remedied by more faith. (chapter 5) Though the Mizes do not mention stillbirths specifically, their words offer no hope to these sorrowful circumstances. Tragedy is not “supernatural childbirth” (per the definition)—as if God was absent from this hell or that the mother’s lack of faith is to blame.

While stillbirth is uncommon, many women experience a miscarriage sometime during their childbearing years. On page 43, Mize declares that she would not have a baby prematurely because “we paid our tithes.” (Mal. 3:10-11) Miscarriages, or “casting your fruit before its time”, will not happen to those who tithe, according to Mize.

Statements like the following lead one to believe that God exists to serve us, and not that we exist to serve Him: “You should have a perfect family too. Four may not be the perfect number for you, but however many you want, you can have them by using the Word of God. The Word will produce for you just as it did for us.” (pp. 55-56) As if the Word of God exists to do our bidding!

Throughout the book, the author cites her experience as proof that God works according to our faith. For example, she was told that she could never have children, but after standing on the Word of God, she did. The problem with most of the stories told here is that she never mentions any medical terminology, proofs, or whys. If she couldn’t have children, why not? Saying that God healed her from some mysterious disease is just ambiguous. Now, I believe that God can heal, but these stories, even from a non-critical point of view, lack substance.

The entire book hinges on the interpretation of Genesis 3:16, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and they desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Jackie Mize and many others believe that, “Jesus bore that sorrow, that grief, so that we don’t have to. Isn’t that good news? I don’t have to bear sorrow and grief!” (p. 26)

This road—the one that Jesus walked so you don’t have to—is the path Mize leads you down so that you can experience a painless birth. When you begin feeling pain, you need to curse the devil and get back to believing.

A quick look at many godly examples in the Scriptures show us that they bore sorrow and grief due to no lack of faith (think of Job), but to the greater purposes and good of the glory of God. There is no explanation in Supernatural Childbirth of Scriptures’ hard words: “take up your cross,” “the fellowship of His sufferings” or “in this world you will have trouble.” If you have trouble, it is because you do not believe enough.

Did Jesus break the curse? Yes. Yet, we live in the tension of the “already, not yet” in that Jesus triumphed over sin and death, but we don’t realize the fullness of that in this life. If it were so, we would not die. Death is a curse. Why not use The Power of Faith to triumph over your sin and impending death? Why just use it for childbirth?

The victory is ours in the end, but we experience the consequences of sin here in this life. We are reminded of the goodness of the glory of God whenever we have a toothache, a migraine, or a broken down car on a deserted highway in the middle of the night. Why is this a reminder? Because this place is not our Home! If we could escape sorrow and grief now, why would we long for heaven?!

So, the question must be asked, Who am I to critique this method of painless childbirth, when I obviously have no experience in the subject? Isn’t my bias toward pain influenced by my previous experience, thereby disqualifying me from being objective on the subject?

One does not need to experience a painless birth to have great faith. Faith is not measured by the intensity of contractions. Many factors influence the inherent ease at which some women give birth—size of the baby, pelvic capacity, fetal presentation, labor positioning. Many physicians and midwives note that women who are able to “let go,” “give in,” and “surrender” to the process typically have shorter, easier deliveries. In fact, head-strong women tend to have more trouble, as they don’t like to feel out of control and so resist the process.

Jackie Mize gets it right when she says this, “The pain women experience in childbirth comes mostly from fear and lack of knowledge.” (p. 32) If she began the book with this statement and spent its entirety educating women on the childbirth process, she’d have a book worth reading. Except for the vague references of the uterus being a muscle one must relax when it contracts, there is no real childbirth education. It is more of an education in substance-less faith—one that places it’s hope in what God can do for us and not in who He is.

In conclusion, there are many things a woman can do proactively to ease the pain of childbirth: acquire more education, seek the labor support of another woman, and decide on a safe, comfortable environment for starters. We should ask God to comfort us and to ease our pain in His mercy. This is good and right. Yet, the comfort we receive from our faith in God is not that He always takes away all our pain on our command, but that if we should make our beds in hell, He is there.

Several years ago I found myself in an awkward situation. This, of course, is not unusual for me and my mouth, but I will tell you about it anyway. I was talking with a group of women. (It goes downhill from here.) Because it was appropriate, I shared a tragedy I’d experienced earlier on and mentioned how it was the darkest time of my life so far. I felt as if God had forsaken me—as if He had left me alone to wallow in my circumstance. I called to Him but I didn’t hear an answer. There was no comfort to speak of.

The reaction by these women was swift and sure. My statements were akin to blasphemy; I had basically declared that Jesus wasn’t the Christ. I’d called Him a liar. One Scripture after another was quoted while I sat there in my treason. I began to protest but very soon realized that it was useless.

I won’t take the time to re-defend myself here. My immaturity prevented me from realizing that not everything needs to be said aloud—even if it is true. Back then, the times were dark and lonely, and I longed for the “peace that passes all understanding” or at least a little supernatural relief from my suffering. The psalmist asked why, Job asked why, and Jesus did too (though His circumstances were arguably incongruent to my own).

God is not afraid of our honesty. Elisabeth Elliot cautions us, “Do not be afraid to tell Him exactly how you feel (He’s already read your thoughts anyway). Don’t tell the whole world. God can take it–others can’t. Then listen for His answer. Six scriptural answers to the question WHY come from: 1 Peter 4:12-13; Romans 5:3-4; 2 Corinthians 12:9; John 14:31; Romans 8:17; Colossians 1:24. There is mystery, but it is not all mystery. Here are clear reasons.”

If you are wondering why suffering comes to those who love Him, take time to look up those verses. The subject has been on my mind a lot lately. That’s why I loved this text from Suffering and the Sovereignty of God that I came across today.

My wife has had a significant impact on my life for Christ. One thing I didn’t mention in my chapter was what took place right after our son Owen died. He was delivered by an emergency C-section and only lived for twenty minutes. Since my wife, Kellie, had to undergo general anesthesia, she never got to see him alive as I did. I was with Owen in the operating room after he died while they were finishing sewing Kellie up and then waking her up. I was trying to imagine how I would tell her that Owen had died. As she was waking up she was still quite disoriented because of the anesthesia and not quite sure where she was or what was happening. But she knew that something serious was happening so she began to tell the anesthesiologist that we must pray and then she lifted her hand into the air. She wasn’t coherent enough to know that she had just given birth to our first child and yet on a deep subconscious level she knew that she needed God.

This was a great encouragement to me as I stood by our son. I believe that God is so much at the core of who she is that even when she is drugged from anesthesia her first response is to call out to him. This display of faith was God’s grace to me, telling me that he would carry us through.

How has Jesus sustained you through the dark days?
At first it was hard to see how Jesus was sustaining us through the dark days. Yet deep down I knew that he was. My mother died when I was sixteen, two years after I had become a believer. After her death God lead me to Romans 5:3-5, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Having endured through her death I had come out on the other end with my faith intact and I again had hope that God was for me.

After Owen died my wife, who had not experienced the death of one so close, never believed that she would be able to have joy again. And while I certainly didn’t feel joy, I knew that one day I would. The suffering I had endured through my mother’s death had indeed produced hope. Even though my firstborn was dead I believed that I would again have joy. I had experienced God’s faithfulness and I knew that he would be faithful again.

The text, though, that impacted me the most was 2 Corinthians 7:6, “But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus.” During the first months after Owen’s death we felt very little comfort from God. At times I struggled with anger thinking, “God, I know you are sovereign and so you are the one who brought this about. I accept that, but the least you could do is draw near to us and give us comfort.” On the six month anniversary I was reading through all the e-mails and cards we had received from God’s people and I was reflecting on the help we had received from his people in the Middle East and in Istanbul where he was born. Then I read this verse and it dawned on me. God was and is comforting us by the coming of countless brothers and sisters in Christ. Often we don’t feel the warm presence of the Lord in our suffering, but that does not mean he has left us alone. We are a part of the body of Christ and it is through this body that he ministers to us in our darkest days.

One reason I think the Bible values age over youth is because it’s difficult to live a long life without pain, tragedy, disappointment, and hurt coming your way. Experience gives our words credence when we proclaim, “God is faithful.” II Corinthians 2:3-4 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” We see in this verse that we are God’s agents of comfort to soothe one another. He could zap us with relief, but usually, he sends others who have already walked the path of pain to walk alongside us, holding us up.

It is a good reminder for all of us—for those who are walking hard roads and for those who already have.

I like strategy games. Rook, Blokus, and Scrabble are examples. Some games are pure chance, and there is no fun in that. Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders? I play them with my children out of pure love because in real life, I hate those games. When you are battling to the death, I like to think that my winning had something to do with my technique instead of the fact that I drew the card with the Sparkle Princess near the finish line. (That’s a Candy Land reference.)

I used to think baseball was pretty simple. There’s a bunch of guys trying to hit a ball and run around some bases. But it’s so much more than that. I never cared for baseball until I understood it. There’s a game within a game, and strategy is as important as skill.

I would never have thought there’d be an occasion in baseball where a manager would allow runs to score on purpose, but there is. You have to play the rules to your advantage. You must save your best pitchers for the right games while observing the rest periods appropriately. There are even rules about the rules—which can get complicated—but that’s the fun of it.

Team COMBAT took home their third five-foot-high trophy this week. That’s three wins in a row against the best hand-picked teams around. They’re doing great. One nine-year-old on my son’s team even hit one out of the park. (Somebody tell me what’s in those hot dogs.) They’re a great team.

But my son still has this problem. They’re called The Red Raiders. I asked my son why he’s afraid of The Red Raiders. (This is beginning to sound like a Berenstain Bears story but it’s not.)

“Their pitcher picks off, Mom,” he says.

“So?”

“So, their pitcher picks off.”

“Don’t you think every nine-year-old kid is shaking in his cleats about [your team] Team COMBAT?” I ask.

And so, it doesn’t matter. They can win all day long, invoking the slaughter rule as easily as they unwrap their Hubba Bubba, but he doesn’t care. Have some confidence, kid. He’s still scared of The Red Raiders. Their pitcher picked off a kid leading off second base in one sly swoop many months ago, and he hasn’t forgotten it.

There are some things I’m anxious about too. Childbirth is one of them. I’ve faced it many times, but there’s nothing you can say to me to fix it. I’m scared of it and I’m not even facing it. I have compassion but not confidence.

I’m also tentative about moving out of a state I’ve never left. I’ve lived in Florida my entire life, and I’m worried I’ll hate to freeze. What if my blood can’t take it? What if this whole thing is a big mistake? What if nobody likes us and our house gets eaten by termites? (The former is more probable than the latter.)

While we have no right to walk around smacking our gum, likewise, we should not worry either. John Piper writes, “Anxiety shows that we are too close to the world and too far from God. So don’t be anxious—the world has nothing eternal to offer, and your loving heavenly Father knows your needs now and forever.” The way I faced my last birth was this: I clung to Jesus. When my strategy failed and I proved ill-suited to face it, I would tell Him all about it. Those were some long nights before the birth.

There will always be The Red Raiders out there. We will always be tempted to worry. It is my choice to coddle my worries or to hand them over.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. I Peter 5:6-7