The Squeeze of the Birthing

I am very aware of this place currently in my own life, and the Lord has been showing me His sovereign purpose over it all, and to encourage those who are finding themselves here also and those who will come to find themselves in the squeeze of birthing.

We are moving through the narrow gate of Matt 7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad and easy to travel is the path that leads the way to destruction and eternal loss, and there are many who enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow and difficult to travel is the path that leads the way to [everlasting] life, and there are few who find it." (Amp). To move through the narrow gate requires so much of the excess to be taken off us leaving only the essential. I see it by the Spirit as a shedding, and the Lord says it will leave you feeling almost naked and exposed. It is such a tight place, a tight passing through, it feels compressed on all sides with little wiggle room to move, yet we are moving through. While there may be circumstances we are facing simultaneously, the Lord revealed His sovereignty overarching all of it, not as the author of all things but rather His hand working all things together for good in the midst of. The Lord is saying to us the squeeze in because we are in a spiritual birth canal. The pressures acting as spiritual contractions that keep you moving through. Where we may feel stuck, we have come to far to turn back and yet not passed through. Any mother understands the endurance, the strength and focus required during labouring. The Lord said this birthing is less about what we are birthing this time and more about who we are coming out as in this birthing process that will have us looking different from how we have ever been previously. Rather than a need to make ourselves small to pass through, the Lord desires us to become thin, a removal of anything that the Lord won't allow to pass through with us. In a moment of my own of feeling the impact of a particular pressuring circumstance, rather than feeling led to praying for a miracle, I instead experienced such a deep sense of the sovereignty of God in and over me and a surrender to it as I never have before. There was no need to pray into a miracle because I knew He had it all in hand, and that if praying for that miracle would not be His immediate will as the process was of more importance in the immediate. Instead my cry and prayer that came forth was "Lord make me as a pancake". It was such a funny things to pray, but it was the thinnest thing I could think out, that I wanted the Lord to make me as thin as a pancake that I may pass through. At least a pancake is sweet and tasty! Can our cries and prayers be that right now, in the squeeze of birthing, that we would allow the Lord to flatten us and make us as thin as a pancake that we may pass through, yet retain our sweetness of spirit that we leave a sweet taste in the mouth of God and others that we may not be spat out.

In a similar line, the Lord is asking us "who will give another a drink?". There has been a common statement after conversations with friends over the past few months, that it's been "so refreshing" or of the like in speaking with me. I realised that my personal time with the Lord meant that I had living water that could be poured out, that naturally flowed into others that it refreshed them. It was from reflection on this the Lord spoke. A refreshing drink quenches our spiritual thirst, often that we didn't have the awareness of, it revives those dry places, cleanses out the spiritual 'dust' thats accumulated and restores our being to life and strength and vision. Matt 9:41 "For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, I assure you and most solemnly say to you, he will not lose his reward." Personally I was just so humbled by those refreshing statements, that was my reward, the knowing that the refreshing can only flow from a place where there has been intimacy. There have been too many relational conversations that have carried the weight of the world rather than the weight of glory and we can easily discern that heavy weight, we feel like life and energy is leaking out of us. We need to be those who are not a drain pulling the plug on others because we have partnered with picking up weights. In fact the Lord is saying right now, some of you are trying to be world heavy weights picking up weights of the world that I have not asked or trained you for, put them down and clothe yourself in My heavy glory of My presence. Where you lack drink for others is because you have not kept yourself familiar with My Presence and My glory. Come back into this place as your priority, that none may go thirsty.

The Lord also spoke a few weeks ago that going forwards over months and years He wanted us to understand how important hospitality will become. To make ourselves ready in heart and ability to be hospitable on all occasions. That genuine and joyful hospitality will create a place of deep ministry and healing for many. That this was not a selective invitation but the Lord requesting of all of us, not just those gifted in hospitality. Home hospitality in coming days will be necessary and essential in the Kingdom of God. New families in God will be formed from this place of hospitality, a spirit of adoption in the body, old relational barriers and excess that have been walls to reconciliation between man and Jesus are going to fall. There is going to be a shift from a 'ministry' thinking and operating where it's packaged and segmented in our lives, to becoming lives where there are no lines our boundaries where you can't tell where personal life and ministry life ends and begins because our lives will become living ministry no longer compartmentalised.