Birthing Naturally Books

Materials to nurture your spiritual life through childbearing.

Christian Childbirth Handbook

How Faith Affects Labor

A word like faith has several definitions. In some instances, it is used to mean a religion or the sum of beliefs. Other times it is used to mean a trust or assurance in God (or something else). Both of these uses are accurate, and both need to be addressed when discussing faith and labor.

Many people talk about Christianity as their faith, and rightly so. The backbone of Christianity is a trust in the Bible as accurate, God as real and Jesus as deity. With the collective "faith"ť come some understandings of God you may have that can help in labor.

God created the female body to bear children before the fall. This is why in Genesis 3 God says the work will be increased during childbearing, not that a woman will suddenly have to give birth. His design for giving birth works.
Because God is good, he meets the needs of his people. This includes their needs during childbearing.
God is a good creator intending to give hope and a future, not to bring you harm.
A child is a blessing. Never is a baby referred to as a punishment or any thing other than a blessing in the Bible.

Possessing a faith that includes these points can help to reduce the amount of fear you have about giving birth. This will have a significant affect on your labor. Dr. Grantley Dick-Read concluded years ago that the amount of fear and anxiety a woman has going into labor correlates to the amount of pain she will feel during labor. Women with more fear and tension experience more pain while giving birth. There are physiological reasons for this. The chemicals your body produces in response to fear and stress work to decrease the blood flow to the uterus and begin the process of closing the cervix. This can result in a very painful, long, unproductive labor.

One factor that increases fear are birth "horror" stories. Christians hear the same horror stories that scare many women, but there is a trust in God and the divine creation of our bodies that should make us stop and think, "God didn't created a flawed system." Christians also dear with the "Eve Curse" which some Christians take to mean extensive and unbearable pain for all women giving birth. Christians who believe this expect labor to be painful, entering the childbirth experience with more fear and tension creating the very unbearable experience they expected.

This overall faith in God as good and wise, loving and caring, can help you go into labor calmer, decreasing the effects of fear on your labor. But not all fear goes away because you have faith in God. There are normal, healthy concerns that motivate you to make good decisions for your health and your baby. It is natural to be nervous about the unknown or even apprehensive about a big job you have to do. This type of fear should drive you to take action, not become a paralyzing fear.

How you react to concerns is important. If you dwell on fear, trying to avoid labor because of it, you are letting fear control you instead of God. This is a problem. If you try to ignore the fear using a false pride, you are setting yourself up for a problem. The only way to overcome the fears is to acknowledge them to God, and choose to continue to follow his word. This is the second type of faith.

Individual faith, your personal trust in God that allows you to follow his plan is the type of faith that leads ordinary people to do extraordinary things. In Hebrews chapter 11, we see a list of men and women who stepped outside the comfortable and "safe" because they knew God had called them to do something. In these cases faith is not about the absence of fear or concern. Jonathan did not know if he would be successful when he headed off to face the Philistines; Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego did not know they would come out of the furnace alive, Ester didn't know the king would not have her killed. In all these cases, faith in God lead people to do what they feared, what could have caused them pain or death, because it was more important for them to obey God than for them to remain comfortable.

Gideon and his men were ready to fight because God sent them. Yet God seemly removed their chances to win by reducing their numbers. In reality, it was never about how many men Gideon had or what types of weapons he could fight with. The battle was always the Lords, and he could have won it without any army. Still, Gideon had his job to do. God sent him and his men to fight. They had to accept that some of them may not come back from the battle, that some of them could get hurt. It was not just God fighting, and it was not just Gideon's army fighting. It was Gideon and his men following God and using the resources given to them to accomplish the job God gave them. It was faith that moved Gideon to do what needed to be done.

God has as much control over childbirth as he does over battle. He could have your baby be born with no effort on your part as easily as he could win a war without an army. But labor will more likely require work on your part. It will be you acting in faith to follow the plan God set out for you. To do this, you must be aware of God's plan. You must also know what resources you have.

The measure of your faith is not the outcome of your labor. You can not tell how much faith you have by your possessions, your physical blessings, how easy your labor was or any other thing we can see with our eyes. Faith is not determined by the outcome--Paul still had a thorn in his side, Job lost everything he had, Stephen was stoned.

Faith is measured by what you do - not by what happens because you do it. Faith is shown by the works - by Abraham moving away from his family when God said go; by Jonathan attacking the Philistines because God said go; by Ruth leaving her home to stay with Naomi, by Esther approaching the King. The faith of each of these people would have been just as strong if their stories had ended differently. Would Esther have had less faith if the king had killed her? Would Ruth have had less faith if she hadn't found a husband? No! It was the faith that made them do what they did. God determined the outcome.

This type of faith is based on a trust in God's control and working out his plan, not a hope for a specific outcome. God's plan does not always turn out to be what you wanted. David prayed and fasted for a week because he had faith that God could keep his child alive, but in the end the child died. John was following God's plan to prepare the way for the Messiah, yet he was beheaded. Paul asked to have his thorn removed and God told him no. You can have faith in God having the power to do something, and he still may not do it.

God does say things happen because we have faith--but it does not mean it is the only reason things happen. If you consider for a moment the statement "cars go when you step on the gas pedal," you can see the statement is 100% accurate, but not complete. In addition to stepping on the gas pedal you must make sure there is gas in the car, the car must be turned on and put into the proper gear, all the parts you do not control in the engine need to be in good working order. Yet none of this negates the truth of the statement that cars go when you step on the gas pedal. The gas pedal is simply one part of a greater system that makes the car go. It is the same with our faith, it is only one part of greater unseen reasons God works the way he does.

Job's friends had very formulaic ideas of how God worked. To them God was a cause-effect that man could control. If you did X, Y would happen. But God's response to Job's friends, "You have spoken of me what is not right." You cannot use human wisdom to reduce God to simple if-then statements. Human wisdom cannot fathom the divine wisdom and understanding of God. There is no promise of an easy labor if you do this or that. There is no guarantee of a painless childbirth because you trust God. Yet there is the faith that God is good, and his plan is for good even if we cannot see it.

Laboring in faith looks like a mother and father doing the hard work that needs to be done, whether it is a two hour intense labor, a slow and dragged out labor or a surgical birth. It looks like a mother doing her best to follow God's lead and God's plan instead of her own, making decisions not out of fear but out of faith in God's plan. It looks like a family participating with God in bringing about the miracle of a new soul. There is no script for laboring in faith, you simply have to be willing to step outside your comfort zone and follow where God leads you.

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