Birthing: Patience and Fulfillment
In the Bible, we encounter individuals who receive life-changing visions from God only to be followed by years of waiting before the holy vision becomes a tangible reality. Abraham was 75 when God told him that he would be a “great nation” and all the nations of the world would be “blessed through him” (Gen 12:4). At 100, the promise was finally fulfilled through the birth of Isaac. Sometimes the wait can be years, as in the lives of Abraham, Moses, and David; in others, a matter of days. God is the source of new life. In our spiritual journey of knowing, trusting, and loving God, birth is experienced through the reception of faith, hope, and vision. During our periods of waiting, we should avoid “pushing the process along” through self-effort, networking, or promotion. Instead, we must learn to be led by the Holy Spirit and wait patiently for God’s timing, power, and provision for the birthing vision to be fulfilled.
In the New Testament, 33 years transpire from the birth of Christ until His passion, death, and resurrection fulfilling the messianic prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and others, sometimes centuries after their original utterances. From this point on, “waiting” in the New Testament context appears to move from years to days and months. For our purposes, I will take a closer look at the disciples who waited for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit after the Ascension of Christ:
And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:4-8)
For the first disciples, the waiting period was 10 days between the Ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. These 10 days may not seem like much compared to the years of “waiting” in Old Testament accounts, but for these disciples who witnessed the brutal death of Jesus, we can only imagine the doubt, fears, and intense hours of prayer until the “promise of the Father” finally did come upon them in flames, giving them the ability to preach the Gospel in foreign languages to those gathered in Jerusalem from many nations for the Feast of Weeks.
This intense waiting period culminated in the explosive birth of the Church. For the Disciples, it was a matter of days; for the Hebrew prophets, centuries. In Acts 2, the Apostle Peter preaches and 3,000 come to faith and are baptized in one day. Imagine the joy Peter and the other disciples experienced when they were privileged to witness and participate in the birth of Christ’s Church.
This incredible birthing of the Church continues to multiply each day in every nation. In February of 2013, I had the privilege of training Anglican pastors in South Sudan, a new political nation in Africa. Now in 2014, South Sudan has been experiencing fighting among political factions, yet the Church is strong and growing. In parts of the US, Europe, and other nations, church attendance may be in decline, but this is the shift in the distribution of the world’s Christian population from the “Global North” to the “Global South” as noted in Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life study released in December, 2011. However, even in these places known as “post-Christian,” the Holy Spirit continues to birth vibrant, new Christian communities through the renewal efforts of traditional denominations as well as new church-planting movements.
The Pew study, “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population” shows the number of Christians worldwide has increased from 600 million in 1910 to more than 2 billion in 2010.1 In Witness Essentials, author Dan Meyer claims that followers of Jesus are increasing by more than 80 thousand per day and that 510 new churches form every day. He writes, “The irony is that, except for the Middle East, Europe, and America, Christianity is expanding everywhere else today.” 2
This year, my family and I experienced a birthing process both spiritually and physically. First, in March, we returned to Tokyo as international mission workers after an 8 year absence. In 2006, God called us to leave for Los Angeles, where I worked as the National Coordinator of Multicultural Alpha for Alpha USA. Through this work, I witnessed and helped encourage the growth of immigrant congregations throughout the United States with the evangelism tool of The Alpha Course in many language translations including Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic.
Through our ministry we also witnessed and participated in the growth of the Christian community throughout the media industry. Then, after two years in Montreat, North Carolina, forming a non-profit ministry, Global Leadership Dynamics, we were invited to return to Japan! After leaving Tokyo with two little girls in 2006, we returned in 2014 with three little girls and a little boy. Three months after landing at Narita airport, our fourth daughter Abigail Grace was born. The past year of transition has been an amazing process of trusting God through the birthing process on several levels! Along the way, prayer and worship have sustained us through the stressful adventure of mission service with a large family plus having a child in a foreign culture. Fortunately the food is simply delicious in Japan with natural weight-loss included!
Waiting can become more difficult the closer you near the birth promise. These are the moments when we need to trust God through prayer and worship, not increased activity! The problem for the modern wired disciple, however, is that we have a huge temptation to engineer things or analyze the process via the internet and the connectivity of social media. These activities can make us feel secure and confident at first but they actually fall short in bringing us the real confidence and trust that only come from prayer. When in the birthing process of a holy vision, remember that the timing, power and provision all belong to God. Prayer is the real work in the waiting process. Technology tries to convince us otherwise each day, but as modern disciples we do have much in common with the early disciples gathered before the Holy Spirit’s outpouring. The work of prayer allows us to partner with God in the birthing process. Simultaneously, it prepares our hearts to receive with great joy the fulfillment of the vision.
Notes
1. http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-exec/ Accessed on September 4, 2014.
2. Daniel Meyer, Witness Essentials (InterVarsity Press, 2012), pp. 32-33.
