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If you love families, motherhood, and children you will find this book a joy. If you haven´t think about the relation between the gospel and motherhood, childbearing this book will explain that to you. Motherhood will involve pain from beginning to end. Without a doubt, God intended this would be a school for us as women. It is lovely to remember the gospel while I raise my kids. Gloria did a wonderful job explaining deep topics with mundane tasks. If you know a mom who loves God, the Bible and her family she is like Gloria, you better pay attention. This book has many chapters, but don´t feel overwhelmed by that, they are short and interesting. I think this book would be a great gift for any mom, maybe since the baby shower party. Even when the book talks about miscarriages, I don´t recommend giving it to someone who suffered one, just not yet, maybe later. I really enjoy her books. I pray she continues writing to bless many.
Here some quotes I enjoyed:
- Our multiplied pain in multiplying is intended to point us to a profound theological reality: we need a Deliverer.
- How we need someone to deliver us! We are helpless to save ourselves.
- We hear through the megaphone of birth pain a call to repentance and faith in Christ.
- Many mothers suffer greatly for their children, or even suffer because of them. Some mothers witness their children inflict pain—on themselves, on others, and even on the mother who bore them. It is devastating to consider the reality of our brokenness as human beings. Across the globe and throughout history, a mother’s experience is diverse and wide-ranging, from the socially acceptable lament of “my kids are making me crazy” to the unspeakable griefs that a mother would never dare to utter aloud. Along the lines of Lewis’s comment on pain rousing a deaf world to the existence of God, the megaphone of maternal pain calls us to repent and believe in the gospel—the one resolution to our sorrow.
- While the pain of pushing may last mere hours or minutes, the pain of parenting in this sin-sick world can last a lifetime.
- We all need to see how our pain as mothers points us to a man who hung on a cross for our sin and three days later walked out of his grave for our justification.
- Perhaps you rehearse a litany of your sacrificial, motherly service and love and conclude: I carried her, I raised her, I fed her and clothed her, so why this pain? What hope can I have?
- Only the grace of God through Jesus Christ can deliver us from the worst pain and fate a human being can endure—eternal separation from God and punishment in hell.
- Pain beckons us to live in humble repentance and confident faith in Christ.
- Oh, how we need eyes to see that God is the center of the universe! As dizzying as the pain we experience in raising children can be, we need to have the wherewithal to remember how it points us to God himself.
- What a relief to learn that our birth pain and motherhood is ultimately not about us, and that it serves to point us to our only hope. Be mindful of the Rock that bore you. Remember the God who gave you birth. Christ is all.
- Every theme of pain and suffering in this world gives way to a vision of our glorious Christ.
- our pain is not meritorious. Using pain as a pedestal to boost our ego is one of those fake hope solutions that doesn’t last. When pain builds our pride, then the diagnosis is that we have a heart problem, and the gospel is the cure. The Son of God bore the wrath of his Father and bled his heart out on the cross so that we might be liberated from bondage to sin.
- When we stop building our pedestals of maternal glory (and stop looking sideways at other moms), we can direct our focus somewhere else entirely. Wavering hearts find lasting hope only when they look to Christ.
- God doesn’t ordain our pain so we can pat ourselves on the back. Fertility struggles, marital stress, pregnancy and labor, adoption complications, the struggle of being a sinner who is raising sinners in a fallen world—even when our eyes are blurry with tears, we see with eyes of faith that God has purposed our suffering to produce an incomparably glorious outcome. When we undergo light and momentary affliction in our mothering, then we see it for what it is—a reminder to look to the unseen. Birth is not about us, but about God.
- Birth pain is a picture of how a Christian awaits final glory.
- The pain of life in this fallen world is no false labor. The hardest part, perhaps, is to realize that the transition phase could last many more millennia until the Lord’s return.
- The triumph of life over pain, struggle, and even death itself touches our hearts.
- We wake up day after pain-filled day in this broken world, but the day is coming when the last throes of this labor will be over and we will be totally, completely, thoroughly, finally newly created. Grief will turn to laughter, tears of sorrow to tears of joy.
- One minute we joyfully embrace our heritage of children and the next minute we are on our knees begging God to increase our faith and trust him because our motherhood is so painful. It is so important for us to know that we do not have to rely on our feelings and emotions when we consider the children we raise. Contrary to the cultural opinions of our day, which are all over the map regarding how they view children, without any disclaimers, the Bible teaches that children are a heritage from the Lord. As God’s humble creatures, we must look to him and his Word in order to understand what it means to be blessed.
- Living with this disability and chronic pain has been a tremendous trial for our family, but it is not apart from God’s gracious design to satisfy us with himself as he brings himself glory. Every day we have practical reminders that we are weak and he is strong, and that yes, Jesus loves us! This is a greater treasure than healthy, pain-free bodies.
I copy the Description here so you don´t have to look for it, just go get the book!
"The world is filled with messages for women about pregnancy. Popular books and well-meaning family and friends offer unsolicited advice about what to expect and how to stay healthy—sometimes resulting in joy and excitement but other times leading to discouragement and fear.
The Bible, too, has a lot to say about childbirth—offering real hope that nothing in this world can match. In Labor with Hope, Gloria Furman helps women see topics such as pregnancy, infertility, miscarriage, birth pain, and new life in the framework of the larger biblical narrative, infusing cosmic meaning into their personal experience by exploring how they point to eternal realities. Women will see that only Christ can provide the strength they desperately need in order to labor with hope".
Check the Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Introduction
1. In the Image of God He Created Them
2. Be Fruitful and Multiply
3. The Promised Seed of Woman
4. Why Does Childbirth Hurt So Bad?
5. Pain in Parenting
6. Writhing under God’s Judgment
7. God’s Birth Pain
8. The Gospel Is the Ultimate Cure to the Abortion Epidemic
9. Tasting Death for Others
10. The Birth Pains of Death
11. Jesus’s Death Begets Spiritual Offspring
12. Birth Pain after Childbirth to Raise Spiritual Disciples
13. Putting Pain in Its Place
14. All Creation in the Throes of Labor
15. Conceived in Sin and Saved by Grace
16. You Must Be Born Again
17. Boasting Only in the Cross
18. A Tomb Became a Womb for the New Creation
19. Our Deliverer Delivered through Birth Pains
20. Saved through Childbearing
21. Children Are a Blessing
22. Knit Together
23. Don’t Trust Birth; Trust God
24. God Who Causes to Give Forth
25. From Inevitable Sorrow to Guaranteed Joy
Scripture Index
