Evidence of Life

I am the first of three children born to my parents.  My mom told me how horrified she was when a group of medical students walked by when she was giving birth and someone yelled out, "Look, she's crowning!"  and they looked in with their clipboards in hand.  I can't remember if it was me or one of my siblings, but my mom was very annoyed at one of the nurses because right after birth the nurse strongly flicked the newborn's feet with her fingers to make the baby cry.  Strong crying ensures that the lungs are clear of fluid and that life-supporting oxygen is reaching the brain.  Although crying is not desirable in a baby at 2am, it is almost a comforting sound to a mother and father to know, "He's breathing.  He's alive."  How devastating is silence at birth!

I know many people close to me who have suffered miscarriages or given birth to stillborn children.  How horribly painful and depressing to have a baby forming in the womb with all the excitement and potential of new life, and the first breath of oxygen is never drawn.  That is pain enough to break the heart, and depress the soul in sadness.  As terrible as it is to give birth to a stillborn child, there is a spiritual parallel.  James says in James 2:26, "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."  As a body without breath is lifeless, so faith without works is dead.  When we are born again of the Holy Spirit, God gives our souls dead in sins new life.  God removes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh.  A stillborn child is no more alive than a stone, but those who place their faith in Jesus Christ and are cleansed with His blood and rejoice in abundant life.

Like a baby arrives crying into the world, no one comes to Christ until they have cried out to Him!  Thomas Watson says:  "Are there pangs before the birth?  So before Christ is born in the heart, there are spiritual pangs; pangs of conscience, and deep convictions.  "The were pricked at their heart." (Acts 2:37)  I grant in the new birth all have not the same pangs of sorrow and humiliation, yet all have pangs.  If Christ be born in thy heart, thou hast been deeply afflicted for sin.  Christ is never born in the heart without pangs.  Many thank God they never had any trouble of spirit, they were always quiet; a sign Christ is not yet formed in them." (A Body of Divinity, pg. 199)  We are not called to make others cry through violence, but to make sure we have had those violent cries.  We tend to focus on the pain the mom must endure in childbirth because of the intense severity, but consider how child is squeezed and forced into the world with intense pressure.  Spiritual birth is no easier than physical birth, but is as fundamentally simple.

There is more to life than just breathing, however:  there is also eating and drinking.  When a baby is first born, one of the first things the nurse will do is put the baby to the breast of the mother.  When a person is born again by the Holy Spirit, he will crave and desire the Word of God.  Watson writes, "The word is like breast-milk, pure, sweet, nourishing; and the soul in which Christ is formed desires this breast-milk.  Bernard, in one of his soliloquies, comforts himself with this, that he surely had the new birth in him, because he found in his heart such strong breathings and thirstings after God.  After Christ is born in the heart, there is a violent motion:  there is a striving to enter in at the strait gate, and offering violence to the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 11:12)  By this we may know Christ is formed in us"  (A Body of Divinity, pg. 200).  As a midwife looks to the breathing, cries, and appetite of a baby as evidence of good health, so there are physical indicators that enable us to consider our spiritual life and health.  Do you desire the pure milk of the word?  Do you desire to please your heavenly Father, as Jesus did?  Are there works coupled with the faith you profess?  Let this be a personal examination that we might cry out to God that His work would be performed in us.

Too much church activity is like hooking up a ventilator to a stillborn child.  There are people in church fellowships throughout the world that have the appearance of a new birth, but are not truly born again.  Life-support only works when there is life to support!  If there is no life in the members, church activity is simply warming a corpse, like when Elisha laid upon the Shunamite's son and breathed into him in 2 Kings 4.  It is God who gives life.  It is only God who can bring a child into the world with violent cries, and it is only by His grace and mercy that we can be born again through faith in Christ.  Even a living child can become ill.  How has your appetite been lately?  A bad appetite in adults can be the sign of ill health.  If a person notices their dog hasn't eaten a bite of food in two days there would be cause for concern:  what of yourself and your children?  When God has given us fresh manna in His Word day by day we are fools if we do not gather of it.  And when you have gathered, may you partake of it as you have of the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ.
Do you find in your heart "strong breathings and thirstings after God?"  Faith without works is dead.  A body is full of inner workings:  respiration, pumping of blood, perspiration, digestion, brain activity, and muscles pumping, organs working according to design.  A fully-functional body and mind has been created to do, not to sit around and do nothing.  Because God has done an inner work in us, let us do outer works that please Him.  It is in our God we find satisfaction, and we have been made alive that we might live unto Him for His glory.