BIRTH PANGS ARE PAINFUL…
Right now, we’re feeling the birth pangs in real time, both personally and globally, as things are shaking rapidly and preparing us for the return of Jesus, because everything that is shaking is getting us ready for His coming.
The Church that we once knew has died, and God is rebirthing her right now, because pregnancy has changed her. She is no longer meant to be a whitewashed tomb, striving in man-made prisons and mindsets, permeated by a seeker-sensitive culture and Saulish empires. Instead, she is being prepared to become the pure and spotless Bride she has always been called to be.
You and I have gone through immense metamorphosis and change, walking through seasons of warfare, conflict, persecution, and deep anguish as God has been leading us into transformation. He has been forming us into the kind of believers we were called and designed to be from the very beginning, even though this process is rarely talked about because it is so painful. This process kills us and births something entirely new.
I’ll never forget a friend calling me in 2024 and saying, “Nate, you’ve been in a season of mush, just like a caterpillar that creates a cocoon and stays there until it’s formed into a butterfly.” He said, “God placed a cocoon around you, and you turned to mush for a season, a season where nothing made sense and you felt like you died,” and he was right because that is what I felt at the time, and I know what many have been through these past few years.
Just as a caterpillar’s physical body disintegrates and completely changes form, you went through a season where everything disintegrated, and God began to reform you. And while it sounds glorious to think about what’s coming, when you’re in the process, you don’t think like that, you don’t understand what’s coming, and most of the time, you don’t even see any glimpse or have joy for it at all.
In those seasons, it feels like revelation changes and everything feels different. You’re not hearing from God the same way you used to, and you’re not dreaming the way you once did. Everything shifts and everything changes completely internally and externally.
It becomes painful, suffering even, for most, and it often feels like your greatest wilderness, even after you believe you’ve already walked through many wildernesses before.
It is the deepest place of pain and even torment, yet it is also the place where God forms and forges you the most.
Romans 8:22 says, “For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.”
The Greek words here are powerful. Sustenázō means to groan together, to sigh deeply with shared grief, and Sunōdínō means to suffer birth pains together, the intense travail that comes right before delivery.
Let me pause here for a moment. So many people right now are feeling this anguish, feeling grief and pain deeper than anything they’ve experienced before. Some of it makes sense because you can connect it to circumstances or situations you’re walking through, but other parts of it don’t make sense at all.
You’re waking up with this grief and going to sleep with it. It feels like a heaviness sitting on your chest all the time, and you’re crying out to God, “Take this from me. What is happening?” I want to tell you that part of this is intercession, part of this is you sensing the times we’re in, and part of this is God pulling you into a higher level.
There is a greater anointing resting on you, and when you don’t step into it fully, it can feel like pressure, anguish, or unrest. But there is also another part of this, an attack from the enemy attempting to disarm you, make you feel faulty, ineffective, and emotionally worn down at the very moment God is calling you higher.
The enemy is trying to break you mentally and emotionally, while God is actually calling you out of the cocoon and into who He designed you to be from the beginning. This is the version of you that religion tried to steal, hijack, suppress, and hold back for a very long time. But hear this clearly - this is the season God is revealing you!
The birth pangs you are feeling are markers. They are signs of God lifting you higher, leveling you up, arming you, and readying you. Church, this is your revealing!
Romans 8:19 says, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.”
We’ve often felt this turmoil as something negative, experiencing it as inner war and asking, “What’s going on?” But what’s actually been happening is that God has been getting you ready, forming and forging you in this season.
As we move into 2026, this season has felt like another level entirely because the birth pangs have only increased on the earth. You can see it in those moments where Chronos and Kairos meet, those internal shifts you feel deeply, where something changes both in you and in the atmosphere, and we feel it in the earth, and it changes the way we see things, awakening conviction where we were once asleep, just as Jesus told us this would happen in Matthew 24:8.
These birth pains can be measured through personal events and times, but they are also measured through moments that shift our trajectory, pull us out of apathy, and lead us deeper into repentance and travail. Those moments move us further into who we are called to be.
Romans 8:22 speaks of the deepest grief that we all feel together, and this year we have experienced many of those moments. Sadly, we felt it again with the Bondi shooting and again with the Charlie Kirk shooting, moments God did not orchestrate, but moments He uses to wake up the Church and remind us that time is short. Don’t play the game. Know who you are called to be.
And when I think about those moments, what stands out is the intense opposition of the enemy to the birthing. The enemy always tries to counter what God is birthing with death, chaos, and destruction. While it does cause real pain, it also reveals his hand, and it reveals that something is about to be born.
Some of the battles you’ve walked through never made the news, but they were just as painful. Loss, persecution, rejection, things that felt like they broke you. But hear this: the enemy overplayed his hand, because all it has done is reveal that the birthing is coming for you.
This corporate grief mirrors the grief of a mother in childbirth, not just pain, but the unknown that eventually gives way to birth. You see, suffering is always a sign that great joy is coming.
Body of Christ, birthing is coming. Delivery is coming. Corporately, the Church is giving birth right now. God is birthing a move, a people, and a Church that is glorious and bright. Yet, first comes a process where the Church has to GET UNCOMFORTABLE again, walk out of the white washed tomb - the wrong birthing suite, and pick up her voice again.
This will be a Church not hiding from darkness, not complicit with evil, but rising in authority, power, and dominion, leading people to Jesus and into the light they are longing for.
And I also mean this on a personal level. You are about to give birth to what God placed inside you long ago, what the enemy tried to delay, rob, and steal.
So as this week begins, remember this: the turmoil you feel, the inner battle, and the grief you carry, both internal and external, are signs of what God is doing right now. God is birthing you, and God is birthing His Church. Don’t be discouraged. This is all part of what God is pouring out in this hour.
Lastly, as I was writing this, the word foreboding leapt out at me in the Spirit, and I want to break that now. I break the spirit of fear and foreboding that has come against you, the lie that your future will not be bright or that it will only bring more loss and pain. In the mighty name of Jesus, I bind that spirit now. You are stepping into your greatest days! FOREBODING BREAK NOW!
Embrace the cocoon. Embrace the unknown. God knows exactly what He is doing in you. The Birth pangs are painful, but they are only signs that you are increasing and moving into victory.