Chapter 11 - Have a Vision & Be Led
As I’m sure you’re beginning to see, education, planning, and preparation, both in spiritual and natural matters, is essential in preventing fear from having any place in your pregnancy and birth.
Solid plans and preparation for pregnancy, birth, and beyond will be founded on both information and revelation.
They cannot be built only on doing the best we know, but also on what’s been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, having ears to hear from Him all along the way. One of the Holy Spirit’s jobs is to show us things to come, and He does this so that we can prepare for it.
At the same time, that doesn’t mean we have to know every exact detail of how something is going to transpire in order to be ready for it. If we did, living by faith would become irrelevant.
Proverbs 31:21 (NASB), “She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet.” The reason she’s not afraid is because her household is ready for what’s coming. She may not know exactly which day it will start snowing, or how much it will snow, or how long it will snow, but she does know it will snow and therefore she has prepared for it.
In Joshua 1, Israel was instructed to prepare for their imminent entrance into the Promised Land. They were told exactly where they were going and what the mission was. Then in chapter 3:4, they were given a very specific distance at which to follow the Ark of the Covenant, which represented the Presence of God and was carried by the priests ahead of the people as they entered the land. “Do not come near it, that you may know the way by which you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.” (NASB) So although they had prepared, had a plan, knew the destination and what the final outcome was to be, they still had to follow the presence to know how to get there. They had to stay far enough behind that they could clearly see which way it was going in order to be led by it.
For original intent to be seen, the individual, personal leading of the Holy Spirit cannot be discounted or overlooked.
