13. Why the Great Travail?
Then a great sign was perceived in heaven, a woman enclothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and upon her head a garland of victory, a crown of twelve stars. Having a child in her womb, she screamed in travail, being tortured to bring her child to birth. But another sign was also perceived in heaven, look, a great fire-colored dragon with seven heads and ten horns and upon his heads, seven royal crowns. And his tail dragged a third of the stars of heaven which he cast into the earth. Then the dragon stood in the presence of the woman in travail, so that when she should bring her child to birth, he might devour her child. And she brought forth a son, a boy who is about to shepherd all the ethnic families with a rod of iron, and her child was seized into God and into His throne (Revelation 12:1-5).
A woman who is giving birth experiences pain because her hour has come. But when she brings forth a child, she no longer remembers the pressure because of the joy that a child has been born into the world (John 16:21).
Why does God use travail to cause us to understand His entrance?
The picture given to us of a woman clothed with the sun, screaming to give birth, is nothing other than the Gospel fulfilled; it is the knowledge of God entering into the knowledge of all, as prophesied by Isaiah and Habakkuk.
The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40:3-5). – For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
These are wildly different metaphors, the birthing through travail, a highway through the desert, and the crossing of the Jordan, yet all three are just different ways to express this wonder of a God becoming Himself as Life and Love inside of creation – through you and me, and especially through the offering of our dying bodies to God.
In each metaphor, it is God coming through, and the result for each is the knowledge of God filling the knowledge of all.
Now, in Symmorphy II: Essence, in my ongoing attempts to “define” God, I devoted an entire chapter to the question, “What Is a God of Travail.” Indeed, there are few questions more important for us to continue to ask and to continue requiring of God His answer.
Proceeding now through this letter, I want first to set out the outlines given to us by the first two metaphors, the crossing of the Jordan and the highway through the desert. Then, I want to set before our eyes a number of key gospel verses containing words related to travail, to the work of great pressure in our lives.
With that background, then, we hope to discover what God meant by placing a woman screaming in pain to bring forth as the opening of the ruling chapter of the Unveiling of Jesus Christ, and as the single most important metaphor of LIFE entering creation, the knowledge of God through us into our world.
Here is the beginning of our thinking. – For the creation was made subject to purposelessness, not willingly, but through being subjected based on the hope that creation itself will also be made free from the slavery of decay into the freedom of the glory of the children birthed out from God (Romans 8:20-21).
Creation is ignorant of God by a darkness placed upon it, a darkness filled with hope. God’s hope is that a people will believe into Jesus such that they arise out from that darkness into all that Life is and means – yet while still retaining their dying bodies, sharing the same form with all others who remain under the darkness.
We may not fully understand it, but there is an equal exchange taking place. For even as we enter into all the meaning of LIFE, so God enters through our possession of mortal bodies into the knowledge of creation. No mortal bodies – no unveiling of Jesus Christ.
Thus we see that the Highway for God and the crossing of the Jordan for us, though parallel, are movement in differing directions, God coming through our entrance into Life. This is why the crossing of the Jordan, that is, the entrance into all that Salvation is and means, cannot be “going to heaven after you die,” for such a thing gives no place for God coming through.
In fact, this is what Jesus means when He says, “Meet Me in the air.” The unveiling of Jesus Christ is God entering into the knowledge of creation. It happens as we enter, through the Spirit of Life dwelling in our dying bodies, into the knowledge of God in the heavens.
When we bring the travail of the Church and the birthing of the manchild into this same picture, we find the deepest of philosophical questions. – Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? You cannot have an egg without having a chicken who lays it, and you cannot have a chicken without an egg out from which it came.
You cannot have a human entrance into God without in equal measure having a God entrance into humanity. As humans enter into the knowledge of God, so the knowledge of God comes to all humans.
The crossing of the Jordan was a passage parallel to imminent and terrifying death. It says that the waters “piled up.” It would have taken most of the day for all Israel to cross. By the time the Ark of the Covenant came up into the Promised Land, only after the last Israelite had crossed, that turbulent wall of water, quite visible on their right hand, would have been very high.
Yet the most important point of that crossing was The Mercy Seat above the Ark, standing between the people and death, standing upon the lowest place on earth, standing unmovable until every little one who belonged to Jesus had made their way through. The action of that Mercy Seat is expressed in Romans 8:26-27. Yet that Mercy Seat is also the entrance of God, the Pillar of Fire, into our world.
Which comes first, the woman who brings forth the manchild or the manchild out from whom she comes, the manchild who clothes her with the Lord Jesus Christ, who protects her from all opposition, and who is, in fact, her very travail?
For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. – Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before her pain came, she delivered a male child. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children (Isaiah 62:5 & 66:7-8).
Our travail is the travail of the Church, and we give ourselves to God for her sake.
The manchild seized into God and into His throne is God coming through into our world. The entrance of Life, creation set free – God honored and known, requires the successful passage of both at the same time, two things simultaneously passing through each other.
I have known of this puzzle since I was twenty-one at Graham River Farm, for someone suggested in the sharing of the word, I believe it was Brother Lenny, that if the manchild “is born” before its time, that is, if we present ourselves as the overcomers before the time, then that life will be devoured by the dragon. We did not have the understanding God has given to us now, but Brother Lenny was speaking of this very thing.
What if our bodies are swallowed up by life BEFORE the world sees our love for one another? Very simply, the accusations will continue, the same accusations the Church throws at Jesus right now. – You love one another ONLY because you are resurrected sons of God, what good is that to us?
It is only when they see our love for one another made visible in our dying bodies, that is, the manchild – God made visible, will they know that God, indeed, sent Jesus into this world.
The Ark of the Covenant does not stand on Mount Hermon, high above the waters of death; it stands at the bottom of the Jordan, the lowest place on earth. – Having already willingly taken hold of the form of a slave, Himself ekenosen, that is, He Himself called an invisible God into visibility, becoming the same as humans. And having been found in outward appearance as a human, He humbled Himself, actively becoming hearing-under all the way to death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:7-8).
By this we know Love – And we also.
The “death of the cross” we have come to know as the carrying of others all the way through this passage neither Jesus nor we, nor they, can traverse, yet willing to be carried by Father.
I think we can see, at least dimly, the critical issue of the travail. Our question remains – why travail? Why does God need a woman screaming in pain to be delivered of her child inside the Unveiling of Jesus Christ.
Yet consider this staggering Bible statement. – In the same way, the Spirit also joins as help together with our weakness, that is, personally seizes hold of our need as our help; for we are not aware of the things that are necessary for us to pray, but the Spirit personally brings us in line with Father for the sake of others, with inexpressible groanings.
The Spirit out from God is the essence of God touching creation. And from these words we derive an unbelievable question, a question filled with implications beyond our comprehension, a question that takes us places we have never considered.
– What is a God of travail?
But what is travail?
Specifically, the life inside the womb has grown too large, the woman can no longer carry it. Yet her dilemma is that the life is too big for her; she is too small for its significant entrance into the world. In the other direction, the child itself is fully developed for a world it does not know. It must depart this place of warmth and comfort in order to enter into its “destiny,” we might say.
Travail, then, is two things for the mother and two other things for the child. In the mother, the passage out must be enlarged, against her very construction, and the great muscle that is her womb must push the child out. For the child, it must come to regard this formerly cozy place as suddenly hostile to its present interests, and it must be pushed out into that for which it was created.
Let’s now bring in a number of Gospel Verses regarding these pressures of travail. We want to use gospel words to describe the true meaning of this awful and glorious passage.
The One who comforts and encourages us in all our pressures of travail, inside and out, enabling us to comfort those who are inside every pressure, through the comfort and encouragement with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Corinthians 1:4). – Now, I rejoice in sufferings for your sake, and I am filling up that which is lacking of the travailing pressures of Christ in my flesh for the sake of His Body, which is the Church (Colossians 1:24).
We now even exult boastfully inside the pressures of travail within and without, being fully aware that such pressures bring forth steadfastness, and steadfastness, the proof of approval, and approval, hope. This hope does not leave us ashamed or confused, because the love of God has already been poured out and shed abroad inside of our hearts through the Devoted Spirit, the One already given freely to us (Romans 5:3-5). – For our momentary and easy to bear pressure of travail within and without is working out for us a far surpassing beyond-ness into far surpassing beyond-ness (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Many pressures of travail are necessary for us to enter into the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). – One of the elders said to me, “These who have been enclothed with white robes, who are they and from where have they come?” And I said to him, “My Lord, you know.” And he said to me, “These are those who are coming out of great travail [pressures within and without]. They have washed their robes and made them white inside the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:13-14).
The Greek word is thlipsis, which most translate as tribulation or affliction, but which I translate as pressures within and without, the pressures of travail.
Notice that I have three sets of verses that view this travail from three different perspectives.
The first set makes it easy to see that we call our difficulties as God through us for others. The third set is interpreted outwardly and carnally by most, “the great tribulation” as referencing the world and not the fulfillment of the Gospel in the Church. Yet we can see that Acts 14:22 is the same word as Revelation 12:1-5, the Church bringing forth life, that is, God through her into this world, even as she herself is entering into all that God means for His sons, for the “normal Christian life.”
It is the middle set of verses that I want to consider most, for we have always misunderstood what is meant to happen through the “tribulation” at the heart of these two verses.
One of the most significant turning points in my life happened to me in March of 1997, when I heard God speak to me, ~ “Son, you passed the test.” ~ This thought was completely unexpected, for in my own eyes, in the eyes of all those with whom I related, and by the teaching under which I sat, I had failed utterly.
But in hearing those words, I saw what God meant, at least as much as I could at that time, and I knew that God was entirely different, and what He is doing in our lives was entirely different, then anything I had known or ever heard tell.
I could not have told you at the time or for years after, but from that moment on, I began to seek for the knowledge of a God I had not known. And out from that God showing Himself to me, I have said that the most important thing I would see happen in your life is a complete change of your definition of God.
We have always interpreted Romans 5:3-4 as tribulation producing in us “an improvement of character.” Or, as they say in the world, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
It was just under a year later, in February of 1998, when I sank into the full knowing that my “character” will never improve, that I will not be “making it,” that “becoming a son of God” by “self working on self,” as I had been taught, was never going to happen. I did not know that God had just turned on the lights. In fact, not long before, Brother Buddy Cobb had preached a lengthy sermon on 2 Peter 1:5-11, that we could forget about “entering the kingdom” until we had successfully traversed this lengthy program of “getting it right.” You can imagine that such a word only increased my despair.
God did not design us to become better people; He designed us to be filled with Himself.
Romans 5:3-5 is not a path of character improvement; rather, it is showing us something entirely different. You see, verse 5 says that we already are filled with God, specifically, God as Love, before the travail even begins. But look again at the first set of verses on travail, 2 Corinthians 1:4 and Colossians 1:24. Clearly the travail is for the sake of others.
You see, in Romans 5:3-5, LOVE is not the end product of the travail. God as Love fills us full before any travail can begin. Thus the travail is for one purpose only, that the very Love that fills us might now fill others. That others might be comforted by the comfort we know inside of God.
Over the last several weeks, God has been taking me through every kind of emotion I have felt in my life for every differing kind of difficulty (or at least it seems that way to me). The point is that, in sensing the same things now, I become fully aware that I have always interpreted everything WRONG.
I interpreted everything as a need to “reconnect” with God, or a whip pushing me to “doing better,” or, most of the time, just the fact that there was something terribly wrong with me. Now, as God brings these same things back into my present experience, I realize that NONE of this has EVER been about ME!!!!!! All of it has always and only been God with me for others.
And, as I shared in the last lesson, as I now say, “God, this is You with me for the sake of Your Church,” and as I turn everything in every moment towards the Father’s Desire groaning inside of me that every Word God speaks would be fulfilled inside Christians on this earth right now, a glorious Church bringing God through her into this world, then I KNOW, in faith, that every moment of my life wherein I interpreted everything wrong, is now swept into this same travail. And I am able to declare inside of Jesus that my ENTIRE life has been for the Church.
We still have not answered the question, Why travail? Let alone the beyond-all question, What is a God of Travail? But we do have the meaning of “seized into God and into His throne.”
Three times in my life, I experienced the strong realization that this precious fellowship I had been a part of, this place that had done so much for me, was no longer God’s place for us, and I felt like a child being pushed out of the womb. The first time, in leaving the move, it was a pressure filled with pain. The second time, leaving the church we had been part of in Lubbock to come to Houston, there was still some pain in a very definite, “there is nothing more for you here,” but not as painful as the first. The third time, in realizing that our season of goodness at Lakewood Church was complete, it was no longer a painful experience, mostly because God had become everything in my life.
God does bring a change in our character, though in a completely different way than we thought. You see, we have two human characteristics that are of God in themselves, but that are a problem when it’s time to be birthed. The first is that we like our comfort zones, we prefer to sit on our duff. And the second is that we like to make things happen, to “get the job done.”
We see God pushing us out into a brand new world, and off we go, “getting the job done,” which means that no actual birthing out from God is taking place. These two tendencies that work together, not doing anything and doing something, must both be lost inside of God.
I am more engaged with travail for the Church right now than anything I have known before – AND – I have stopped all thought about, even all “daydreaming” of, making something happen. Yet I travail over what must happen, giving everything to my Father, everything of my human weakness and failure, for His sake, that through the authority He has placed inside of me, the Spirit might accomplish all inside of believers in Jesus alive now upon the earth. Yet my life-long, anxious, and failed effort to “make something happen” has finally run its course.
I am describing the meaning of travail, and its purpose.
This practice that continues with me, of using every present, personal, and penetrating bit of awfulness to call it God with me for the sake of Your Jerusalem, oh God, that she would be a praise in all the earth, and in doing so, calling through faith every single similar moment in my life as being EFFECTIVE in God for that same purpose – a whole PILE-UP of travail, is the greatest TURN AROUND I have ever known. It is turning my entire life, every moment, every failure and every glory, every tear and every laugh, into God with me for the sake of His Church, now in her hour of greatest need.
Please understand. I am very little and inconsequential, and what you would see outwardly, I’m sure you would say, “Come on, Daniel, you’re a disaster.” It matters not to me, for my God is inside of me and I believe inside of Him.
God is so different, God as He is, than humans can conceive. A God who is meek and lowly of Heart, a God who walks beneath, lifting others up, a God whose greatest likeness in human history was a man on his face in the dirt, under a cross he could not carry, carrying us, carried by God.
How is anyone to know such a God?
Our lives have NOT been ours, ever, but God’s – God sharing Himself with us, His agony, His heartache, His longing, His deep, deep hope – and all for the sake of His people, believers in Jesus, all for the sake of others.
And when creation sees such a God coming out from such a Church, all will know that this same God carries them, all will glorify Him.
And that is the greatest mystery of all, that the “child” being birthed is God Himself entering into our world, entering into the knowledge of all.
Let me just conclude with this. I had marked this Tabernacles season of 2025 as significant inside the timetables of God. Whatever else God might be doing, I find myself dramatically affected by a new way of living and thinking. I find an anointing upon me to turn everything I feel and experience into the Intercession of God through me for the sake of the Church, all who belong to Jesus in every land on earth.
And as I give myself more and more to that Intercession, I find it increasing daily.
And whatever else God might be doing, I am content, for I know that I was made for this great travail, for I see a Church walking this earth, living as the full completion of the Gospel.
I am convinced God brought my letters into your life because you are made for this as well.