If you follow Posture on Facebook or Instagram, you may have seen our exciting announcement that we posted this weekend. After many years of infertility, my husband Bruce and I are expecting our victory baby in March 2021! (See the announcement here: https://youtu.be/hNI5n9N0fG0)
In today’s episode, I’m sharing a bit of our journey and the victories we’ve received in the waiting.
Infertility may not be a part of your story…praise God! However, if you are believing for major victory in any area of your life, this episode is for you.
Transcript
Today, we are going to take a “Posture of Peace” by being filled with joy and peace in believing.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you, God is with you in everything. Together, we’re going to be emboldened to take a daily Posture of perfect peace.
Romans 15: 13 says, “May the God of hope fill
you with all joy and peace in believing so by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope”. Other translations say, “overflow with hope”, I just love that. So, if you follow Posture on Facebook or Instagram you may have seen our exciting announcement that we posted this weekend.
After many years of infertility, my husband, Bruce and I are expecting our victory baby in March 2021. And I just have to say we have been so overwhelmed in the best way by everyone just jumping in and sharing in our joy with us. Thank you so much for celebrating us. I’m still going through comments and messages because i just want to take time and savor each one their treasure to us. Thank you. I’ve even had some really sweet conversations in my DM’s with fellow mamas who are also waiting for their victory babies. So, I thought I’d share just a bit of our story and particularly, I wanted to share the breakthrough in the victories that Bruce and I received in the waiting, in the believing, in the trusting during this journey.
Now, infertility may not be a part of your story. Praise God. However, I do know that many of you probably all of you are trusting the Lord right now for some major victories and maybe you, like us you’ve been waiting for years for these victories. Whether it’s physical healing, maybe you’re believing for a prodigal to come home or for salvation for a loved one. Maybe you’ve been believing for a restored marriage, or perhaps even believing for your spouse or a home of your own, or a dream job, major victories. I believe all of us can relate to this. So, please don’t count yourself out of this conversation just because infertility may not be a part of your experience. We are all believing for these big things right now and it is an adventure.
Now, let me be clear. This is not a do exactly what I did and you’ll get your prayers answered conversation, okay. I don’t believe prayer is transactional in that way I am not giving you a formula. There is no formula for answered prayer. Just in case you’re wondering, what I’m going to be talking about is something so much greater and that is developing an unshakable trust in the Lord that is relational, not situational, not transactional. You know, we serve a God who chose intimacy with us. He wanted to be in a relationship with us. So what we’re going to be talking about today is discovering the joy and the peace, and believing and trusting in Him. Now, Bruce and I, we are calling our daughter our victory baby because she is definitely a victory. However, while becoming pregnant with her is definitely a victory. It is not the victory, okay. It’s not the only victory in the story. You and I, we always have victory in Jesus, always. So, no matter what you are believing for right now, you are not fighting a losing battle, never. For those who follow Jesus, not even death has a final say. Just think about that for a second, think about the majesty of who Jesus is and the victory He has given us.
Jesus’s victory, that is our starting point. Salvation made victory our lifestyle not an event, not an outcome, not a resolve of a particular circumstance, not a result. So, years ago, when it became apparent to Bruce and I that getting pregnant might not be as easy as we assumed it would be when we first got married. We knew that we had entered a battle and you know it wasn’t a battle we had chosen for ourselves. Honestly, like most battles it definitely wasn’t one that we even really wanted to take on.
You know at the time it wasn’t even a battle that we felt particularly equipped for. We didn’t have a clear way forward, we didn’t have all the answers at times it honestly felt like we didn’t even have the energy or the resources to take this battle on. But this is what we knew, “we were not alone in this battle”. And we knew that the one who is for us is so much greater than anything ever coming against us. So, we had to armor up by making some decisions by becoming firm in some big beliefs, and the first one was this. We knew that we knew that we knew that God is good.
So, we would not allow frustration or disappointment or grief or the unknown take that knowing away from us. And I talk about the goodness of God a lot, I mean basically every episode that I record for Posture is wrapped in this truth so I don’t need to expound much more on that here. I’ll just say this, “if it’s not good, it’s not God”. And second, we decided, Bruce and I that we were enough for each other. Right, we chose each other after all, we made a covenant relationship with each other in marriage, for better or for worse, and other than our relationship with God.
Bruce and I do not have a covenant relationship with anyone else on Earth. We don’t have a covenant with our parents or our siblings or our best friends or our Pastors. Nor do we have a covenant with any of our future children. The covenant that we made was with each other and it was for a lifetime. And you know what? We want to enjoy our lifetime so we decided we were enough for each other and we were going to enjoy the heck out of each other in every season and in every battle. And we weren’t going
to let what we didn’t have which was a child, and answers, and medical insight. Overshadow what we did have each other.
And the third decision, the big belief that we were going to stand firm on was this. We were not going to make ash out of other people’s beauty. Now, this is what I like to call the kingdom-kicker because the world cannot do this authentically, and that is wholeheartedly celebrating people who received what you are believing for.
Now, you have to have a healed heart and a renewed mind to do this well, which by the way you have access to in Jesus. You are equipped for this. I
promise, you can do this. Bruce and I decided that every pregnancy announcement, every adoption announcement would be an encouragement to us not a grief. We decided that every new baby and child that was coming into the lives of our friends and families, they would be a reminder to us of promises fulfilled.
There’s this beautiful scripture in Psalm 119:24 and it says this about the Lord. It says, “your testimonies are my delight, they are my counselors”. So, every testimony that Bruce and I come across, we delight in as if it is our own. Testimonies, they are our counselors, they are a guide to us, pointing us to the truth of who God is and who we are becoming in Him. Now, you might think. “Well you know what Lindsay, it’s totally easy for you to talk about all this now because you’re pregnant now”, and perhaps that’s true. But we had years to wrestle with all the what-ifs and all the unknowns. And the big what if, the big question that even a few brave people asked us during our journey was “but what if it doesn’t happen? What if you believe and trust and decide on all these things, and walk in the truth but you never get pregnant or you’re never able to adopt?” This is what we knew, this is what we trusted even if we did not have children, God would not leave us empty-handed. I mean, He never has. Our lives here on Earth are rich and full in Him. I’ve said this before, we were never promised a perfect life but we were promised perfect peace.
So, whatever you’re believing for today, big or small. Know this, believe this, trust this, you don’t have to wait for the victory. Perfect peace is a victory that you have access to right now. You know, our journey with infertility, it was not easy but it was filled with peace and joy in believing. By the power of the Holy Spirit, you can abound overflow and hope. And that my friends
in every battle is a victory.
The promise of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26:3. In Hebrew. It is shalom, shalom, meaning complete wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken. This is who you are in Jesus, because of Jesus. You are a living testimony of Jesus’s ultimate win with every step you take today you’re putting Jesus’s victory on display and satan’s defeat on replay.