S2 E34 - I Can't Wait For You To Get Here

We had our 16 week ultrasound appointment today where we find out the gender of the baby. We are so excited to announce we are having another little baby girl! In just 5 months from now, Finley Grace Sipe will be joining this world. While it's been a very challenging pregnancy, and the next 5 months will be hard as well, we both know it will be worth it the day that we get to hold her. Well...Jesus encouraged his disciples in the same way, even using labor & delivery as an illustration. Discipleship is hard, and the challenges we face in this world certainly are a great struggle. But we will forget all about them when one day we see Jesus face to face. No matter what we face in this life, it will one day all be worth it. 

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Transcript

Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Set Your Mind Above Podcast! I’m your host BJ Sipe – I’m a Christian, a preacher, a husband, and a father. In this podcast we take everyday, ordinary events and explore how they can teach us extraordinary, eternal truths. I’m so glad that you joined me for this episode. Now, let’s open up our minds, our hearts, and our Bible’s together. 

Okay, so I might get a little emotional with today’s podcast, just a fair warning going into this. I have been looking forward to today for months now, because today was a very special day. We had our sixteen-week ultrasound on the baby this morning, and this is the week that you can really confirm the gender of a baby. We walked into the ultrasound room and I stood by Kylie and held her hand, as every second seemed like an eternity. The baby came up on the screen and the ultrasound tech started to reposition the doppler to help us get a better angle. Pretty soon she looked over at us and said, “Alright guys, congratulations! You’re having another little baby girl.” My heart leapt in my chest. I was going to be excited either way, but there is just something about having a daughter and being a girl dad. Pretty soon I will have not just one but two beautiful little girls, as well as my son. My heart is so full right now, I just can’t contain my excitement. We’ve been much less secretive with our third one than we have with our other children, so I don’t even mind telling you the name we’ve picked out already. In just about 5 more months, we will be welcoming Finley Grace into this world. Throughout the whole day I just keep fast forwarding in my mind to this Fall when she will finally be here. What will she be like? How will the kids respond when they get to hold her for the first time? What will it be like to watch my wife holding her for the first time as she takes her first few breaths? That is the picture I keep going to in my mind, and it’s the picture that my wife and I keep reminding ourselves of, especially given how hard this pregnancy has been. There is not hiding it, this has probably been Kylie’s hardest pregnancy out of all of them. There have been some days when she just doesn’t have any more to give to anyone. Being sick and exhausted and taking care of yourself is already hard enough, much less being those things and also taking care of two toddlers. There are somedays where we get in bed after a long day, and I can just tell that her tank is absolutely empty, and she looks over at me and laughs, “This is your fault.” Of course, we are just kidding, but behind the jesting is a very real sense in which this is hard! There’s no other way around it. My heart really goes out to all of you women, because I cannot for a minute begin to fathom the difficulty of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. The discomfort of having your body change and effect everything from eating to sleeping to even walking. The pain that goes along with childbearing that men could never understand. I am reminded of Carol Burnett likening the sensation of giving birth to grabbing your bottom lip and pulling it over the top of your head. I hope in saying all of these things that I am not turning those of you still on the fence about having children someday off from the idea entirely. Here is the point – we keep reminding ourselves of that day when we will finally hold our little Finley in our arms because when that day actually does come, we won’t even remember how hard it was to get there. I remember clearly the days when Ava and Dane were born, Kylie was sitting there and just holding Ava and then later Dane, and she looked up at me each time and said, “I’d do it all over again. This is so worth it.” This is more than likely our last child that we have together, but even if it is, I know that after 5 more hard months, my wife will be sitting up and holding Finley when she turns and says to me, “This was so worth it.”

It probably wouldn’t surprise you that even in his ministry, Jesus used childbirth as an illustration to help his disciples understand some very important spiritual realities. Jesus, while teaching his closest disciples in John 16, said the following in vv. 16-22, “In a little while, you will no longer see me; again in a little while, you will see me.” Then some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this he’s telling us: ‘In a little while, you will not see me; again a little while, you will see me,’ and, ‘Because I am going to the Father’?” They said, “What is this he is saying, ‘In a little while’? We don’t know what he’s talking about.” Jesus knew they wanted to ask him, and so he said to them, “Are you asking one another about what I said, ‘In a little while, you will not see me; again in a little while, you will see me’? Truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will become sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her time has come. But when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the suffering because of the joy that a person has been born into the world. So you also have sorrow now. But I will see you again. Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy from you.” The disciples were about to lose their teacher, their Lord, and their friend. None of them were anticipating his death, much less his resurrection and his ascension. They had always lived in the security of having Jesus right there with them, but now, for the first time in their discipleship to him, things were about to get very difficult. Jesus would go on to say, “Indeed, an hour is coming, and has come, when each of you will be scattered to his own home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.” They would be persecuted. They would be hated. They would be rejected. And yet, Jesus tells them to take heart. How? How could they take heart given how difficult things were about to get? Because before long, they would see Jesus again. Jesus has overcome the world through the resurrection, and one day each of them, along with all disciples, have the same hope of resurrection! What Jesus said to them in that day is the same hope that we can take to heart ourselves. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” And again in Romans 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.” In this life, we will have difficulty and struggle. We struggle against sin. We struggle against acts of hatred towards those of faith. We struggle against vices. We struggle against sickness and death. The list is endless, so how do we press on? By focusing not on what is, but what is to come. One day, when we see Jesus again and he returns to bring us home, we will completely forget about the struggles that we faced in this life. What brought us temporary hardship in our lifetime will not in the slightest measure compare with the immense joy and glory we shall see in our eternal home with Jesus. I can only imagine Paul and the other disciples standing alongside of Jesus, and turning to one another and saying, “It was all worth it in the end.” I know that life can be difficult. I know that discipleship is not easy. But I hope that in this moment, you can be reminded that it will be worth it. 

Thank you for tuning in to today’s episode, and I would invite you back Tuesdays-Fridays for a brand-new episode each day. If you haven’t already, be sure to find us on Facebook for occasional announcements and special video sessions. If you have benefited from this podcast, please if you’re able be sure to share it with someone else that you think could benefit from it as well. Until next time, know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each & every day set our minds above.