"A TIME TO TRAVAIL IS UPON US!"
We Have Entered a Season of Travail
When the Lord told me that we would be entering into 10 Days of Travail, I had no idea that Brian and Lori Kooiman, who work with me, would be having their third child on this day. Lori just delivered a healthy 8 lb., 14 oz. boy, Benjamin. Psalm 127:3 tells us that children are a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is a reward. In verse 5, the Psalm goes on to say, "Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate." Many of the excerpts in this newsletter were taken from the books Prayers that Outwit the Enemy and Possessing the Gates of the Enemy.
When it comes to bearing children, it's an interesting fact that there is a desperate, agonizing pain of the soul that comes with barrenness. Equally true, however, is that there is a desperate, travailing pain of the body that comes with giving birth. My wife, Pam, and I understand the agony of barrenness as it was ten years before we were able to have children. There were times of desperation in those years and times we agonized before the Lord. But God heard the desperate cries of our heart for children and brought a miraculous healing to Pam's body that allowed her to conceive. Since that time, she has become familiar with the travailing pain of birth, having given birth to six children.
Because what we experience in the natural often mirrors that which we experience in the spiritual, we can see there are times when agony and travail are appropriate precursors and responses to spiritual birth, just as they are to natural birth. We agonize when something God intends to be has not yet manifested, and we travail as we birth God's new thing into the earth.
When the Lord first spoke this season of travail to me, I was very unclear as to what He was saying. Travail connotes that we are at a narrow transition. This transitional place is a life and death intersection. The transitional place is a place of "crossing over." You can read about that in the book Possessing Your Inheritance. I believe we have entered a "Season of Travail." Travail means that we are in a "distressed" moment.
I do believe that during this month, there are ten days specifically that the Lord will burden us for our future. Some of you are already feeling that distress. This travail season could take us through July. I sense that we are to pray specifically about Israel during March and watch carefully until June.
Travail Defined
Apostle Barbara Yoder, a dear friend and wonderful leader, defines TRAVAIL: Travail is a specific type of prayer which births (Isaiah 66:7-9), as well as wars (Isaiah 42:12-14). When a person enters a time period or season of travail (birthing and/or warring), they will experience it as a heaviness, a weight, a burden, a deep penetrating concern, or an uneasiness over a situation or condition that they cannot shake. Sometimes, travail extends to weeks or months, particularly when God burdens a person over a nation.
Travail is defined as birthing, delivering; to be disgusted, faint, grieved or weary, distressed, troubled. The old Latin word was used as an instrument of torture composed of three stakes a person was tied to. To travail is to be troubled, sorrowful, in agony, intense pain or distress. In other words, it is not a comfortable experience. Often time, a person will initially interpret travail emotionally and become introspective, suspecting something is wrong with them. However, it is not an emotion, it is the burden of the Lord, and the voice of the Lord coming to a person as a burden to draw them into partnering with Him to birth and/or to war.
The only way travail will be released is through prayer. The person will feel weighted down by a situation until it is released through sustained prayer. It is during travail that people often experience a "Romans 8:22-26 time, "For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." The Holy Spirit within the person knows how to pray under this type of burden. As the person begins to pray, the Holy Spirit takes over and begins to travail within and through them with groanings that cannot be expressed in English words.
Isaiah 42:13 says that God Himself, "will go forth as a Mighty Man, He will cry, 'yes,' He will shout aloud, He will do mightily against His enemies." Verse 14 continues, "Thus says the Lord, 'I have for a long time held My peace, I have restrained Myself, now I will cry out like a woman in travail...'"
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