In Utero. Am I talking about the title of the third and final album of the 1990’s alternative rock band Nirvana or the Latin term for “in the womb”? I am actually talking today about a natural phenomenon that happens when God takes a moment in His timeline of eternity and chooses a womb to give birth to a
child. There is a spiritual principle tied to God’s natural principle of the womb.
We have to understand how God thinks and uses the natural to help us weak and sometimes dense humans see and learn a spiritual principle of the Kingdom. A well known example of this is the principle of sowing and reaping. The Bible is chock full of illustrations that are based on this natural principle. You have to sow something before a harvest is prepared and reaping can happen.
Jesus spoke of this natural/spiritual dynamic of the womb in John chapter 3. Jesus said to a Pharisee named Nicodemus “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” There is a physical, natural womb that gives birth to flesh and there is a spiritual womb that gives birth to destiny over a child. That spiritual womb I believe is the womb of the home. It is this that I hope to portray to you in a fashion that you walk away from reading this with a holy hunger to cultivate a spiritual womb in your home.
Mom and dad, remember back to the days during the pregnancy of your child. While your child was “in utero” you would put those silly looking old foam covered headphones onto your womb and play music for your child in the womb. You would read to them, call them by name. Dad you would lay your head down there on that womb and listen to the sounds of that child. You would kiss your wife’s womb in a deep gesture of love toward that child. There were seasons during that pregnancy, trimesters where key growth took place. During those trimesters you entered into a prenatal care regimen. You started with some Doctor Visits, scheduled blood tests, sonograms and a gestational diabetes testing. You abstained from drugs, alcohol and tobacco products. You made sure you got adequate rest and good nutrition. You took prenatal vitamins. You changed your entire life because of what God had put in your physical womb. “In Utero” changed your life.
And then the time came for delivery. A season of travail ensued. Pain wrapped in a sense of deep joy united with the work of labor that ended in you welcoming your child into the world. The natural womb had just completed its season and the season of the spiritual womb has begun. Your child is now “In Utero”. Lets put some skin on this:
You see we recognize passages like Psalm 139 and Jeremiah 1 with understanding that before we were formed in the womb God knew us and set destiny in our hearts and wrote our days in His book. To Jeremiah God declares “Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” God had set destiny in the heart of Jeremiah that was not released until he was twenty years old. In Psalm 139 David declares that God “covered him in his mothers womb”… and all the days fashioned for him were written in God’s book before any of them had taken place. God set destiny in Davids heart that was not yet released until he was a young man tending sheep and the Lord sent the prophet Samuel to anoint him.
But we have to understand that, yes God set destiny in our hearts to be released in His season, His timing. That God looks individually on each one of us before we existed and set purpose, set destiny and identity on us. Mom and dad that’s so powerful for us a people, for you and for me. That is the overt context of the passage, the covert message we need to get from the Holy Spirit is this: God chose a womb, Mom and Dad, God chose the womb that you would come forth from and God chose your womb to bring forth a child of destiny. In the natural and in the spiritual. Your child is a child with a God given destiny and God given purpose. That child is here in this world now because God chose you to be that child’s parents. You are uniquely created and uniquely gifted to be the spiritual womb to release destiny in your child. The salvation of your child is an “in utero” concept as far as God is concerned. Mom and Dad your child’s eternal destiny is the primary calling of your life and the culture and spiritual health of the home sets the stage for a spiritual birth.
Listen, taking your children to church with you is great, and you should, but it equates to the equivalency of your prenatal Doctor visits. Sending them off to children’s church, that’s those prenatal vitamins. VBS, that’s like the sonogram and church camps are the equivalency of the gestational diabetes test. They are all important parts to development of the destiny of your child in Christ, but none of these things will never take the place of the womb of the home at cultivating the spiritual health of your child that is a journey towards salvation.
So my question to you today is this: you understood the natural in utero season, and you lived the responsibility to do what was necessary to carry that child to term and deliver, will you not choose to sacrifice and embrace the spiritual in utero dynamic of the home and turn your home into the womb of Gods presence and spiritual destiny?