When Birth Pains Begin: Lessons from Jesus’ Metaphor

This one’s a bit longer than usual, about 8 minutes, but stick with it. Grab your coffee, find a comfy chair, and let’s sit with this together. With everything happening in the world today, a few minutes of thoughtful reflection can make all the difference.

Why Jesus Chose an Unpredictable Metaphor

If there is one thing I’ve learned from studying the Bible, it’s that certain words or phrases are very deliberate to paint a visual picture, and when you really sit down and think about that image, things start to make more sense.

Today, I'm discussing “These are the beginning of birth pains,” from the New Testament.

At first, I wondered why Jesus used that phrase in Mark and Matthew. Then it hit me. Labor is not a cut-and-dry process. Most people think labor works like this: your water breaks, you rush to the hospital, and 24–48 hours later, you’ve got a screaming, pooping bundle of joy.

I wish. As a mother who went high-risk overnight with one child, and lost two others, absolutely nothing about pregnancy and labor is predictable. And that’s exactly why Jesus said “the beginning of birth pains.”

What People Think Labor Is

Culturally, we’ve been conditioned to think of labor as one single, continuous, happy event. But labor is actually a highly individualized process, with unpredictable timelines, and the media almost always misrepresents the whole process and reality of labor, which shapes unrealistic expectations. 

Thank you, Hollywood.

What Labor Actually Is

Latent (early) labor is different from active labor, and that is different from the final transition phase of labor. To make that more complicated, each of these stages have their own different phases, and that's just the bare basics.

Here is a quick breakdown without all the intimate details for some readers.

• Water breaking first is not always a thing.

• Latent (early) labor can last hours to days, especially for first-time mothers.

• Contractions can slow down or just start and stop altogether.

• Active labor can vary from an hour to 12 hours; note that some people have gone beyond this.

• Prodromal Labor (pre-labor), which can happen in the final weeks of pregnancy and last 24–72 hours to weeks, because it is consistent contractions that don’t cause significant cervical dilation. It’s the body getting ready and the baby into position, and it often stops and starts.

• The final phase of labor can vary from 30 minutes to 3 hours.

• Back labor, don’t forget that one. That can throw extreme pain into the mix you weren’t planning for.

• Breech births, while on the rare side, are more dangerous, painful, and tiring, and can take longer than a normal delivery.

• False labor (Braxton Hicks) can start weeks to months in advance, and these help tone and prepare the body for birth; they can come and go as they please.

• Not to mention a host of other symptoms, pains, and surprises that come along during the labor process in general. I’ll spare those details, but they should be kept in mind too.

  
  

So when Jesus says, “These are the beginning of birth pains,” He’s describing a a full blown, unpredictable process. A process that can vary significantly. 

Not A Single Quick Event

He’s giving a metaphor that makes perfect sense if you understand what labor is. That is why His phrase needs to be understood from a medical perspective to fully digest what He is explaining to us. 

Apologies to anyone who just learned more than they bargained for, but it is relevant to what Jesus is saying to us. Both Gospels show Jesus explaining a process, a painful and drawn-out process, that literally has an unpredictable nature.

We are living in a time with many rumors of wars, nations rising against nations, famines, earthquakes, and people coming in His name to deceive many. But much like labor, these events can not truly be predicted. We could be in any stage or phase of these labor pains; we simply have no way of knowing just yet.

Scripture is bluntly showing us that our constant guesses, fixations, and predictions about His return are about as good as our predictions of when the baby will crown, and our time here could be better spent doing more important things, like spreading the Gospel. 

Like pregnancy, we know it’s going to have to come out at some point, but in the meantime lets not fear that and prepare a good home. We have to be patient and endure through all the various pains. 

We also should not be assuming or proclaiming timelines based on one contraction the world is having, when we know labor can decide to slow, be mild, or completely stop for a while. 

We can not confidently predict a timeline when there is no timeline to follow. Like snowflakes, no two deliveries are the same. I’m not saying don’t read and study the Bible and end-time prophecies, or not watch current events, and keep an eye on the world; we do need to do that. 

What I am saying is we can not predict these labor pains, and we shouldn’t be attempting to either. At least not so concretely that we build a whole fixated way of living around just that. To confidently say we are in on stage or phase shifts a person from being Christ-centered and doing His work to focused only on His end game and bypassing all souls yet to be invited to His table.

Watch Out That No One Decieves You

Jesus was asked, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” in verse 3. 

But look how Jesus responds to that question: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many.” Matthew 24:4–5

These things have already happened, in fact, many different times throughout all known history, in all manner of combinations. Many have truly thought they were entering the “birth pains” or “end-times” phase.

It’s Jesus’s very first sentence in His response that is the most overlooked, “Watch out that no one deceives you.” That prominent warning is often missed. He led His signs with a warning first, not last.

This was for them, meaning us, believers. 

Not some future dark figured boogy man in the dark. We are very capable and have historically proven that those in Christianity can be our own worst enemy by trying to overanalyze, overpredict, and overstate the world around us.

The birth pains He spoke of are unpredictable for a reason.

We do not know when they started, or, truthfully, if they have started yet, or how long the stages of labor will be for the world. History shows us a long line of groups that believed and focused on Jesus’s description in Matthew and Mark to their folly.

Now, do I personally think we are possibly starting to enter this phase of labor that He is telling us about? Yes, we may be. I can definitely feel something is happening in the spiritual realm that we can not see. 

But I am also not the only person to have ever felt or thought that, either in their generation. 

But I am not going to overpredict, overanalyze, or overstate the world that I live in. Also, I live in America, where I am a woman who has the freedom of speech to even talk about this in the first place and put it on the internet.

In other countries, you can be executed for a lot less. Think twice before you cry persecution. Yes, we may not be liked by some now, but we are not being handed over to be persecuted and waiting for our death sentences as described in this passage.

I think Christians in this country have done a massive disservice to themselves by believing America is the whole world Jesus was talking about in these verses. No, we are just one of many countries. 

One That Is Free

Go across the Atlantic right now and ask them what they are thinking and feeling right now. They, along with many others in the past, have suffered much more for believing, and it was they who were handed over to others for their belief.

You can’t remove their history and then make a prediction/assumption on the world as a whole regarding these labor pains. You just can not. People are too laser-focused on this country to look at the world as a whole. God doesn’t see it that way, and we can not either.

Is America on its way to silencing believers in the future? Who knows? But in other places, it’s freer than it ever has been. I will not predict God’s timing, only state what I’m seeing and feeling, and write what I am led to write.

What Scripture is describing in Matthew and Mark is an unmistakable, pivotal turning point for all Christians around the world. This, I believe, can be described accurately as entering that active phase of labor. “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.” 

When you are in active labor, you know it; everyone in your family knows it, trust me. There is no feasible way to deny those contractions.

But we are not fully there just yet. America and many countries have unprecedented religious freedoms that are constantly taken for granted, misused at every corner, and frankly just wasted, even if we are in the beginning stages. 

And this leads me to the next phrase overlooked in this passage: “but see to it that you are not alarmed.”

Why Did Jesus Say That?

Because to over fixate on something that is undeniably unpredictable, especially when we do not know the date of conception, is the wrong path forward and the wrong state of mind to be in. 

Our commission is to go forth and spread the Gospel, not to sit in dark rooms and attempt to predict God’s timing. To be laser-focused on that and nothing else is to miss the point of the freedom we have now, and that is:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Matthew 28:19

I Could Go On and On 

My point is, while yes, it is important to pay attention to what the world is up to and the prophecies in the Bible to help us understand. It is vitally more important to do what God commands us to do and let Him sort out our labor pains. 

For all we know, we are just in the Braxton Hicks phase of this, or tomorrow we’ll be in full-blown bear-down labor, and all believers alive will feel it and see prophecy unfold before our eyes in ways we can not miss. 

And some events may have happened/happen without us even realizing they’re part of the process, because we can not see everything all at once.

My Takeaway

Birth pains are not linear, predictable, or uniform, and neither is the spiritual “labor” of the world. What matters is our commission, our readiness and awareness, not hyper-fixating on exact timing. We have greater things to be doing right now, like protecting our children.

We watch, we pray, we plant seeds, and we live faithfully through the waves of intensity and pauses, knowing the process is unfolding as it should and not to fear.

© Jane Isley