Labor with Hope: Gospel Meditations on Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

The world is filled with messages for women about pregnancy. Popular books and well-meaning family and friends offer unsolicited advice about what to expect and how to stay healthy—sometimes resulting in joy and excitement but other times leading to discouragement and fear. The Bible, too, has a lot to say about childbirth—offering real hope that nothing in this world can match. In Labor with Hope, Gloria Furman helps women see topics such as pregnancy, infertility, miscarriage, birth pain, and new life in the framework of the larger biblical narrative, infusing cosmic meaning into their personal experience by exploring how they point to eternal realities. Women will see that only Christ can provide the strength they desperately need in order to labor with hope. 160 pages

View excerpt here.

Read our Reformers Review by Shamira Eglinton here.

“Gloria Furman has a disarming way of connecting the most concrete stuff of our lives to the most glorious truth of the gospel. She’s doing it again here, as she peers into the realities of pregnancy and childbirth through the windows of Scripture. This book opens the windows wide. We do well to ponder this theme, of which God keeps reminding us in all kinds of painful and marvelous ways.” --- Kathleen Nielson** , author; speaker; Senior Adviser, The Gospel Coalition  “Gloria Furman has written devotionals that will transform the way we view pregnancy from conception to birth and beyond. Labor with Hopemagnifies the glory of Christ and all that he has done, and helps us fix our eyes on the one who gives eternal life.” **--- Trillia Newbell** , author, Sacred Endurance; If God Is for Us; and God’s Very Good Idea **Table of Contents: Introduction 1. In the Image of God He Created Them 2. Be Fruitful and Multiply 3. The Promised Seed of Woman 4. Why Does Childbirth Hurt So Bad?! 5. Pain in Parenting 6. Writhing under God’s Judgment 7. God’s Birth Pain 8. The Gospel Is the Only Cure to the Abortion Epidemic 9. Tasting Death for Others 10. The Birth Pains of Death 11. Jesus’s Death Begets Spiritual Offspring 12. Birth Pain after Childbirth to Raise Spiritual Disciples 13. Putting Pain in Its Place 14. All Creation in the Throes of Labor 15. Conceived in Sin and Saved by Grace 16. You Must Be Born Again 17. Boasting Only in the Cross 18. A Tomb Became a Womb for the New Creation 19. Our Deliverer Delivered through Birth Pains 20. Saved through Childbearing 21. Children Are a Blessing 22. Knit Together 23. Don’t Trust Birth, Trust God 24. God Who Causes to Give Birth 25. From Inevitable Sorrow to Guaranteed Joy