Discerning Vital Force from Acupuncture to Homeopathy: Biblical Discernment of Birth Practices, Ep. 3

Written By Natalie Portman

Hey friend, welcome back. If you've been with me for the last two episodes of this series, you know we've been walking through what it looks like to test birth practices against Scripture instead of just against what feels helpful. Today we're tackling a topic that touches almost every corner of the birth world, whether you've ever noticed it or not. We're looking at acupuncture, moxibustion, reiki, homeopathy, crystals, and sound healing, and I promise this episode is for you even if you've never used a single one of these. By the end, you'll have a simple framework you can run any practice through for the rest of your birth journey.

🎧 Listen to the Episode

Why I'm Sharing This From Personal Experience

Before we dive in, I want to be honest with you. This isn't me pointing fingers from the outside looking in. As a doula, I've recommended acupuncture and moxibustion to more clients than I can count, and I've done acupuncture myself during pregnancy, in labor, and in the postpartum season. When I was engaging with those things, I never questioned it. I was simply trying practices that seemed to work.

But here's what I've learned the hard way. Just because something is popular doesn't make it safe, and just because something works doesn't mean it's wise to engage with. There are a lot of spiritual counterfeits floating around in the birth world, and I don't think that's accidental. John 10:10 tells us that the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, and I can't think of a season more targeted by that than pregnancy and birth. This is the season of growing and nurturing life itself, so of course it would be a place where counterfeit light gets offered to us, dressed up as health and wellness.

The One Thread Running Through Six Different Practices

Acupuncture, moxibustion, reiki, homeopathy, crystals, and sound healing look completely different on the surface. But underneath all six is the same underlying claim, that there's an invisible life energy or spiritual force that can be accessed, moved, balanced, or directed. Illness or pain happens when that energy gets blocked, and each practice's whole job is to move it, unblock it, and rebalance it.

In traditional Chinese medicine, it's called qi, flowing through channels called meridians. Reiki calls it universal life energy, with the practitioner acting as a conduit. Homeopathy calls it vital force, believing water can "remember" a substance long after it's been diluted past any measurable trace. Crystals are said to hold a frequency your body picks up on, and sound healing uses tones to bring that same field back into balance. It's one idea, expressed six different ways. Once I saw that pattern, I couldn't unsee it.

What Isaiah 50 Taught Me About Walking in the Dark

I read something in my devotional recently that I haven't been able to shake, from Isaiah 50, verses 10 and 11. Verse 10 describes a believer who fears the Lord and obeys Him, and yet is still walking in darkness with no light, choosing to trust in the Lord rather than scramble for answers. Verse 11 describes something very different: people who make their own light, their own fire, by lighting torches, and who end up lying down in torment.

God isn't condemning someone for wanting light in the dark. Wanting light isn't the problem. It's where the light is coming from. And here's what struck me the most. The person in verse 10 isn't in the darkness because they did something wrong. They fear the Lord and they're obeying Him, and yet they're still walking in the dark. That's not a contradiction in Scripture. Think of Job, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, even Paul. Ultimately, I think it points to Jesus, who on the cross cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Maybe your baby is breech at 38 weeks. Maybe your due date has come and gone and labor hasn't started. Maybe you're in the postpartum season and it's harder than you ever imagined. Those are exactly the moments we're most tempted to light our own torch, to grab for something that promises certainty. God removing our pain isn't always proof of His goodness, and God allowing us to walk through pain isn't proof that He's punishing us. His character doesn't change based on how comfortable our situation is.

Running Each Practice Through Three Questions

Throughout this series, I've been using three simple questions to test any birth practice: where does this come from, what worldview is it built on, and what fruit does it produce? Two verses do a lot of work behind the scenes here, Deuteronomy 18:9-12 and Colossians 2:8, which warns us not to be taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy dependent on human tradition rather than on Christ.

God didn't leave the human body half-finished, waiting for someone to unlock hidden energy grids running underneath it. Psalm 139 tells us we are fearfully and wonderfully made, already a complete design. Most healing in the biblical picture happens through the ordinary systems God built into us: rest, nourishment, time, a wound closing, a fever breaking. Scripture leaves room for miraculous healing too, but even then, it doesn't hand us a technique for accessing a hidden force. It points us back to God Himself. In Exodus 15:26, God says, "I am the Lord who heals you," not "I am an energy that heals you." In James 5, the instruction for the sick isn't to learn a method for moving energy, it's to call the elders, anoint with oil, and pray.

That's the real difference. Vital force theology says there's a power in the universe, and if you learn the right technique, you can access and direct it yourself. Biblical healing, ordinary or miraculous, is relational. It's not a force you learn to move, it's a Person you come to.

Acupuncture and moxibustion come out of traditional Chinese medicine's belief in qi flowing through meridians, with needles and heat used specifically to move that energy. Reiki names itself as energy work outright, channeling universal life energy through the practitioner's hands. Homeopathy rests on the belief that water holds and transmits an energetic memory, an animistic claim dressed up to look like medicine. Crystals trace back to New Age and animistic frameworks, the belief that objects can carry and transmit spiritual energy. Sound healing carries the belief that specific tones can retune your body's energy field, a very different claim than simply saying music affects your mood, which is just how God made us.

I want to pause here, because I know this can start to feel heavy, like everything is dangerous. That's not what I want you to walk away with. Changing positions in labor, massage, a warm compress, getting in the shower, moving your body, none of that is asking you to submit to an unseen force. Those are simply comfort measures that engage your body doing what the Lord designed it to do.

Where Modern Medicine Fits In

I also wanted to hold modern medicine up to these same three questions, because passing the source test doesn't automatically mean every medical decision is a good one. Hippocratic medicine actually grew out of a deliberate move away from spiritual explanations of illness toward physical causes, and much of what built modern medicine came out of a distinctly Christian framework, from the first hospital systems built by monastic orders to scientists like Boyle, Newton, and Pascal, who studied creation because of their faith in a Creator.

But medicine can still be practiced from a posture of control instead of stewardship. Think of an induction pushed for scheduling convenience rather than medical need, or a decision driven by fear of liability instead of an honest picture of your options. That's why I love the BRAIN framework: Benefits, Risks, Alternatives, Inquire of the Lord, and Nothing (what happens if you wait or decline). An epidural isn't more or less faithful than declining one. A C-section isn't more or less faithful than an unmedicated birth. The real question is whether this choice is wise and necessary right now, and whether you can receive it with peace rather than fear or pressure.

📖A Scripture to Anchor You

"Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God." – Isaiah 50:10 (ESV)

This verse has stayed with me since I first read it in my devotional, and I couldn't shake it as I was preparing this episode. It describes someone who is a believer in God. They fear the Lord, they obey Him, and yet they're still walking through darkness with no light of their own to hold onto. That's not a punishment or a sign that something has gone wrong. It's an invitation to trust God in the very moment when trusting Him feels hardest, rather than reaching for something else to manufacture our own certainty. If you're walking through a hard pregnancy, an unexpected diagnosis, or a labor that isn't going the way you hoped, this verse is for you. You don't have to light your own torch to find your way through. You can rest in the name of the Lord and rely on Him, even when you can't yet see how the story ends.

🙏 A Prayer for You on Your Journey

Lord Jesus, I thank You so much for my sweet sister who's listening right now, and I thank You for the life she's caring for, and for the trust You've placed in her to steward that life well. I pray that You would impart supernatural discernment. I pray that You would help this mama see clearly what practices are wise to engage with and which ones are not. I pray that You would give her the courage to test everything against Your Word. And Lord, where any of us have engaged with practices that are not pleasing to You, whether we knew it at the time or not, I ask that You would give us the humility to repent, not out of shame, but out of love for You and a desire to walk in Your truth. I ask that You would help us recognize the moments we're tempted to light our own torch, to manufacture our own path out of darkness, pain, or uncertainty. I pray that You would give us the patience to wait for You, to trust that Your way is good and Your truth is sure, even when we're walking in pain and uncertainty. And Lord, I just pray that whatever season this mama is walking through right now, whether it's a season of blessing where everything is great, or a season of breaking where she's in the midst of darkness, I pray that she would come to know You more, trust You more, and ultimately love You more through it. Not because waiting in the dark is easy or fun, but because You are faithful, Lord Jesus, through it all. I ask this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

If you've engaged with any of these practices before, I don't want you to walk away carrying shame. I know my own heart, and I am so prone to wanting to light my own torch too. The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but the One who's with you in any dark season doesn't come to steal, kill, or destroy anything. He came so that you would have life, and have it abundantly.

If you'd love a practical way to work through any practice we didn't name today, grab my free Christian Mama Birth Prep Library, which includes a discernment guide you can use for anything that comes up in your own birth journey.

Next episode, we're continuing this series and looking at other practices growing more common in modern birth culture, like the Blessing Way ceremony, placenta rituals, and astrology.

📎Resources & Links Mentioned

✨ Christian Mama Birth Prep Library - Free birth prep tools, including the NEW Birth Practice Discernment Guide to walk through this framework yourself

💕 Work with Me 1:1 - Virtual Doula Support & Schedule a Private Coaching Call

✝️ Online Christian Childbirth Education - Explore my complete birth preparation self-paced course

🎴 NEW Christian Birth Affirmation Cards - You can now purchase them here

📣 Let’s Stay Connected

If this episode encouraged you:

Meet Your Host —

Natalie is a certified birth doula and childbirth educator in Jacksonville, FL. She's trained through DONA International, certified as a Body Ready Method Pro, and an advanced VBAC doula. Through Faith Over Fear Birth, she equips Christian women to experience peaceful, faith-filled births through both virtual and in-person support.

About Me | Services

🔗 More You Might Love

📄 Full Episode Transcript

Hey friend, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here with me today, and if you've listened to the last two episodes, you know we've been walking through this series on biblical discernment of birth practices. Today's topic touches almost every corner of the birth world, and most people don't even realize it.

But I wanted to share my personal ties to some of this before we really get started. As a doula, I've recommended acupuncture and moxibustion to more clients than I can even count, and I've done acupuncture myself during my pregnancies, while in labor, and in the postpartum time.

When I was engaging with those things, I never questioned it. I was simply trying practices that seemed to work to help my body. But here's what I've learned the hard way: just because something is popular doesn't make it safe, and just because something works doesn't mean it's wise to engage with.

I've mentioned this before in the series, that there are a lot of spiritual counterfeits floating around in the birth world, and I definitely don't think that's accidental. John 10:10 tells us that "the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy," and I can't think of a season more targeted by that than pregnancy and birth.

This is the season of growing and nurturing life itself. So of course it would be a place where counterfeit light gets offered to us, dressed up usually as health and wellness. Today we're talking about a thread that runs through a surprising number of birth practices, and the ones we're going to look at today are acupuncture, moxibustion, reiki, homeopathy, crystals, and sound healing.

On the surface, they look completely different, but underneath all of them is this common idea. All of them rest on a similar underlying claim: that there is an invisible life energy or spiritual force that can be accessed, moved, balanced, or directed.

Illness or pain happens when that energy gets blocked. The practice's whole job is to move it, unblock it, and rebalance it. In traditional Chinese medicine, it's called qi, flowing through channels called meridians. Acupuncture needles specific points to clear the blockage. Moxibustion does the same thing but with heat, burning a dried herb near those points, and that's often used to help turn a breech baby.

Reiki calls it universal life energy, and the practitioner describes themselves as a conduit, letting that energy flow through their hands into you. Homeopathy calls it vital force, and here's how it works, because I honestly didn't understand it myself until I was researching for this episode.

A homeopathic remedy starts with a substance. Sometimes it's a plant, but sometimes it's something pretty strange, like snake venom, crushed bees, or sometimes just plain table salt. That substance gets diluted in water over and over, sometimes dozens of times.

By the time you get the little pill or drop you'd actually take, there's no measurable trace of the original substance left at all. So how is it supposed to work? The belief is that the water "remembers" the substance, and that this memory, this energetic imprint, is what stimulates your body's vital force to heal itself.

And here's the part that surprised me the most: the more diluted it is, the more potent it's believed to become. Less of the actual substance equals more power. So this isn't like herbalism, where you're taking a measurable amount of a plant. Homeopathy is an energy claim dressed up to look like medicine.

Then there are crystals, which are said to hold a frequency your body picks up on. Sound healing does something similar, using tones to bring that same field back into balance. This is one idea expressed in six different ways, and once I saw that, I really couldn't unsee it.

I read something in my devotional recently that I haven't been able to shake, from Isaiah 50, verses 10 and 11. Verse 10 says, "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God." That verse describes a believer who's genuinely in a hard place. This person is walking in darkness with no light, and instead of scrambling in the dark, they trust that God is there and will bring the light of day again.

Then verse 11 says, "Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches, walk by the light of your fire and by the torches that you have kindled. You shall lie down in torment." That's a pretty big contrast.

God isn't condemning someone for wanting light in the dark. Wanting light isn't the problem; it's where the light is coming from. The person in verse 11 is making their own light, their own fire, by lighting torches. And here's something that struck me as I meditated on this verse: the person in verse 10 isn't in the darkness because they did something wrong. They fear the Lord and they're obeying Him, and yet they're still walking in the dark. That's not a contradiction in Scripture at all; it's actually a pattern used often. Think of Job, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, even Paul. But ultimately, I think it points to Jesus, who on the cross cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Darkness isn't always God punishing you for something. Sometimes it's a place the Lord allows us to go so He can test our faith, and where faith is formed. Maybe you're 38 weeks today and your baby is breech, or maybe your labor hasn't started and you've watched your due date come and go, and you're anxiously waiting for labor to begin. Or maybe you're in the postpartum time, and it's so much harder than you ever imagined it would be. Those are exactly the moments we're most tempted to make our own light, to light our own torch, to grab for something that will give us certainty.

So I'd love to challenge you with this idea: God removing our pain isn't always proof of His goodness, and God allowing us to walk through pain isn't proof that He's punishing us. His character doesn't change based on how comfortable our situation is. Peter writes about this in 1 Peter 1:6-7: "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." I love that he uses fire as a metaphor here, except this time it's not fire used to light our own path or to get out of darkness. It's God using fire to burn away what doesn't need to be there and reveal something more valuable underneath.

James says something similar: "Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds, because the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and steadfastness, left to do its full work, makes you complete, lacking nothing."

I'm definitely not saying we need to go looking for pain, or treat comfort measures or medicine as a means of escaping pain. That's not what I'm saying. But I do think, if I'm honest, our culture, and sometimes even faith culture, has started treating the total elimination of pain as the highest goal there is. Through medication or meditation, we're trying to escape all pain, and sometimes I think we chase that to an unholy degree, as if pain itself were the enemy instead of something God allows us to experience in order to bring glory to Himself and goodness into our lives.

So much of what's marketed to pregnant women is built on the assumption that pain is the worst thing that can happen to you. But Scripture never says that. Separation from God is the worst thing that could happen to you, and pain is something He can absolutely use.

Here's a visual, if you're a visual learner like me. Imagine a tapestry while it's being woven. On the back, it's a mess. There are knots and loose threads, and it doesn't seem to make any sense. But that's not the finished side; that's not the side it was made to be seen from. Turn it over, and those same threads that looked like a mess make something beautiful, something with true design, something the weaver could see the whole time. I believe that's so true of our pain and what we go through.

Here's what gives me hope in all of this, though. Jesus walked through the darkest moment anyone has ever experienced, and He never once kindled His own fire. When He was on the cross, He didn't manufacture His own way out, although He totally could have. He trusted the Father completely, all the way through, even when it cost Him everything. He never abandoned obedience to make His own path easier, and because He stayed faithful in the dark, we can trust God even when we can't see the outcome ourselves.

So now that we've laid that groundwork, let's get into the meat of this episode and dig into the three questions we ask about each practice. The first is: where does this come from? The second is: what worldview is this built on? And the third is: what fruit does it produce? I don't want to just breeze past these six practices as a group and move on, so we're going to slow down and run through each one using those three questions.

Before we do, I want to preface this by saying that when I was pregnant the first time, I hadn't heard of more than half of these things we're about to cover. I didn't grow up around any of this, and it wasn't until I got into birth work that I started realizing how often these things come up in the birth space.

As we run through these three questions, there are two verses doing a lot of work behind the scenes: Deuteronomy 18:9-12, which lists practices God told Israel to stay away from because of the power they were actually submitting to, and Colossians 2:8, which warns us to see that we're not taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies dependent on human tradition and the elemental spirits of this world rather than on Christ. Keep these two verses in your back pocket as we go through each practice.

Let's go back to the beginning, when God made the human body. He didn't leave it half-finished, waiting for someone to come along later and unlock hidden energy grids running underneath it. Psalm 139 says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We're already a complete design. God created our physical systems, our nervous system, circulatory system, immune system, all of it. Most healing in the biblical picture happens through those ordinary systems doing what He designed them to do: rest, nourishment, time, a wound closing, a fever breaking. That's not neutral or accidental; that's His design working as intended.

Scripture absolutely leaves room for miraculous healing too, healing beyond what the body can do naturally. But when Scripture talks about that kind of supernatural healing, it doesn't give us a technique for accessing a hidden force. It points us back to God Himself. In Exodus 15:26, God says, "I am the Lord who heals you," not "I am an energy that heals you." In James 5, when someone's sick, the instruction isn't to learn a method for moving energy toward them; it's to call the elders, anoint the sick person with oil, and pray. If healing comes, it comes through the prayer of faith, not through a mechanism the person praying has learned to control.

Do you see the difference? Vital force theology says there's a power running through the universe, and if you learn the right technique, the right points, the right dilution or frequency, you can access and direct it yourself. It's fundamentally about human technique. And again, I can't help but picture that "light your own torch" analogy with these practices. Biblical healing, ordinary or miraculous, is fundamentally relational. It's not a force you're learning to move; it's a person you come to. That's really the deepest problem underneath a lot of these techniques. It's not only that they come from a different culture, a different era than Scripture; it's that they replace a relationship with God with a technique.

So as we walk through these, I'd encourage you to really listen to the underlying worldview. What is this practice asking me to believe, to trust in, and to ultimately direct my heart to when I need help?

First, let's look at acupuncture and moxibustion. You might run into these two if your baby is breech, since it's common for a midwife or doula to recommend moxibustion as an option to help the baby move head down. And if you're past your due date, acupuncture gets recommended as a way to induce or start labor naturally.

What's the source? This comes out of traditional Chinese medicine, a system built entirely around chi flowing through meridians. The needles and the heat exist specifically to move that energy; that's the whole point of the practice.

What's the framework? The worldview underneath it is that your body is an energy system, and a trained practitioner can access and redirect it. That's a different claim than "your muscles are sore and you need heat to help." This is a spiritual claim about an unseen life force, even when it's presented in a clinical or calm setting.

And the fruit? I remember engaging with acupuncture because I really wanted to get labor started, or suggesting moxibustion to a client to help her baby turn head down. I completely understand the desire behind engaging with these things, but wanting a good outcome doesn't answer the question of what I'm aligning myself with to get there. That's still worth asking, even when the result seems good.

Now let's look at reiki. More and more doulas now list reiki as one of their offered services, sometimes woven into the labor support itself. You can also see it offered postpartum as a way to process a hard birth or heal from birth trauma.

Reiki was developed in early twentieth-century Japan, explicitly describing itself as channeling universal life energy through a practitioner's hands. This one isn't veiled; it names itself as energy work. As for the framework, the practitioner isn't doing the healing themselves; they consider themselves a conduit, something the energy moves through into you. As for the fruit, people report feeling calm, relaxed, and at peace after a session, and I don't doubt that's a real feeling. But calm isn't the same as safe, and peace that comes from an unnamed energy source isn't the same as the peace Scripture describes, which can only come from Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Now let's look at homeopathy. This one might be the most embedded of all six practices, and it's easiest to miss because it's usually sold as part of a birth kit, little labeled vials for stalled contractions, back labor, retained placenta, or postpartum bleeding, all packaged together as a natural labor birth kit.

The source, as we already covered, is one man's theory about a vital force stimulated by remedies diluted past the point of containing any of the original substance. The framework is the belief that water can hold and transmit an energetic memory. At its core, this is an animistic claim: non-living matter carrying and communicating spiritual information. That's a very different picture than "God designed plants with properties that interact with our bodies." As for the fruit, the mechanism being claimed isn't chemical, it's energetic. So even if someone has experienced real relief, the explanation being offered for that relief is worth examining.

Now let's look at crystals, and this one's pretty obvious, since you can physically see a crystal. This one is becoming more popular in hypnobirthing circles, where a specific stone gets used as a calming anchor during a relaxation practice.

The source: crystal healing traces back to New Age and animistic frameworks, the belief that physical objects can carry, store, or transmit spiritual energy. This shows up in ancient practices too, but its modern popularity comes largely out of the New Age movement of the twentieth century. The framework: a rock doesn't have a will, a spirit, or healing power according to Scripture. Genesis gives us dominion over creation, so we don't submit to it to receive spiritual power from it. Treating a stone as something that emits a frequency capable of resonating with and rebalancing your body's energy field flips that relationship. It turns something God made for us to steward into something we're looking to for power. The fruit: a beautiful stone in your hospital bag might feel harmless, even sentimental, but the danger was never really about the rock itself. It's about the belief attached to it, that the object is doing something spiritual, and that's worth examining honestly.

And now, sound healing. This one is newer in the birth world but gaining popularity, and there are now entire courses that teach couples how to use singing bowls during labor, with some prenatal yoga classes building sound bath sessions into the class offerings.

This comes out of the belief that everything in the universe, including your body, vibrates at a certain frequency, and that specific tones, singing bowls, or instruments can retune your body's energy field back into balance. Like the others, this traces back to Eastern and New Age spiritual frameworks, not a biblical understanding of sound or the body. As for the framework, there's a real difference between music affecting your mood, which is simply how God made us, and a frequency being described as capable of correcting an energetic imbalance in your body. The first is simply how God made us; the second is a spiritual claim about sound having power to heal on its own. As for the fruit, if you love music in your birth space, that's not what we're talking about. It's specifically the belief that the vibration itself is doing spiritual work.

So here's what I want you to notice now that we've walked through all six individually. Every single practice, no matter how different it looked on the surface, fails that first question about the source. And every one of them traces back to a framework outside Scripture, asking you to align with something other than God to get relief, comfort, or an outcome.

I want to pause here, because I know this episode is starting to feel heavy, like everything is dangerous. That's not what I want you to walk away with. Changing positions in labor, massage, a warm compress, getting in the shower, moving your body, none of that is asking you to submit to an unseen force. Those are comfort measures that engage your body doing what the Lord designed it to do.

In fairness, I wanted to also examine modern medicine against these same three questions.

The source: this one actually surprised me when I looked into it, because Hippocratic medicine grew out of a deliberate move away from spiritual explanations of illness toward physical causes. Early Greek physicians were looking for what was actually happening in the body, not appealing to unseen forces to explain it. A lot of what built medicine into what we know today came out of a distinctly Christian framework. Monastic orders built the first hospital systems in the Middle Ages specifically as an act of caring for the sick as worship, at a time when the culture cared very little for the sick and dying. Men like Boyle, Newton, and Pascal, some of the founders of the scientific method itself, were devout believers whose faith in a Creator motivated them to study how bodies and the natural world worked. They were looking at creation and trying to understand the order God had already built into it. So medicine's source isn't asking you to submit to an unseen spiritual force. That doesn't mean every doctor today shares that worldview; most modern medical training now operates in a purely naturalistic framework, studying what's observable without reference to God either way. But the method itself, looking for real physical cause and effect in the body, isn't in competition with Scripture the way moving your chi is, for example.

Now the framework, and honestly this might be the most important part of the whole segment, because passing the source test doesn't mean modern medicine is all good. Medicine can absolutely still be practiced from a posture of control instead of stewardship. Think about a provider pushing an unnecessary induction because it's more convenient for their schedule, not because it's actually medically needed. Or a situation where your body is treated like a machine on a timeline, dilating in labor on a strict schedule instead of something to steward with wisdom and patience. Or interventions suggested out of fear of liability rather than an honest picture of your actual options. Again, none of these are vital-force problems, but it can creep into the territory of "I am taking this to control the outcome" instead of "I am stewarding what the Lord has given me so I can trust Him with the outcome." So medicine passes the source test in a way energy work doesn't, but the framework question needs to be asked decision by decision.

And now the fruit. This is where I want to get really practical, because this is where it actually plays out for you. An epidural isn't more or less faithful than declining one, just like an induction isn't more or less faithful than waiting for labor to begin on its own, and a C-section isn't more or less faithful than an unmedicated vaginal birth. That's not the question. The real question is: is this wise and necessary right now, in my specific situation, and can I receive that with peace? Or am I only saying yes to an intervention because I'm scared, or because I feel pressured, or I'm trying to control the outcome?

That's exactly why I love teaching the BRAIN framework: B for benefits, what are the benefits of choosing this particular intervention; R for risks, what are the real risks to my specific situation; A for alternatives, is there genuinely anything else available to me right now; I for inquire of the Lord, stop and actually pray and seek Him for what He would have for you in this decision; and N for nothing, what if you say no, or not right now, to that intervention. To me, that's such a wise way to approach interventions, especially something like modern medicine, which passes the source question but still requires discernment when it comes to framework and fruit.

So let's go back to that Isaiah 50 passage. Are you the person who trusts God when you're in the dark? Or are you the one who's so quick to light a torch and find a way out yourself? And I'm not saying that to shame you if you've engaged with any of these practices. I know my own heart, and I am so prone to wanting to light my own torch, to find my own way out of things, and that's not just in the context of birth practices.

The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, and in this season of growing and nurturing new life, that's exactly the kind of place where he's going to plant a counterfeit. But the One who's with you in any dark season doesn't come to steal, kill, or destroy anything. He came so that you would have life, and have it abundantly.

If you want a practical way to walk through any practice we didn't name today, I'd love to invite you to sign up for the Christian Mama Birth Prep Library, where I have a discernment guide you can use to work through any of the practices we covered today, throughout the series, or any that come to mind for you. You can sign up for the birth prep library through the link in the show notes.

Next episode, we're going to continue this same series and tackle some other birth practices that have become more and more common in modern birth culture, things like the Blessing Way ceremony, placenta rituals, astrology, and more.

Before we go, I'd love the opportunity to pray for you.

Lord Jesus, I thank You so much for my sweet sister who's listening right now, and I thank You for the life she's caring for, and for the trust You've placed in her to steward that life well. I pray that You would impart supernatural discernment. I pray that You would help this mama see clearly what practices are wise to engage with and which ones are not. I pray that You would give her the courage to test everything against Your Word. And Lord, where any of us have engaged with practices that are not pleasing to You, whether we knew it at the time or not, I ask that You would give us the humility to repent, not out of shame, but out of love for You and a desire to walk in Your truth. I ask that You would help us recognize the moments we're tempted to light our own torch, to manufacture our own path out of darkness, pain, or uncertainty. I pray that You would give us the patience to wait for You, to trust that Your way is good and Your truth is sure, even when we're walking in pain and uncertainty. And Lord, I just pray that whatever season this mama is walking through right now, whether it's a season of blessing where everything is great, or a season of breaking where she's in the midst of darkness, I pray that she would come to know You more, trust You more, and ultimately love You more through it. Not because waiting in the dark is easy or fun, but because You are faithful, Lord Jesus, through it all. I ask this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

Natalie Portman
Next

Testing Yoga & Hypnobirthing Against Scripture: Biblical Discernment of Birth Practices, Ep. 2