1.0 INTRODUCTION
Delayed pregnancy/fertility arises either in the form of long periods of infertility or childlessness. Known cases of infertility are demonstrated in the examples listed below:
• Abraham and Sarah
• Isaac and Rebecca
• Jacob and Rachel
• Manoah and wife
• Elcana and Ana
• Zechariah and Elizabeth, etc.
The rate at which delayed pregnancy or fertility catches many women off guard is becoming alarming. Many marriages in our land today have been destroyed due to perceived childlessness or infertility. Couples run from one herbalist, spiritualist, or hospital to another in search of babies. It can tear families apart and has given rise to polygamous situations. Some even end up on bar beaches where the spirits of mermaids await some sleepless nights. They are willing to do anything in cash or in kind to achieve their heart’s desires. As such, they are often ripped off, maimed, and killed. The questions that arise due to this situation are:
• Should today’s childless couples just pray for babies?
• Whose fault is it?
• Is it caused by God or is God aware of this situation?
• Why did God allow Satan to make this happen to us?
• Will we ever conceive?
An attempt will be made to answer these questions towards the end of this article. Some people have also turned to some medical knowledge like in vitro fertilization which helps some childless couples to conceive. Some people have considered delayed pregnancy or childlessness as God’s punishment for sin.
2.0 UNDERSTANDING THE FACTS ABOUT LATE FERTILITY
God can work through many means to call us to faith, but it is wrong to interpret childlessness as a curse.
Children are gifts that come from God if we ask him. The answer may come in a child of your own, a child for adoption, a child ranger, or a group of children in the neighborhood or at a church. Infertility can present a couple with an urgent crisis of faith. Not being able to have children raises profound questions about the purpose of a marriage, the value of spouses, and their sense of belonging to the Christian community.
Why do couples get married? Couples get married to enjoy sex, procreate (have children), and have life partners. The purpose of marriage is not just for procreation. So, if there is a problem of childlessness or infertility or delayed pregnancy, the marriage is supposed to stand still for the other purposes of the contract. But for most Christians today, the opposite is the case. To them, childlessness may seem to refine their relationship with God, since God expects his followers to be like Christ, and this sometimes involves pain. Recognizing our ultimate goal of becoming more like Christ reminds us that marriage and having children are not our only purposes in life. Having children is not our only purpose in life. Some atrocities have been and continue to be committed by some couples of children today:
• Sarah took matters into her own hands by offering Hagar to Abraham. She had trouble believing God’s promises and waiting on the Lord.
Likewise, some of us encourage our husbands to marry second wives (Gen. 16:1-14) in order to have children at all costs. This topic will be fully discussed in my next presentation on DIVORCE BETWEEN CHRISTIANS in future issues of this magazine.
In the Old Testament, a child woman was considered a failure and was a social embarrassment to her husband. The case remains the same for today’s woman. Children are a very important part of the economic structure of society, a source of work for the family because they take care of elderly parents. Some were forced to give their servants to their husbands or to marry other wives.
Husbands were allowed to divorce barren women. These women are broken from shedding tears at night. Things haven’t really changed since then.
3.0: TYPICAL CASES OF LATE FERTILITY
Several couples in the Bible endured long periods of infertility before finally having children:
• Abraham and Sarah stayed seventy-five (75) years after their marriage before having Isaac (Gen. 16:1-4; 21:1-7).
• Isaac and Rebekah remained twenty (20) years before having Esau and Jacob, father of Israel (Gen. 25: 19 – 26).
• Jacob and Rachael waited eight (8) years before having Joseph, who became the ruler of Israel (Gen. 29:31-30:24).
• Manoah and his wife spent several years before getting Samson, who became a judge in Israel (Judges 13).
• Elkanah and Anna spent several years before giving birth to Samuel, who became a prophet in Israel (1. Sam. 1).
• Zechariah and Elizabeth also spent several years before the arrival of John the Baptists, the forerunner of Jesus Christ (Luke 1).
If you focus properly on the case of Zechariah and Elizabeth, where both were pious people, careful to obey all the laws of God both in spirit and letter, of priestly origin, of the temple service body and elderly but without children. We can carefully conclude like David that children are gifts and a blessing from God, but childlessness is not a curse but God’s inability to bestow gifts even on couples (Ps. 127:3). As many cases as mentioned above are with us in our various scholarship centers and the longest cases have been replaced by foster children.
4.0: SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED
The need arises to answer some of the questions that couples without children have and here are some answers provided as additional points of view:
has. Should couples with children today simply pray for babies?
Yes. Just pray believing that God will answer your prayers. Children are a gift from God and it is only God who can grant that gift to whomever He decides and at his will (Rom. 9: 15-16; Ex. 33:19). Those who came before us only prayed in faith and received their gifts (Gen. 15:7-8).
b. Whose fault is it?
It is nobody’s fault, especially if the relationship between you and your God is cordial and between true friends. So, the fault may lie with the enemy and if childless couples understand this, it will be his duty to take from Satan his gifts under his control (Matt. 11:12).
against Is it caused by God or is God aware of this situation?
God is aware of the situation and has allowed it to happen so that the couple’s faith can be tested. After all, Abraham was tested and Zechariah and Elizabeth were equally tested. So why not you? (Luke 1:25).
d. Why did God allow Satan to happen to us?
As mentioned in the body of the writing, there was no instance of a barren, infertile, or childless woman in the Bible, except David’s wife, Michal, the daughter of Saul, who was cursed by the husband for mocking or mocking the husband while praying and dancing. to God (2 Samuel 6:16-23).
me. Will we ever conceive?
Yes. The couple of children must conceive as others before conceiving them. The word of God is always new in our midst. There will never be a barren or infertile woman among us (Deut. 7:14; Gen. 18:14).
The writer was a victim of fertility for seven (7) good years and when it was God’s time/decision to give us the free gift, we had a bouncy baby (a complete and well designed gift that made us forget the past plague years of lobsters, a perfect gift without any defect). Throughout the long period of infertility, we resign ourselves to God, trusting in his supremacy and promising to give us that gift. But we never stop praying and fasting to stop and reduce Stan’s power and his demons used him as agents of torment to deny us God’s blessings and create unhappiness in our marriage. After all this, and when God’s time came, we had a baby like Sara.
5.0: CONCLUSION
We must realize that delayed pregnancy/fertility is not the same as infertility or sterility, but many couples, due to ignorance or lack of patience, rename it as infertility or childlessness. Remember that all the women mentioned in the Bible, namely Hannah, Sarah, Rachel, Elizabeth, Rebekah, and Manoah’s wife, did, after all, have children of their own. Except for David’s wife (Michal/Saul’s daughter), whose case was a curse, there was no case of an infertile woman in the Bible.
When a situation like pregnancy delay occurs in our families, we often ask “whose fault is it?”. and “Why did God allow this to happen to me?” But, Paul had a similar case in 2 Cor. 12:7-9 and God who was aware of the situation replied: “My grace is enough for you.” From then on, Paul never spoke of the problem again. In such situations, the first thing to understand is that God has allowed it but has not caused it. If we do not find these theses and if those who preceded us found them, how can we speak of God’s goodness to those around us? Remember that if there is no proof, there will be no testimony in our lives.
Anyone who wants to become like Christ must be ready to suffer pain. If we acknowledge our supreme pains of becoming like Christ, we will remember that marriage and procreation are not our true purpose of creation. Having children will not allow us to make Heaven or reach maturity in Christ. Therefore, our pursuit of children at all costs should not be with the emphasis shown by those who are of the world.
Once childlessness or late pregnancy is accepted as part of a couple’s life struggle, the grievance of childlessness must have run its course and, as such, the couple begins to meet the needs of their child. environment, which until now had gone unnoticed. They can surrender their sense of longing for children to God. They can help out in churches and fellowship centers as church teachers, counselors, youth workers, friends, and confidants.
Finally, childless couples need to resign themselves to faith and trust God completely. Also, the need to always be joyful in all situations needs to be re-emphasized here (Philippians 4:4-6), as obstacles are only overcome by those who are joyful in the Lord. Let us decide to carry the cross of God in the way it is provided for us and also receive the problems from him in the way we receive the gifts from him upon us (Matthew 16:24; Mark 10: 28-30).