Speaker 1
Are you or someone you love struggling with infertility? It's a painful reality for countless couples. So what hope and encouragement does the Bible offer in the face of fertility issues? We're finding out on today's edition of Ask Pastor Mike.
Life has the frustrating habit of throwing us untreated, unexpected curveballs, and the questions that arise can leave us searching for answers. That's why we set aside time each week to wrestle with difficult issues of life and faith.
Welcome to Focal Point and another edition of Ask Pastor Mike. I'm your host, Dave Drouy. Today we'll be joining executive director Jay Wirtin and Pastor Mike Fabarez inside the pastor's study for a very personal conversation about God's grace in light of infertility. Jay.
Speaker 2
Well, thank you, Dave. Pastor Mike, I know that we have some listeners who've been praying and waiting for years for God to bless them with a family. Is there any encouragement in Scripture for those struggling with infertility?
Speaker 3
Well, I think we need to look at the big picture because infertility is just one area of pain and deprivation, right? You can think of people that waited a long time and prayed for a spouse, like God hasn't granted them the right person to marry. Some people have been praying for some kind of deliverance from chronic pain or some health crisis.
So this is just one subset of what the Bible speaks to often, and that is that God is good, and he is faithful, and he is sovereign, regardless of the deprivation that we may feel in a current situation. In some ways, that may help us kind of grab that and rejoice in that, is to know that all deprivation, whether it's something I feel like I don't have in terms of relationship, finances, health, or in this case, children that your heart may yearn for, is that all of these feelings of deprivation are short-lived.
In the end, God will fulfill the desire and the hope of every Christian. We're going to enter the kingdom without any feelings of deprivation, without any feelings of pain or lack or anything that we don't have. So in a sense, what we need to learn to do is to be patient and to recognize that if God, even through our entire life, does not grant us the desire of our heart, in time he will.
And sometimes we need to see these times of deprivation as a platform for us to learn to trust God, to see our faith refined, and to learn to have empathy for other people around us who are in pain that maybe we wouldn't have had if we hadn't gone through a lot of pain in our own lives.
Speaker 2
Well, that makes me think, because we look at our modern medicine and it's amazing in the things that they're able to do.
But sometimes medicine pushes things too far beyond the biblical bounds.
Are the medical answers for infertility something that we should be concerned about? Is that prohibited in Scripture, or is it okay?
Speaker 1
No.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 3
And I think my take on this, if you heard my teaching any amount of time, you know that often I kind of dismiss this, what I think is a misguided faith in the fact that we are supposed to let God do these things. Like someone, you know, we talked about someone who doesn't have a spouse. They kind of wait for a spouse to drop in their lap. And I always equate that to a guy who needs a job. God's called him to work; he needs a job. He doesn't sit around and wait for the job to fall in his lap. We should go and do whatever is biblically appropriate and within the biblical bounds to see that achieved.
When you look at medicine and you look at Genesis 1, clearly God gives us the dominion over the materials of this earth so that we can use those things for good. An infertile couple that's struggling with infertility certainly has within their, I think, biblical right, if you will, within the toolbox of what God has given us to go seek medical help to deal with their infertility. Now, of course, there are some medical procedures that may lead to the conception of life and some procedures even disregard those lives. So we need to be careful about an actual conceived child and treating them like a mass of cells or something we can just dispense with.
But beyond that, and to get personal here, my wife and I struggled with infertility for 10 years in our marriage, actually more than that with our third child, but just to get our first. We've been married for 10 years and we had not been given a child. We looked at the options in the medical field to see what we could find that would help us. We were able to do some things medically that opened up the door for us to have a child.
And I'm not saying it's biblically allowed simply because we did it. We certainly, in ministry and as biblical Christians seeking to lead other people, were on our knees with an open Bible, searching to see what was allowed and what wasn't. As long as we weren't creating life and discarding that life, we felt like the Bible certainly gives us an open door to seek medical attention to get to the place of carrying out what we felt very strongly was God's will for our lives, and that was to be parents.
We were very close at the end of that journey to saying, okay, our fulfillment in being parents may be fulfilled in adoption. We'd gotten the papers and we were ready to go forward with some of that when, just in our very last ditch effort, if you will, we conceived our firstborn, Matthew. So, you know, we know what this is like and we know what it is to look at the ethical challenges of medical intervention. But I think as long as we're not creating life and discarding life, then we can certainly do whatever we can to see fertility aided.
Speaker 2
Well, certainly I would imagine in those times of waiting on God for your first child, there were times that you were saying to yourself, maybe children aren't in our future.
And certainly, there are couples out there that probably have that same issue, and maybe adoption isn't an option for them.
How would you speak to those people who desperately want to have children but just can't?
Speaker 3
And I felt like we lived in that stage so long. My wife Carlyn and I were struggling with the feelings of we're not going to have these kids. And we, you know, all of our friends had had kids. So we were in that position of feeling that. What we'd always said and just encouraged each other with was knowing that all feelings of deprivation are temporal. They're all going to come to an end. We know we're going to get to a place where our hearts are fulfilled, if not in this life, in the next. We'll look back at this time of deprivation.
What I always said to my wife is, listen, let's make sure that in this time of pain, we don't look back on this and feel embarrassed that we were whiny children of God that just kicked and screamed and always moaned and couldn't rejoice with other people who had children. We had to look at our own Christian life and say, let's struggle through this difficult time with dignity, with self-control, and with a real joy for other people. Let us know that one day this will be a past pain. We're either going to be bouncing some adopted child on our knee, or our own child, or one day in the kingdom have fulfillments that far exceed anything beyond being a parent. So let's just not be whiny people.
I think what helps is, you know, I read through the Bible with our church families. You know, Jay, every year, and I can't, but every year when we were infertile, there dealing with the passages in the wilderness wanderings where God was just so angry with the people for being such chronic whiners and complainers. In the New Testament, of course, it says to do everything without grumbling or complaining. I was just so struck by that every year. It may be hard; we may not have what we want, but we can't become those people that are such a drain on God and God's leaders, whining and complaining about not getting everything that they want.
Even though this is a profound and important thing, we've got to learn to find some contentment through this period of deprivation. In time, it's going to be over. You're going to look back and see, you know what, man, that hurt. But we're done with it now. Our hearts are fulfilled. And how did we deal with it? Did we deal with it with dignity and strength and patience, or were we sniveling, whining little children?
Speaker 2
Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I trust that today's conversation was an encouragement to couples dealing with pain and infertility.
You gave a message on this that expands on a lot of what we talked about today.
So let's finish our discussion with the message: Trusting God when hope seems lost.
Speaker 4
Well, this week my family and I had the opportunity to sprawl out one night on the living room floor to play a board game, the Game of Life. So before I knew it, I was having to decide whether to go into debt to pay for college and how much insurance to buy. I did choose, by the way, to go into debt for college. And then I proceeded to pull the lowest paying salary card in the deck. Then I kept drawing those little life cards that kept messing up my life. I bought insurance I never needed. I invested in stocks that never paid off. You know, I didn't have the best game. Matter of fact, I came in dead last. Yet I had a good time in part because I knew in 20 minutes we'd be seated on the sofa eating ice cream.
So I was, okay, yeah, Mike, that's really cute. But you know, that's a board game. When that stuff happens in real life, I mean, that's different. That's devastating. I mean, I get the pain. I know it's real. I've had my own share. And I know that sometimes when you think this is the way it ought to be and life takes you down a completely different path, I recognize the disappointment there. I also recognize that when I open up my Bible, I seem to find that people in the Bible have not been immune to this disappointment either.
Take Abraham, for instance, the 11th chapter of Hebrews. If you want to talk about a hero of faith, well, someone with ambitious and strong faith, I mean, Abraham's the guy. He's called the father of faith. And yet what we read about him is not just some wonderful story of a life that's well lived and where everything works out. As a matter of fact, we find in the verses in Hebrews 11 about Abraham that his life was filled with disappointment. He knows the pain of having God say, "Hey, you're going to have to wait." Proverbs 13:12 says, "Hope that is deferred makes the heart sick." I mean, longing fulfilled—the next phrase says, "that's the tree of life." I mean, that's just great gratification and fulfillment. But when your hope is there and it's put off, I mean, that just hurts inside.
Abraham, do you ever deal with that? Actually, he did. As a matter of fact, there was a lot of hope deferred in his life. In Hebrews chapter 11, the two verses that I'm thinking of are verses 11 and 12. Let's examine this little season of disappointment. And if I say little, it's only because it only happens in two verses here. But it was a long season of disappointment for Abraham. Now it works out, it seems, in the end. But let's put ourselves in the sandals of Abraham and his wife Sarah, and recognize that the longing and hope that they had, God kept saying month after month and season after season and year after year and even decade after decade, "Hey, Abraham and Sarah, I know that's what you want, but not now. No, not now."
Has God ever had you wait on something you really wanted? Something that you think is right and it's good, and God has confirmed this as the right plan for your life? And then God says, "Oh, not now, though." Take a look at the text. Hebrews chapter 11, verse number 11. It says, "By faith, Abraham, even though he was past age." Which is another question I'm going to ask now. How come this guy that we meet who's named Abram when we meet him in the scriptures, which by the way, means "great father," is nothing but a big irony? Because when you meet him, you say, "Hey, great father." Oh, that's right, you've got no kids. I mean, here's a guy in the Bible we meet at age 75 with no children. They've been to so many baby showers, but they've never had one for themselves. And they've kind of thought, "Well, I guess life's passing us by."
Loving the concept of following a righteous God, when God calls him, he proves, "I'm there. I'm for you. I'm going to follow you." He leaves this southern area of modern-day Iraq and he goes up through the Mesopotamian valley and he finds his way over to Canaan. And he's there doing God's will. God says, "Hey, great father, I'm going to make you a father of a great nation." And you know when God kind of gives you a sense of something good in your life and he says, "Hey, I'm going to do this for you," there's that fulfillment in your heart that you have, knowing that God is going to take you down this path. You have wise counsel, you have God's principles, and you have that sense of godly longing. And then God says, "Well, not now, though." That hurts for Abraham and Sarah; that's how it was. Sarah was barren.
And yet in the end, he was enabled to become a father because the whole time he had to wait. Look at his faith—his resilient, ambitious, strong, sterling faith. He considered him faithful who had made the promise. This is the right thing. This is God's path for my life. And God may be saying, "Wait, but it's going to happen." And so it did. Verse 12: "So from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore." But I'm telling you, if it's a board game, everybody's lapping him three or four times. I mean, he is really behind in this.
Do you know how many years it was until God finally fulfilled the promise for Abraham? 25. 25 years of waiting. God's made you wait for a few things, I'm sure. Desires that he's put in your heart. Maybe it's a desire for a relationship. God's got that longing in your heart. There's that sense of, "Yes, God's gonna." And you wait. Or maybe it's parenting.
Speaker 3
My wife and I have been through that.
Speaker 4
Maybe it's that sense of where your job was supposed to take you. Maybe it was the fulfillment and usefulness of your life in the body. I don't know what it is, but God has made you wait. That's painful. It's a painful pause in your life, hope deferred. It makes the heart sick. You know that those 25 years were filled with some heart sickness. Well, he had his child, and you'd think, well, everything was great from that point on, but it really wasn't. There was another crisis in Abraham's life. Let's pick it up in verse 17. Here's the other episode that Abraham is remembered for when it comes to pain and kind of the head-scratching season of his life. He's got the pride and joy of his life, Isaac. I mean, he had hoped and tried to shortcut God's plan with Ishmael and Hagar and all those other things. But now Isaac is here, and you'd think, wow, that's great, everything's going to work out, and they lived happily ever after. But that's not what happened. There was this thing that's described here as a test from God.
Look what he was asked and actually did. Because he was willing to follow God even down a path that didn't make much sense, he was willing to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Can you imagine that? Some of you don't have to imagine it because God's done that to you. You know what it's like, don't you, when God takes something away that's hard? I mean, that's the crisis of life. There are those painful pauses, but there are also those difficult detours. And all of a sudden, God says, okay, now take Isaac, take him up this hill called Moriah, and I want you to go sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Wow, that didn't make any sense. How do we deal with that? How do we manage that? How did Abraham manage that? Well, part of it is found in the context, the context of the whole list of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. Look back up to verse number six. You might remember this verse. It really is the foundation for this chapter. And verse six said, you know, without faith, without trusting in God, it's impossible to please God. I mean, you can't please God without faith.
And then he delineates two things. You've got to believe that he is, that he exists. And you must believe or trust in the fact that he is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him. Do you see that there in verse six? There is that predicated knowledge that I am confident in the fact that there is a good God and that God is good to those who seek him. Now Abraham, was he seeking God? Oh yeah. So much so that when God said, leave your home and go to this place I'm going to tell you about, and I'm not going to give you a lot of information, but just take the next step here and trust me on this one, Abraham said, fine, I'm with you. I'm there, I'm going. And the bottom line assumption is that the faith that Abraham had to have every year that God said, I'm going to make you wait another year, I'm going to make you wait a little bit more, that longing in your heart, I'm not going to fulfill it right now. The bottom line, foundational assertion of Abraham's faith had to be that God is still a good God. Even when I'm hurting, there had to be that affirmation.
And that'd be a good place for us to start. When God makes you wait with a painful pause or a difficult detour, let's start with this: we need to reaffirm God's goodness. That's really where it starts. If you want a godly perspective, if you want ambitious biblical faith that's going to let you navigate through that, you've got to be able to say, God is still good. Asaph, in his song in the Psalter, the Psalms, does exactly what needs to happen in our lives. When we're feeling the pain or the injustice or the heart sickness that we all go through down here on earth, we've got to have this resolve of Asaph. Asaph is feeling it. He's thinking, God, I don't get it. I'm following you, I'm trusting you. I'm seeking you. And look at my life. It's hurting. There's pain. Well, he shows that he is going to specifically affirm the goodness of God.
He's looking around and he's seeing people that, unlike him, are having a pretty good time in life. So much so that he's envying those people now. They're not godly. They're not doing the right thing. He's envying arrogant people, which is an odd thing for someone who's godly to do. But he's doing it because he's seeing their prosperity. I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Sometimes it seems that people who cut corners and don't do the righteous things, it's like verse four. They don't have struggles. I mean, look at them. Their bodies are healthy and strong. You ever feel that way when the doctor says you're sick, you got some chronic problem, something goes wrong in your body, and you look across the street at Mr. Tan, you know, toned, pagan, across the way? That guy's never sick. Come on. How come their life is better than mine? I'm trying to follow you. I'm trying to do the right thing. I mean, he's got a beef with God here.
Well, he ends this chapter, and this is a song, this poetry, I realized. And that's why it starts with the conclusion. Look up at verse number one. He's going to end this psalm after thinking through it all, and he's going to get to this affirmation, verse number one. Look what he says. Surely God is. What's the word? Good. He is good to Israel. He specifically speaks of God's character. He is a good God. He's not torturing us. He's not with a magnifying glass trying to hurt us. He doesn't have malicious intent in his heart just because he's saying no to our desires, just because he puts us on a difficult detour. He's not a mean God. He's not a bad God. The affirmation of this is important because for him, look at how this ends. Verse number 27, Psalm 73. I mean, he recognizes as he stands back and actually says he's got to go to church, so to speak. He's got to go to the house of God to get this perspective.
And he realizes that those who are far from you will perish. Oh, they may be toned and tanned now, but you know what? They're in trouble with God. You're going to ultimately destroy all who are unfaithful to you. But as for me now, it's unjust. He's not having a good day. But for me, it is good to be near God. I've made the Sovereign Lord my refuge. I will tell of all your deeds. Now, you think those are the good deeds or the bad deeds? Those are the good deeds, right? Not the apparent injustice deeds that he's inflicted with, which I know he's feeling right. He's just written all about it. But he's saying, I got to step back and say God is good. And in the end, you see how he starts to look forward here. That's the second important part of this. We've got to look forward and recognize that while there's injustice, it's all temporary because let's jot this one down.
Secondly, God will overcome evil. Even if in my life I'm doing the right thing and I have to go through pain, I need to get the big perspective. And the big perspective is soon I'll be on the couch eating ice cream, right? It's going to be. All the injustice of this dumb board game is going to be over. God is doing this and allowing this in his grace according to 2 Peter 3, because he wants people to come to repentance. He wants to pluck people out from the punishment of their sin. But in the meantime, I'm going to have to go through some injustice. There will be some pain. It doesn't mean God's not good, and it doesn't mean that God won't one day right all the wrongs. As a matter of fact, go back to Hebrews 11, and you'll see that we've already looked at that in the discussion about Abraham. Abraham's following God. He's supposed to inherit this great land. But when he goes there, what happens? He's living in tents. And you're thinking, wow, that's not such a great thing. He had to look at a distance and welcome these promises from a distance, knowing that one day they would be a reality.
That's what verse 13 said. Drop down to verse 16. He says, when we do the same thing, when the board game for us, so to speak, isn't working out, we have to long for a better country. Look at the middle of verse 16. I love these three words: a heavenly one. I mean, that's the ultimate reality, the big picture here. Therefore, God's not ashamed to call them their God because it says he has prepared a city for them. You know, that's how the book ends, right? The book of Revelation ends with the fact that all the injustices and pains of this world will be set aside. The old order of things will be done. And I love the way Revelation 11 puts it. Angels cry out and say, now the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.
So when it comes to me saying, you know what? Life's hurting right now for me, God, I got desires that aren't fulfilled. I got a plan that seemed right and good. And now all of a sudden, you put me on some weird detour and it hurts. I got to step back and say, okay, wait a minute. Like Asaph, I got to say, God's good. And like Abraham, I got to say, in the end, it's going to be made perfect and right because you will overcome all evil. And at the end of the book, in Revelation 21 and 22, what does it say? Gonna take every pain, wipe it away. Wipe away every tear. Death, mourning, pain, the first order of things gone. And God is going to correct everything. In the meantime, it's just an opportunity for God's saving grace. That's a whole nother sermon, but it lets me say, okay, God, I'm hurting. But it doesn't mean you're not good. You are good as a person, and you will overcome evil in the end. Just need to be patient, be flexible with God's detours, and keep trusting God is good.
Speaker 1
Let's pray.
Speaker 4
God, help us to have that. We need it. We need more of it. Especially when we're drawing cards from this game of life and they read pain when the card says, wait, we're moving backwards and not forwards when everybody else is lapping us.
God, I pray that like Habakkuk, we can say, even if all that goes wrong, you know what? We're gonna praise God. God is still good. He's gonna overcome all evil. He's working good in my life.
I'm gonna be patient. I'm gonna be flexible. I'm gonna have the faith of Abraham. Give us that. I pray in large measure in Jesus name.
Speaker 3
Amen.
Speaker 1
You're listening to Focal Point, and Pastor Mike Febares is talking about trusting God when hope seems lost. It's the bookend to today's Q and A discussion on infertility on this edition of Ask Pastor Mike. Now, to hear this broadcast again or to share it with a loved one, go to focalpointradio.org.
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Well, I'm Dave Droue reminding you to tune in next time as we continue exploring the depths of Scripture right here on Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point.
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