Words to Stand On, Day Two

    



What do you do when you have a desire that goes unfulfilled? Suppose you have prayed for something for years, yet God does not seem to answer your prayer?

My husband and I married when we were 20 years old. (Looking back, it's plain to see how young we were!) In the rural, family-oriented area that we lived in, the main topic of conversation centered around having babies. Everywhere we went, people would ask us our plans about starting our family. Foolishly, I would say, "It doesn't matter to me if we don't have any kids until we've been married ten years!"

Sadly, I didn't know about the scripture that declares "you shall have what you say." (See Mark 11:23) Televangelist Joyce Meyer teaches: "words are containers for power." It's galling to realize I spoke infertility into my own life.

It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind. After 3 years of marriage, since my husband worked a lot of second and third shifts, I thought a baby would be a lot of company.

Yet nothing happened. Years went by. A desire for a baby became an obsession.

As time went by, infertility became harder. Every baby shower became torture and excuses not to go came easily. Tears flowed during each Mother's Day and Father's Day service. Especially hard were the days our younger brothers' wives announced their pregnancies.

Oh, the advice we received! We were told over and over again to just not think about it and then it would happen. Easier said than done! We were told weird stuff to do to get pregnant. (I can't mention these things here, this is a family blog!)

Over and over we went to the altar and begged God for a baby. Yet it seemed Heaven was silent.

About eight years into our marriage, we moved away from home. Living in a new town where we barely knew anyone helped mature us. We found a church and became involved. This was a time of great spiritual growth for me. I began to study this scripture:

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4

This became the scripture I stood on when praying about fertility issues in my life. The big question became how does a person delight themselves in the Lord? It became clear that developing a relationship with the Lord was key.

Relationships need nurturing. Spending time in the Word, finding areas of service, prayer and praise are vital in delighting in the Lord!

A time came when our church was in revival. The revival ended up lasting 9 weeks. My husband and I attended as much as we could.

One night, the evangelist asked for those who wanted to have children to come up for prayer. We were one of three couples struggling with infertility who responded. Within a month, all three couples became pregnant!

I believe that God saw we genuinely loved Him and wanted to serve Him, so in His timing, He gave us the desire of our heart. I also believe that if you are truly loving God with all your heart, if your desire is not something that God wants you to have, He will change your desire to something better.

In the tenth year of our marriage, we gave birth to our beautiful first daughter, Elissa Joy. We felt her name should be something special that had real meaning. Elissa is the French form of the name Elisabeth which means "consecrated to God." Her middle name, Joy, also means "Delight!"

Since then, we've birthed two more daughters. God truly gave us the desire of our heart.

Is there a longing in your heart? Maybe the best thing you could do for yourself is get as close to Him as possible. Finding joy being with Him makes all the difference.