Saturday, January 2, 2010

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.

10 comments:

  1. Awesome and so true! I'm really enjoying your Words to Stand On...keep 'em coming! I love getting the reminder e-mail, too.

    Jane

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  2. Wow, is God just amazing or what? I love how HE knows exactly when the right time is for the desires of our hearts to be fulfilled.

    Love this series!

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  3. This is an uplifting and inspiring testimony. God is good!

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  4. Wonderful testimony of God's perfect timing...this was especially good..."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."...amen!

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  5. I love the questions this brought up in me. I am really going to have to meditate on the thought of purposful delight.

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  6. Amen! This is a good word, Jeri! Too many times, we focus on 'He will give you the desires of your heart' and forget that there is a prerequisite....'delight yourself in the Lord'. Thank you for the reminder!

    Infertility is a heart wrenching situation. How do you ever get 'away' from it? I'm so glad you found your answer in loving God...and very happy with the wonderful blessings He gave you. (Elissa Joy is a beautiful name, BTW)

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  7. Actually, God was just preparing the earth for the arrival of what took 10 good years to perfect: me!

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  8. How I pray God would give my daughter this very same desire of her life. Her husband's sperm was killed by diabetic crash. It has never returned. None. Doctors say their only hope is inutero fertilization - but it's expensive... and I know God can fix it at anytime. But they are non-believers! So for them the expensive route probably IS the only route. But God STILL gets the final say - if He doesn't want to give them a baby, it won't take. If He WANTS to give them a baby, they don't NEED fertilization! Of course, they say that the fertilization process may BE what God is giving them -- and that MAY be true too! But I think if they would put their FAITH in Him they would get their miracle!

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  9. That's called a living faith...We can be so thankful for God's greatness even when the odds are not there.

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