As I talked to a friend and sister in Christ, I noticed that I am sterile. I have nothing to offer God. I have lost almost everything and sometimes I feel that even my faith is sinking like the Titanic. The only thing I have given birth to is embarrassment and shame. It is very embarrassing to put your faith in God, to pray for months and years and see no response from God. It is embarrassing to expect great things from God and believe the impossible and receive nothing from Him. It is extremely shameful to answer the questions of brothers and sisters who ask if God already answered my petitions and why He doesn’t answer. I can echo Isaiah 26:18:
“We were with child, we writhed in labor, but we gave birth to wind.” (NIV)
The New Living Translation puts it clearer:
“We, too, writhe in agony, but nothing comes of our suffering.”
That nothing comes out of my suffering is as embarrassing as infertility was to a woman in Biblical times. Not being able to have a son was seen in Hebrew law as a valid reason to divorce and abandon the barren woman. Therefore, it was a very stressing situation for a woman to see herself waiting to get pregnant for years and not being able to do so. Likewise, waiting for a something to happen and give birth to a miracle is being a very stressful task for me. Everyone expects me to deliver what I have been waiting for. Everyone expects that God will support me and honor His word and promises in my life.
It is clear that a Christian must bear fruit. And this is something I know from the Gospel. Jesus said: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit--fruit that will last--and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” (John 15:16 NIV) This puts enormous pressure on me as it put enormous pressure on women to bear fruits (children) in Biblical times. As time passes by and nothing happens, people have started to ask me to evaluate my life and my relationship with God because something must be wrong. The diagnosis is clear, I am not delivering a miracle, therefore, I am sterile.
Being sterile is a hopeless situation indeed. But something great is found in the Bible: every time God made a great miracle, He chose barren women to bring it forth. Let us examine a few of these cases:
Sarah
Sarah was a barren woman when God promised a child to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-7). Thinking logically, when she saw that days, weeks, months, and years passed by and God did not fulfill His promise through her, she gave her servant Hagar to Abraham so he could have that promised child. If it was impossible for her to have a child because of her infertility, it was going to be even more difficult to have a child when she was 90 years old and “worn out”. Genesis 17 says:
“God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”
It was way beyond human possibility for Sarah to have a son at that age. Let us remember that menopause comes to women in their mid forties. So, being optimistic, Sarah had stopped having menses for 40 years, add to that that she was barren. This made it completely impossible for her to have a child. Yet, here we have God, showing up when she could do absolutely nothing about it. But praise God because He “chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important.” (1 Corinthians 1:28 NLT)
The world considers important to be fertile, to have a good age to have a kid, to be healthy and young in order to raise a child. But God does not see things as we see them, where He sees sterility, frustration, and impossibility, He sees an opportunity to glorify His Holy Name - and He certainly did when Sarah had her awaited Isaac in her arms. Abraham laughed when God said that Sarah would have a son, likewise, people laugh or doubt when they see a person struggling with faith but at the same time waiting for something impossible to happen. But God has the last word on everything and He can bring forth great things out of nothing, using people who have nothing to offer except their infertility.
Rebecca
According to Jewish tradition, Rebecca and Isaac had to pray a lot before she became pregnant. The Bible says that she was childless and got pregnant after Isaac prayed and asked the Lord to help her to conceive (Genesis 25:21). From this barren and hopeless woman, Jacob and Esau were born. Jacob became the father of the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel. God turned the shame and hopelessness of this woman into a great nation that has survived thousands of years till today.
Rachel
Following the line of matriarchs, Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife, was barren (Genesis 29:31) just like Rebbeca, her mother-in-law, and Sarah, Jacob’s grandmother. Rachel suffered a lot because of her childlessness and God listened to her cry:
“Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.” She named him Joseph,h and said, “May the Lord add to me another son.” (Genesis 30:22-24)
As we may notice from her words, it was a disgrace for a woman not to have children as it is a disgrace today not to bear fruits for the Lord. But the Lord did not punish her for her despair or because she felt disgraced, He had compassion, and He did a great thing: He made her give birth to Joseph, the one who would preserve a remnant on earth after the great famine that struck the Middle East in his time. When everything was against Rachel and her situation was desperately hopeless, God showed His mercy and made her bear the great Joseph.
Hannah
In 1 Samuel 1 we can read the story of Hannah, a woman loved by her husband but childless. It says that the Lord had closed her womb meaning that she was sterile. She was desperate because, as said before, a woman without a child was regarded as nothing by society. Furthermore, in case of the death of the husband, a childless woman would lose all her sustenance and support. In verse 11 she prays:
“Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”
She was greatly troubled; she said to the priest who thought she was drunk while praying:
“I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.” (v.15-16)
She was giving the Lord nothing but her anguish, her grief, her pain, and her misery. These things are not the ones that “move God” to bless according to many Christians. I have heard that what makes God answer is your joy, your strong faith, your tithes, your service to God, but pouring out your soul and tell God about your misery? No, that’s lack of faith and God does not answer these prayers because you are not “trusting” God enough. That’s what I have been said. But it is not what I see in this Hannah’s story.
God answered Hannah’s prayer and turned her misery into joy. In her prayer of thanksgiving she said “My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance.” (1 Samuel 2:2) Horn means strength. She was simply saying that she had no strength, it was low and the Lord, by answering her prayer, lifted it high. Later on, in verse 9 she said: “It is not by strength that one prevails...” What did she mean? She’s simply saying that it is not our own strength or abilities what makes us prevail, it is God and God glorifies Himself even more when He makes the weak strong.
As promised she gave her son Samuel to the Lord and he became one of the greatest servants of God in the Bible. How did the story end? “...the Lord was gracious to Hannah; she gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord”. (1 Samuel 2:21) Evidently God did not punish her for being sad, for saying in prayer that she was miserable, in grief and in pain. God honored this woman’s feelings and made her fruitlessness nothing giving her not one, but six children.
Elizabeth
Elizabeth and Zechariah “were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren; and they were both well along in years” (Luke 1:6-7). Here we have a godly couple, servants of God Almighty and childless. They were blameless, therefore, no one can even suggest that they did not have a child because they did not have faith or because they did not work for the Lord first. They were in that situation because God allowed it to happen.
Once again we see the same obstacles: infertility and old age. Once again, as with Sarah and Abraham, it was impossible for this couple to have a child. There was nothing they could do to make it happen. But that’s when God gets all the glory, when the miracle cannot be attributed to anything we have done. The miracle was entirely His and it was so impossible that “All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it...” (Luke 1:65-66)
From this situation of fruitlessness the great John the Baptist was born, the one in charge of making the way to our Lord Jesus Christ. Of John the Baptist Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist...” (Matthew 11:11) These words are enough for us to see how God blessed that barren woman who apparently had nothing to offer to God but her infertility. She was sterile though she was a faithful servant of God. We must not forget that in Biblical times being sterile was seen as a curse. This explains the despair, the misery and the preoccupation of those childless women who might have thought that God was against them.
Today, lack of answers to prayers, lack of tangible fruits, are regarded by Christians the same way. And many times I have found myself hurt because some Christian brother or sister have suggested that I might be wrong/cursed by God because I am not delivering my miracle. What these brothers and sisters forget is that in the Bible we have plenty of women who were, in the eyes of society, rejected and cursed by God when in reality God was simply waiting for the exact moment in which His name would be glorified to answer their prayers.
These moments were always those in which these women had nothing but suffering, anguish, misery, pain, and grief to offer to God. When something is beyond human hope, that is the perfect scenario for a miracle that will glorify our God. Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, and John the Baptist are the proof that God uses extreme situations of fruitlessness to do great things, not because of our greatness but because of His.
“Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband” (Isaiah 54:1)
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