Faith & Infertility - The most important advice

Have you hit the point of spiritual crisis?  If you are reading this you may even be past that point.  I'm a pastor and this journey of infertility has taken me there more than once. You are not alone.

This journey has taught me not to offer advice, but to just listen and to recognize the struggle.  So I am going to go out on the limb and offer you just one piece of advice in regard to faith on this journey - and it is the most important advice we all need. Do Not Harden Your Heart Towards God.   It is tempting to do so, but keep engaging in conversation with God.  If you are angry, tell God you are angry.  If you want to avoid God, tell God that it is hard for you to stay close.  If your faith feels smaller than a mustard seed, tell God that you are having trouble believing and that sometimes it feels like you are just talking to open space.  Keep struggling with God and don't give up.  God won't.

There is plenty of examples in the Bible that give us warrant to do so.  Open up your Bible to the middle book Psalms and read some of David's cries or angry rants to God.  Read about how Jacob struggled with God and won, but ended up with an injury that was a witness to that struggle.  Moses begged God to be merciful to Lot, and God was.

But as you struggle keep in mind the important advice of Hebrews - Do not harden your heart.  Keep the conversation going with God - He will help pull you through this difficult time.  Remember God is a God of creation, rebuilding, and resurrection!

Hebrews 3 New International Version (NIV)

3 Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. ² He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. ³ Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. ⁴ For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. ⁵ “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. ⁶ But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.

⁷ So, as the Holy Spirit says:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
⁸     do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
    during the time of testing in the wilderness,
⁹ where your ancestors tested and tried me,
    though for forty years they saw what I did.
¹⁰ That is why I was angry with that generation;
    I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
    and they have not known my ways.’
¹¹ So I declared on oath in my anger,
    ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

¹² See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. ¹³ But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. ¹⁴ We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. ¹⁵ As has just been said:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
    do not harden your hearts
    as you did in the rebellion.”

¹⁶ Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? ¹⁷ And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? ¹⁹ So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

New International Version (NIV)

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