Blessedness In Barrenness

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. -Romans 8:28-29

My workplace is filled with the modern unbiblical mindset that children are an inconvenience, even a burden, rather than a blessing. Several times I've been part of a group conversation in which one person mentions that "so-and-so is pregnant... again... like, with her third! or fourth!!!" This prompts wide eyes and slow head shakes from most. "What is she thinking?" is a common reply.

They probably try not to have those conversations around me any more. I have a habit of interrupting the collective mourning by saying, "Good for her! Children are a blessing from the Lord!" The more children, the more blessings! (See Psalm 127:3-5; Voddie Baucham has a great sermon about children, the Christian family, and how modern church structures usually work against God's will for the biblical home. It's seriously worth a listen. Or twenty.)

Then, the other week one of my coworkers asked me for some advice. She'd heard me honor children as blessings from God, and asked me, "what about the people God doesn't bless with children?" Her cousin and her cousin's husband have been trying to have children for years, and for years their hearts have been breaking. God has chosen to withhold the blessing of children from them. They're both professing Christians, but the wife in particular doesn't understand why God wouldn't want her to be a mother. She feels like something is deeply wrong with her, maybe that she's grossly out of God's will, and that if she could just find her way back into His will somehow, He would probably bless her with a baby. She's very near the end of normal child-bearing years. Despair seems inevitable. Her husband wants to adopt, but her heart's just not there yet.

I told my coworker that I would first bookend my encouragement to her cousin with multiple expressions of genuine sympathy - Christians are people who "weep with those who weep," (Rom. 12:15). The desire for children is legitimate, good, and designed by God. She is not wrong for wanting a baby. Second, I would try to slowly and gently show her from Romans 8:28-39 the best possible news she could hear, which she might least want to hear: God orchestrates all things - even childlessness - to bring about Christ-likeness in His children, as a beautiful and essential part of their fullest and most satisfying good, the everlasting experience of Himself.

Therefore, though we would have changed a million things about our lives and the world around us, God has made this reality, this world, to be the best of all possible worlds for His people. His ways and His thoughts are immeasurably higher, and better, than ours.

When God blesses a Christian with a baby, He does so ultimately for His own glory through the incomparable blessing of His child's conformity to the image of Christ. When God withholds children from a Christian, He does so for exactly the same reason. Becoming increasingly like Jesus now, and being most fully like Him in heaven - seeing the face of your loving Father, sharing in His glory, and shining it back to Him - is an immeasurably better gift than anything else we could dream to ask of Him! But joy in Christ comes through suffering with Christ. God designs our pain to produce His glory - and ours.

Christian, God loves you with such a lavish, beautiful, infinite love, that He has chosen to lead you through sufferings you would do anything to avoid, unless you could see as He sees. The worst experience of your life - every experience of your life - is the precious gift of an all-powerful God who loves you with all His might! I urge you to praise Him for the pain you've been feeling. Praise Him for the horrible things that have happened to you. Trust Him, that He really is as good and as wise and as sovereign as He says He is. Treasure Him and His will vastly more than all the smaller joys you might have had in this life. Always look beyond this momentary life to that everlasting One. Draw near to Him in that faith, and you will find that even now He is transforming your temporary pain into an eternal weight of glory.

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. -2 Cor. 4:17-18