Barrenness
1. Travailing in prayer
In my previous article we talked about being in a season of waiting and the prayer and faith required to get through this season. However, what occurs when, following a period of fervent prayer, God answers your prayer and you find yourself living in the fulfillment of that prayer, only to realize that you need to seek God for something new in the new situation He has placed you in? For believers, prayer is understood to be continual, yet there are times when, after trusting God for something, we anticipate that His answer will be perfect. Yet, with time, we come to realize that what we receive may not be perfect in our human eyes, prompting us to seek God further so that He may open more doors concerning the same prayer request. For instance, God answered Abraham’s prayer when he instructed his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac from his homeland and family, rather than from the Canaanites. We witness God’s intervention as Abraham’s servant selects a wife for Isaac, but later, we see Isaac’s wife struggling to conceive, leading Isaac to seek the Lord’s help for her to bear children.
Genesis 24:7 (NKJV)
“The Lord God of heaven who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my family, and who spoke to me and swore to me saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land,’ He will send His angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.’’
A further look into the lineage of Abraham we see this same situation come up again in the life of Isaac’s son Jacob. The lives of Isaac and his son Jacob if juxtaposed have so many similarities apart from the fact that they live in the Abrahamic blessings they experience a period when their wives are barren and they both have to turn to the Lord to seek Him to open their wombs.
2. Rebekah and Rachel’s barrenness
When Isaac marries his wife Rebekah, she serves as a source of comfort for Isaac after his mother’s death. However, their happiness is short-lived because Rebekah is unable to conceive. Isaac then pleads with the Lord on his wife’s behalf to open her womb, and God answers his prayer by giving Rebekah her twins, Esau and Jacob. Rebekah gets to live in the answered prayer as she raises her two children.”
Genesis 25: 21 (NKJV)
“Now Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife because she was barren: and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived.”
When Jacob, one of Rebekah’s sons, grows up, circumstances force him to flee from his brother Esau. He ends up at his uncle Laban’s house, where he falls in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. However, fate intervenes, and Laban deceives him by giving him his firstborn daughter Leah instead of Rachel, whom Jacob had worked seven years to marry. Despite this, Jacob’s love for Rachel prompts him to offer to work an additional seven years to marry her after Laban tricked him with Leah.
Genesis 29: 20 (NKJV)
“So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her.”
Rachel was the love of Jacob’s life, and in His wisdom to ease Leah’s pain, God opens Leah’s womb and closes Rachel’s womb. This causes turmoil for Rachel, and in her pain, she turns to her husband and asks him to give her children.
Genesis 30: 2 (NKJV)
“And Jacob’s anger was aroused against Rachel, and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?”
We see Rachel’s childlessness being a source of disagreement in her marriage but even in her pain we see her seeking the Lord for a child and when her maid Bilhah bears a child she glorifies God for remembering her.
3. Birthing God’s promises over our lives
My learning from Rebekah’s and Rachel’s stories is that God is a God who answers prayers. When we seek God, He hears us and remembers us. As Christians, we might assume that since Isaac and Jacob were living in the Abrahamic blessings, they would not encounter challenges with child bearing. However, we see Isaac, Abraham’s only son, struggling to have a child, even though God had promised his father that he would be the father of nations. Our expectation might be that Isaac would not struggle with having children, but from Isaac and Rebekah’s experience, we learn that even for the things God has promised us, we must continuously seek Him in prayer for their fulfillment.
Our assurance lies in the fact that God hears us, and if we persist, He remembers us and answers our prayers. This is evident in Rachel’s life when God remembers her, and she bears a son, Joseph. Although Joseph may have come after a long wait for Rachel, we later see how important Joseph’s life was to the Israelites during the drought, leading to the Israelites settling among the Egyptians.
Genesis 30:22 -24 (NKJV)
Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. And she conceived and bore a son, and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” So she called his name Joseph, and said, “The Lord shall add to me another son.”
Through Rebekah and Rachel’s barrenness God is reminding us that He holds the keys to fruitfulness. We see both women seeking the Lord and Him hearing their petition and making them mothers. Through their story the Lord is telling us to continuously seek Him in prayer and by seeking Him, He will get rid of the barrenness in our lives and we will bear fruit and see positive change in our families, in our careers and in our spiritual life. If you want to see positive change in your life ask yourself , what do I want to birth in in my life and how am I seeking God for it?
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Thank you for reading. I believe we are entering into a season of fruitfulness and like Rachel God has taken our reproach we are no longer barren we will bear fruit in our workspaces, in our homes and in our places of worship.
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Please feel free to leave a comment or email and share with me about which areas you expect God to move and help you in bearing fruit.
