We have heard your prayer before the Lord for your wife and for the fruit of the womb, and we join with you in carrying this burden to the throne of grace. You do well to look to the example of Isaac, who entreated the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord was entreated of him. The Scripture teaches us that children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward, and from Him is our fruit found. As it is written, From me is thy fruit found, for our fruit is traceable to the root, and cut off from Christ the branch can bear nothing.
We must speak to you plainly and lovingly concerning some of the words in your prayer. Peace and healing are not found in the release of stagnant energy or in washing away ancestral burdens by our own declarations, nor in seeking what you call your highest good. Such thoughts will bear no true fruit, for the heart is searched by the Lord alone, and He gives to every man according to the fruit of his doings. Our help is not in notions of energy or wisdom within ourselves, but in the living Christ who bore our sorrows and carried our griefs, who is the Lord of life and the giver of every good gift. True peace is the fruit of the lips which God Himself creates, when He says Peace, peace to him that is far off and to him that is near, through the blood of His Son. And the fruit of the Spirit is joy, even in long waiting, not from circumstances but from union with Christ.
Therefore we do not pray for the clearing of energies, but we pray for you and for your wife that you may be found in Christ, trusting in His atoning sacrifice alone for salvation, and walking in the light of His countenance. Fruit is ripened by the sun, and how sweetly Christians grow when they walk in the light of God's countenance. The same Lord who ripens the summer fruit in its season can ripen His gracious purposes in your lives, whether by the gift of a child or by conforming you more fully to His holy image. The sorrow is as the blade, but the full corn in the ear is joy, and godly sorrow is meant to sparkle into the diamonds of joy in pardoning love.
We pray now for you both.
O Lord our God, who didst remember Sarah and Rebekah and Hannah, look in mercy upon this husband and his wife. Thou knowest their long waiting and their desire for children. Forgive their sins and ours through the blood of Jesus Christ Thy Son, and grant them to rest not upon any power in themselves but upon Thy sovereign goodness. If it be Thy will, open the womb as Thou didst of old, and grant them the fruit of children to be raised for Thy glory. If Thou withholdest, grant them still the richer fruit of the Spirit, love, joy and peace, and make them fruitful in every good work, content to be in that rich soil which Jesus watered with His own blood. Give to the wife health and strength, quietness of heart, and freedom from fear, and give to this husband faith to hold hard to Thy promise in the dark as well as in the light. Let Thy will be done, and let Christ be all in all. In the name of Jesus our only Mediator we ask it, Amen.
