“I Want Kids. My Husband Doesn’t”
00:00:00.000 | A female listener who wishes to remain anonymous writes in to say this, "Pastor John and Tony,
00:00:11.640 | thank you for the blessings you provide through Desiring God and APJ.
00:00:16.160 | My husband and I have been happily married for 10 years.
00:00:20.420 | When we were married, I knew he did not desire children, but for the past couple of years,
00:00:25.000 | my desire for children has grown significantly.
00:00:28.840 | Many friends have prayed for us, and we have prayed together, but we continue to strongly
00:00:32.960 | disagree.
00:00:34.480 | His lack of desire, my growing desire for the blessing of children."
00:00:39.560 | He's a strong spiritual leader of our home and seeks joy in Jesus daily.
00:00:43.960 | Pastor John, do you have any biblical or experiential advice for us in resolving this difficult
00:00:48.480 | situation?
00:00:49.480 | Yeah.
00:00:50.480 | Well, go get your husband, or just email him the app or the program, because I'm going
00:00:57.880 | to talk to him, and I know his heart can change, because my heart changed.
00:01:02.400 | We had four kids.
00:01:03.400 | I wanted four kids.
00:01:04.400 | I loved them, and we were done, I thought.
00:01:08.120 | Then along comes the adoption possibility of Talitha at age 50, and I thought, "Oh,
00:01:14.160 | my goodness.
00:01:15.160 | I'm too old.
00:01:16.160 | This will never work," and God did a great work in my heart.
00:01:20.800 | Here are 10 reasons—I'll try to go quick—10 reasons that a man, a husband, should want
00:01:28.360 | to be a father.
00:01:29.800 | Number one, God created man with this mandate, Genesis 128.
00:01:35.820 | God blessed them.
00:01:37.400 | God said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it."
00:01:42.560 | Now, I'm not saying every man must marry or every man must have children.
00:01:48.280 | I am saying that God planned that this would be the norm, and God is wise, and God is good.
00:01:56.720 | And if we're going to opt out of the norm of filling the earth by having children, we
00:02:01.960 | should be really sure that we can give a good account to the Lord and not just say, "It
00:02:08.280 | wasn't my preference," or something like that.
00:02:12.160 | God's plan is to fill the earth with image-bearers of his glory, and it is a glorious thing to
00:02:21.120 | participate in that.
00:02:22.600 | That's number one.
00:02:23.720 | Number two, not surprisingly, therefore, God says in Psalm 127, verse 3, "Behold, children
00:02:31.680 | are a heritage or an inheritance from the Lord.
00:02:35.440 | The fruit of the womb is a reward."
00:02:39.240 | Now, the fact that the immediate application of that truth in Psalm 127 is the fact that
00:02:48.120 | lots of sons will keep you safe when your enemies are against you—the fact that that's
00:02:52.800 | the immediate application does not limit the truth of the statement.
00:02:58.280 | And I would say that this is true even if every one of your children breaks your heart.
00:03:06.240 | It's still true.
00:03:07.800 | God does not promise us easy fatherhood.
00:03:12.080 | He promises us good reward, and that may be through much sorrow.
00:03:18.080 | There are rewards that can only come through fatherly sorrow.
00:03:25.580 | Number three, there is a glory in having children and grandchildren, and there is a glory in
00:03:34.500 | having a father.
00:03:37.520 | There's glory both ways—having children, having a father.
00:03:40.600 | Listen to this from Proverbs 17.6.
00:03:44.200 | "Grandchildren are a crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their fathers."
00:03:54.640 | That's a very, very provocative proverb.
00:03:58.360 | Grandfathers have a crown in their grandchildren, and the children, this middle generation,
00:04:07.120 | have a crown in their fathers.
00:04:10.060 | And the point is, fathering children is a glorious affair in both directions.
00:04:17.240 | Number four, have you ever considered how amazing it is and how full of significance
00:04:24.640 | it is that God, the Creator of the universe, has revealed himself as a heavenly Father?
00:04:33.800 | This is astonishing.
00:04:36.240 | It could have been another way.
00:04:38.960 | It can mean nothing less than—it can mean more, but nothing less than—the glory and
00:04:44.800 | the wonder and God-like role of fatherhood.
00:04:50.920 | God didn't look around the world to find some analogy like fatherhood.
00:04:57.840 | "Oh, there's a father.
00:04:58.840 | I'll call myself a father because then they can relate to that."
00:05:02.160 | It's just the other way around.
00:05:04.960 | He created the world with fatherhood in it so that we would experience what he is like
00:05:14.760 | in his fatherhoodness.
00:05:17.600 | Number five, one of the most compelling reasons for a man to become a father is that in doing
00:05:23.640 | so he makes a woman a mother.
00:05:26.600 | Of course, you could put it the other way around, that in becoming a mother she makes
00:05:29.820 | him a father, but that's not the angle right now.
00:05:32.880 | We're talking about the glories of fatherhood.
00:05:35.680 | There are glories of motherhood.
00:05:37.500 | Another time.
00:05:39.500 | In having children, a man discovers he's married to a mother, which he wasn't before.
00:05:48.640 | This is a glorious thing to be married to a mother.
00:05:52.240 | You now get to be married not only to a wife, but to a life-bearer, a mother, with all her
00:05:59.520 | years of motherhood in front of her.
00:06:02.440 | If motherhood is a beautiful thing, and it is, how beautiful it is to participate in
00:06:09.600 | the making of a mother.
00:06:12.520 | Six, this man that we're talking to right now, don't know his name, is married to a
00:06:19.480 | woman who deeply longs to have children, a God-blessed, natural, beautiful longing in
00:06:28.520 | her heart.
00:06:30.200 | What does love mean for this man?
00:06:33.080 | Well, here's Ephesians 5, 28.
00:06:36.280 | Husbands love their wives as their own bodies.
00:06:42.680 | He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes
00:06:49.120 | and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we're members of his body.
00:06:54.880 | Now, that text is an application of the golden rule to marriage.
00:07:01.320 | The golden rule says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself," only it's stronger
00:07:07.360 | here.
00:07:08.360 | This says, "When you love this neighbor who sleeps with you every night, you're loving
00:07:14.960 | yourself.
00:07:16.480 | In loving her, you're loving yourself, for she is your own flesh.
00:07:21.720 | You are one flesh."
00:07:23.200 | Therefore, not only does love say, "Treat her as you would like to be treated," if you
00:07:28.800 | were in her place, longing for children as she does, but love also says, "When she becomes
00:07:36.600 | joyful in motherhood, this joy will be your joy, because she is you.
00:07:47.520 | Her joy is your joy."
00:07:50.200 | What a fatherly pleasure it is to see a woman become a mother.
00:07:57.120 | If you want overflowing joy, then make your body, that is your wife, a joyful mother of
00:08:06.280 | children.
00:08:08.080 | Seven, in giving his wife children, he loves her in another way as well.
00:08:15.040 | Proverbs 31, 28, "Her children rise up and call her blessed.
00:08:19.680 | Her husband also, and he praises her."
00:08:22.200 | There is a great blessing in being a woman with children who grow up and finally realize,
00:08:29.760 | because adolescents aren't all that thankful all the time, they finally realize the preciousness
00:08:35.640 | of motherhood and call her, they write home from college, having awakened to the reality
00:08:41.680 | of all those years of sacrifice and gifting.
00:08:44.800 | They wake up and they write home and they bless her.
00:08:47.600 | They bless her.
00:08:49.060 | This is a gift that every husband should be happily willing to give his wife.
00:08:55.840 | Eight, as I watched my wife's womb grow with four sons conceived in our home, I was stunned
00:09:06.320 | repeatedly at the thought, a human life has come into being that never existed before
00:09:15.360 | and now will live forever.
00:09:18.960 | And we, this woman and I, we were God's instruments of creation.
00:09:26.240 | God just created an everlasting human being by our seed.
00:09:33.520 | What a wonder, what a calling, what an honor.
00:09:38.000 | Nine, I remember back in the 70s, just before we were having kids, people were discouraging
00:09:48.160 | larger families because of overpopulation.
00:09:53.240 | I never bought it, not only because of the math, I didn't buy it because of the math.
00:09:59.840 | There was another reason, way more basics, and I didn't know about the math, but rather
00:10:04.280 | I reasoned like this, no, God's calling is not about numbers, but about kinds of people.
00:10:12.160 | And I said to myself, I aim, God will decide whether I succeed, but I aim to raise children
00:10:20.080 | who will not burden the world, but bless the world.
00:10:24.640 | They will not eat the portion of another, they will create portions for others.
00:10:32.520 | They will be part of world solutions, not world problems.
00:10:36.800 | So my challenge to husbands is think of having children as a way not of burdening the world,
00:10:43.120 | but shaping the world.
00:10:45.600 | And finally, number 10, in having children, expect to know God as you never knew him before,
00:10:54.360 | and expect to be made more humble, more holy, more mature, more loving, more alive, more
00:11:02.840 | far-seeing, more seriously joyful than you could be any other way.
00:11:10.120 | Yes, amen.
00:11:11.120 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thanks for listening to another week of episodes on the podcast.
00:11:16.840 | We're going to break for the weekend now, and you can catch up on all the episodes from
00:11:20.680 | the week through the APJ app for Apple and Android devices, of course, or you can go
00:11:24.880 | to our web home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:30.480 | And there at the website, you'll also find links to our podcast feed if you have a podcast
00:11:34.600 | app that you prefer.
00:11:36.720 | On Monday, Pastor John will field a very interesting question from a young man who wants to know,
00:11:41.000 | "If I'm unsure of my salvation, should I be pursuing marriage?
00:11:45.400 | What are the pros and cons of wrestling with marriage and assurance?"
00:11:49.720 | That's on Monday.
00:11:50.720 | I am your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:53.280 | Have a great weekend.
00:11:54.280 | [END]
00:11:55.280 | Thank you for listening to this week's episode on the podcast.
00:11:56.280 | We're going to break for the weekend now, and you can catch up on all the episodes from
00:11:57.280 | the week through the APJ app for Apple and Android devices, of course, or you can go
00:11:58.280 | to our web home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:58.280 | [BREAK]