A Dream Deferred:
Overcoming Satan’s Lies to the Childless BY Mark Musetti FUSIONext (Winter 2020-2021) Randall House D6 Curriculum
I’m not proud to admit that we have avoided numerous Mother’s and Father’s Day church services. My wife still ducks into the bathroom and cries after the newborns have been proudly passed around the sanctuary. And with a stiff upper lip, I choke back years of sorrow, dutifully trading them in for a half-hearted smile and a dream deferred as God’s attributes somehow escape me. Before I accepted Christ, I suffered from a crippling OCD in a futile attempt to control my relationship with God. In fearing His condemnation and wrath in my failures, I viewed His actions as capricious, often using me for His amusement. As a new believer, I struggled to break free from the notion that “God’s will” was just another way to explain creating order from chaos. And it was deemed acceptable based on an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God that answers our prayers according to His will (1 John 5:14-15). Another challenge I encountered upon immersing myself in God’s Word was in understanding the nature of His promises to His people. Shortly after we were married, we learned that without the Lord’s divine intervention, biological children wouldn’t be a possibility. My wife was inconsolable, and though I looked to Psalm 127:3-5 for comfort, I felt useless, unworthy, and quiverless. In my misconception of the same god that I feared growing up, I couldn’t understand why an egregious sinner like King Solomon would be blessed with so many children while we had none. I even tried to bargain with God in a selfish attempt to set aside my own sin. But from learning the origins of sin through the Fall (Genesis 3), along with the principal characters and their attributes, Eden’s perfection was forever changed into a world where earthly blessings weren’t a direct result of godly living. And our roles haven’t changed. God is the rule maker, Satan is the liar and deceiver, and we, through Adam and Eve, are the transgressors. God’s promises of blessings through childbirth were conditional upon the Israelites’ obedience to the Law (Deuteronomy 7:12–14). When they rejected Him and His prophets, the Lord ultimately withheld His blessings from them. Even today, we are outraged at the wicked whom God has given the hope of children, only to allow them to give into their evil desires by rejecting the very ones living inside of them. We know that Satan is the author and father of lies, because there is no truth in him (John 8:44). A preacher once taught me that if Satan owned a hardware store, he’d only need to sell one tool, discouragement, to do his handOCTOBER-DECEMBER 2022 5