There are reasons for seeking medical attention for infertility that can lead to sin. Answer these questions:

• Do you wish to “make a baby” at the risk of hurting, even killing, your neighbor?
• Do you think that having a baby is the only thing in life that can make you happy?
• Do you put your identity in motherhood rather than in your Baptism?
• Will your faith in God’s goodness to you in Christ Jesus be upset if you do not conceive?

These reasons for seeking medical intervention for infertility are temptations from the devil. These reasons entice us to serve our own desires and wishes, even when it means trusting the words of our doctors over the words of our Creator. We should be wary of these emotional snares that would bind our faith to things temporal rather than to things eternal.

What is our best weapon against such temptations and snares?

Rev. David H. Petersen gives us the answer in his sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – Invocabit (Genesis 3:1-21; 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; St. Matthew 4:1-11) as it appears in Thy Kingdom Come from Emmanuel Press:

All the temptations [of Jesus in the wilderness] show us something of the character of sin and the character of the God who overcomes sin. But the Lord’s response also shows us the best weapon we have against temptation and the only weapon we need. He says, again and again, “It is written.”

The strategy of the devil against our first parents, and then against our Savior, was to plant doubt. He wants us to place ourselves into the role of judge. We will decide what is good for food, pleasing to the eye, and capable of making us wise. We will decide if He is worthy of being our God. This is what we do when we declare, “My God would’t do this or say that.” But, in fact, we don’t get to decide who God is or what He should do. He tells us who He is and what He does in His Word. Faith built on emotions and feelings or our own reason and goodness is like seed sown on rocky ground. It has no root. In time of temptation, it withers and dies.

The answer to doubt is God’s Word. It is written. It is not fleeting, corruptible, or changing. It is solid, lasting, eternal. All things pass away, but the Word of God does not pass away. It is written, in the first place, on the page, not in our hearts. Even the Lord Himself, in the desert, submits to the written Word. It is the written, objective, unchanging Word. (Petersen, 29-30)