Home / Topics / Bible Verses for IVF Struggles and Fertility Treatment
Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 1 did not begin with theological composure. "She was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore." She prayed with such intensity that Eli watched her lips moving and assumed she was drunk. She corrected him: "I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD." The prayer that God heard was not tidy. It was the unfiltered pouring out of years of longing, grief, and raw desire. That prayer, Scripture records, was heard.
Get These Verses Daily — Free“And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore.”
Hannah did not pray a composed prayer. She prayed from bitterness and weeping with such intensity she was mistaken for drunk. Scripture does not correct her emotional state. It records this as the prayer God heard. Raw grief before God is not disqualifying prayer.
“And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.”
The Hebrew zakar — 'remembered' — means God is moving into active involvement on a prior commitment, not that he had forgotten her. Rachel's waiting was not divine indifference. It was the interval before God moved. The interval has a limit.
“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.”
The Hebrew qanah — 'possessed' — means to acquire, to create with ownership and care. God calls the formation process in the womb his own work. Medical assistance in fertility is not stepping outside God's domain — it is cooperating with the creation process he calls his.
“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
When fertility treatment has depleted the words you have for prayer, Paul describes a Spirit who intercedes with groaning on your behalf. The groanings too deep for words are the language the Spirit speaks when you have run out of your own.
“He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.”
This verse closes a psalm about God's reversals of the most entrenched circumstances — the poor lifted from dust, the barren made joyful. These reversals are presented as characteristic of God, not exceptional. They describe who he is.
Genesis 30:22 contains a phrase that deserves examination: "And God remembered Rachel." The Hebrew zakar — "remembered" — does not imply God had forgotten her. In the Old Testament, when God "remembers" someone, it means he is moving into active involvement on a prior commitment. Rachel had been waiting — watching her sister bear child after child — for years. The "remembering" is the end of the interval, not the end of God's attention during it. The interval was not abandonment.
Psalm 139:13 says God "covered me in my mother's womb" — the Hebrew word qanah means to acquire, to own, to create with care and ownership. The creative act in the womb is described as God's own work, his own crafting. IVF involves medical assistance in a process God calls his own. Using medical help to assist that process is not stepping outside God's domain — it is using the knowledge he gave to medical science to cooperate with the creation he does.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
Romans 8:26 addresses a specific experience that maps onto fertility treatment: "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." The groanings too deep for words are the Spirit's language on your behalf in the situations where you have run out of words. The specific exhaustion of fertility treatment — the cycles, the numbers, the waiting, the grief — is addressed by a Spirit who groans with you when you cannot form a prayer.
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