Prayers for infertility and child loss

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Bible verses about infertility and childlessness

What each passage meant where it was written, and what it does and does not offer you now.

How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

Psalm 13:1–6

David asks the question four times in two verses and God does not correct him for it. This is what a complaint sounds like inside Scripture rather than outside it. If you have been told that asking how long is a failure of trust, this psalm is evidence against that. The trust in verse five comes after the complaint, not instead of it.

I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I have not been drinking wine or strong drink, but I poured out my soul before the LORD.

1 Samuel 1:1–20

Hannah is praying so hard the priest assumes she is drunk, and her husband has already tried the line about being better to her than ten sons. Both responses are familiar to anyone in this. What the passage gives you is the shape of her prayer, not a guarantee of her outcome. Samuel’s birth belongs to his particular calling in Israel, and it is not a promise made to you.

Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, when the season comes around, and Sarah will have a son.

Genesis 18:9–15

This is the verse most often quoted at people who cannot conceive, usually with the second half left off. Read whole, it is a dated, specific promise to one couple inside the covenant story, not a general principle about what God will do for anyone who believes enough. Sarah laughs at it. God does not punish her for laughing.

She called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees,” for she said, “Have I even stayed alive after seeing him?”

Genesis 16:1–13

Hagar is a slave, handed over because Sarai wanted a child, then treated harshly until she ran. Nothing that household does is offered as a model. What survives the story is where God turns up, which is in the wilderness with the woman nobody was looking after. She is the one who gets to name him. If you feel unseen in this, that is the line to keep.

I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”

Psalm 42:5–11

The writer talks to his own soul, tells it to hope, and then in the next breath accuses God of forgetting him. He does this twice. It is not a tidy progress from despair to faith, it is a person going round the same loop, which is exactly what a long wait feels like. Being in the loop is not evidence that something is wrong with your faith.

the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don’t know how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can’t be uttered.

Romans 8:22–27

Paul is writing about a whole creation in labour, which is a deliberately obstetric image and a hard one to read in this situation. The use of it here is narrow and practical. When you cannot pray, when the words have gone and all that is left is a noise in your chest, the letter says that noise is already being carried. You are not required to find better words first.

Wait for the LORD. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the LORD.

Psalm 27:13–14

Waiting here means staying with God through something unresolved. It does not mean the thing you are waiting for is on its way. People use this verse to tell others that a baby is coming if they hold on, which the psalm never says. Read plainly it is a command to keep your nerve, addressed to someone who has no idea how it ends.

Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1–3

This gets turned into a technique. Believe hard enough in the outcome and the outcome arrives, and if it does not, your faith was the faulty part. That reading makes every childless person a failed believer, which is cruel and is not what the sentence says. Faith here is trust in God himself, not certainty about a specific event you have decided on.

Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep.

Romans 12:15

Churches are usually good at the first half and poor at the second. There is a Sunday for a baptism and no Sunday for a loss that was never announced. If someone has handed you a verse instead of sitting with you, this is the instruction they skipped. It is also worth saying to yourself: you are allowed to want the weeping half.

Quoted from the World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain. Every reference on this page was checked against the text.

Questions people ask

Is my infertility a punishment for something I did?

No. The idea takes hold because a few Bible narratives describe God closing a particular womb, and people generalise from there into a rule about everyone. It is not a rule, and Scripture elsewhere spends a great deal of energy attacking the assumption that suffering maps onto sin. Fertility has medical causes, many still poorly understood. If guilt is sitting on you, say that out loud to a priest, a pastor or a counsellor rather than carrying it alone.

Does praying more make conceiving more likely?

Christians differ on this, and Scripture does not explain why some prayers are answered as asked and others are not. What it never does is make the outcome a measure of how well you prayed. Scripture is full of people who prayed and received, and people who prayed and did not. What prayer reliably does is keep you in contact with God while you are in it. Pray because you want to talk to him, not because you are trying to reach a threshold. There is no threshold to reach.

Is it wrong to be angry with God about this?

It is not. A large part of the psalms is people telling God he has forgotten them, and those complaints were kept in the book and sung in worship. Anger addressed to God is still a relationship. The danger is not the anger, it is going silent and drifting off without ever saying why. If all you can manage is one blunt sentence about how unfair this is, say that.

How do I pray for a friend who cannot conceive?

Ask them what they want prayed for, and then pray that. Do not assume it is a baby every time. It might be getting through a sister’s due date, or being able to eat, or their marriage. Avoid handing over a verse, a story about your cousin who conceived once they stopped trying, or a reason this is happening. Say you are sorry, keep turning up, and remember the dates they have told you about.

What if we have decided to stop trying?

That decision is not a failure of faith, and it is not giving up on God. People come to it after treatment ends, after the money runs out, or simply because they cannot keep living inside a two week cycle. Grief usually follows, and it deserves the same attention as any other bereavement, including from your church. You are allowed to stop praying for a child and keep praying.

Prayers for infertility and childlessness

When the test is negative again

The moment you already know

Before you tell your partner

Not again, and nothing else

Before the scan, before the results

In the waiting room

For the people treating us

Waiting for a phone call

When you are angry about it

How long is this going on

At three in the morning

Angry and still here

When my body feels like an enemy

When someone else announces a pregnancy

The message on your phone

Going to the baby shower

For the friend who told you

Sitting through a church service

For a loss nobody else counted

You saw what nobody saw

On the date it would have been

For the one we lost

Bible verses about infertility and childlessness

Where these verses get misused

Questions people ask