LilyPotter

That it's the Word of God. Yes. Yes.

I don't think anyone caused it. I think it is a fact of having the possibility of making one choice or the other. If I sit my four-year-old in the kitchen with the cake I intend to take to the bake sale and say, "Do not touch the cake. It's not for us to eat." and then I leave the room, there are two possibilities that will occur. 1) He'll touch the cake (choose wrong) 2) He will not touch the cake (choose right). If he does touch the cake, though I told him not to, it won't be because Satan is sitting on his shoulder saying, "Touch the cake! Eat a piece! Lick off some icing!" It will be because he used his free will to touch the cake and not to obey my instruction. His desire for the cake superceded his desire to do what he knew was right.

Were you posting this to make yourself feel better about not having any more kids? Because it surely can't be meant to make me feel better. I am not pushing my husband to have more kids and I do not want him to have kids he doesn't want to have. DUH! I titled this post "unanswered prayer", not "how can I make my husband have more kids". The point of my post was to say why is it we could pray for something for years and the matter is never cleared up? I have prayed that he will change his heart and WANT another child. That hasn't happened. I have prayed that God would take away my desire, so that I do not want another child. That hasn't happened, either. I'm pretty sure I don't need someone new to point out the disadvantages of having a child while in the older age bracket.

Oy. So many things have come up here since my last post, I don't know what to address. First, I thought the whole point of why there are humans is so that we can have a loving and chosen relationship with God. That God cannot/does not have this relationship with any other aspect of His Creation. Animals don't provide this, because they don't behave according to relationship; they behave according to instinct. Angels don't provide this, because they behave according to purpose - God tells them what to do or gives them a job and that is what they are meant to do. They can't have a "loving" relationship with God, because they just do what He instructs - no free will involved. To me, it doesn't make sense that Angels have free will, because if they do, they can choose wrongly and to choose wrongly is sin and to sin is unholiness and if they are unholy, they cannot be in the presence of God. (Whew!) Heaven may tend to be empty by now. Second, I tend to think like exrockstar is saying. I believe we sin because it is one choice we can make. Not because Satan "makes" us. I also do not describe sin as "an attitude" and don't really even know what could be meant by that. Sin is missing the mark. It is less than the best. I do think Satan may tempt, but it is still a choice we can make.

Right, ex, but that fits with the Orth. Jewish POV that I was talking about. Satan's purposes (in this view) are not in conflict with God's purposes; he is carring out the tempter element that is necessary in God's purposes.

traveller and glorywatch, this scripture has often bothered me: I haven't looked at this in a while, but as I remember, the original translation just says "morning star". We equate the word "Lucifer" with Satan, but the literal translation is morning star. There is no reason to be confident that this scripture is even talking about Satan to begin with. Besides, it's right in the midst of talking about someone else, maybe Nebechaddnezzer? I don't remember exactly, but it's talking about some other arrogant skunk. Satan's backstory is never specifically narrated in the Bible, as far as I know. The story of how Satan came to be is based on church tradition. Also, why would God's holy beings ever "turn" on him? Isn't the power to choose good or evil a uniquely human characteristic? Angels are supposed to be those who carry out God's plans without choice to do otherwise. That is the whole purpose of humans having the uniquely human characteristic of being able to choose good or evil, to choose to be on God's team or not. And if Satan has already been judged, why does he need to wait around for his punishment? If there is no possibility of redemption, why not just bind him up and chuck him in the Lake of Fire now? Why the big wait?

I did a Google on this and discovered the Orthodox Jewish beliefs about Satan are not the same as Christian beliefs. TBH, the Jewish belief made more sense to me. Basically, the Jewish belief is that Satan is not in conflict with God. He is God's agent sent to tempt us. Those who resist his temptations prove their devotion to God. As in Job, Satan is given the explicit parameters for causing Job's pain. (Although I've never been thrilled to think of God outlining those things that happened to Job.) Anyway, it makes more sense to me than Satan being a once-holy being created by God for a holy purpose, who rebelled. Don't throw tomatoes at me, just hear me.

This question never entered my mind before, but since someone wrote about Satan could never repent or something like that, now I wonder. Why is there no posibility of redemption for Satan or demons? If Satan and demons are beings created by God and were originally good, why is it now never possible for them to repent?

Biblicist, sorry if you didn't follow my post. I did confuse you with another poster who said, "I have no expectations at all, I only serve" or something like that. So, sorry for that mistaken identity. However, you said early in this thread: This, plus your assertion that expectations are selfish, leads me to believe that you think it is bad to have any expectations of your spouse. I'm countering by saying that expectations are *NOT* inherantly selfish and it doesn't necessarily have an attitude of, "What have you done for ME lately?" You said your husband is a loving and gentle man. Is it selfish of you to expect that he continues to behave that way? Of course, you may have a moment, a bad day, whatever, when he is not loving and gentle, but does that mean that it was foolish of you to ever expect that he would be loving and gentle? No! I could say more, but my son has an expectation of me reading him a story and putting him to bed, which I go off now to carry out!

Biblicist, At the risk of beating a dead horse, I don't think what you say you believe is actually true. Of course you can only control your own behavior, but that does not (or should not) mean that you can't expect your spouse to behave any particular way. You said you have a gentle and loving husband. I submit that you have an expectation that he will most often behave that way. I assume you don't go to bed at night wondering if in the middle of the night, he'll sneak out, empty the bank account and kidnap the kids. Why? Because you have an expectation that he would never do that. You have an expectation of him continuing to act in a loving and gentle way. In the example of him losing his job, I don't think that is quite the same thing. It sounds like he lost his job due to circumstances beyond his control. Being a team, it makes sense that you would work if you can, even if this was not the way you originally expected it to be. Marriage certainly includes such curve balls. We need not pretend we had no expectation that it would be otherwise. Sometimes, I will come across a person who says, with an air of superiority, "I don't care what anybody thinks of me." But if this were true, the person would be a sociopath. All normally-functioning people do care what other people think of them. Every person who has ever uttered this phrase stands before me with clean hair, clothing that resembles in some way the things people normally wear, shoes on their feet, no brocolli stuck between their teeth...you see? If you truly didn't care what people thought, there would be no reason to eat with a fork, wear undergarments, sleep in a bed, live in a domain, cut the grass or use a toilet. Whenever you say you have no expectations of your spouse, it reminds me of this.

I'm so sorry you experienced that, Mom2Many. 2003 is when I lost my daughter at term and also had an early miscarriage.

Yes, that is why I know that the answer may not ever be another baby for Lily. Even if the answer was for me to get tired of wanting that, that would be an answer I could take. It's the limbo that I'm sick of. I don't want to want something if it's never going to happen. I would take just plain not wanting it anymore. My husband and I have talked about it so many times and gone over the issue so completely. His reasons are not silly ones, they're serious. I face risks in pregnancy, I think there's a one in ten chance I will have another placental abruption. Since he has no particular longing for all those big-family things I mentioned, he sees it as why tempt fate? It's too dangerous and we got three out of five here alive, why risk anything else? He's also 45 years old now. This is a major point for him. He is concerned about not living long enough to raise them all, or be a part of their lives as adult, etc. I would be totally on board with adopting. It has gone through my head enough times that I've checked out library books and read articles on the web. But, again, this huge sticking point of my husband's age is almost a bigger issue with adopting than it would be for having a baby by pregnancy. I don't write it off as a possibility, maybe a way that God will answer this prayer. But really, it's not going to be much longer before the passage of time is even too much of a negative for me. It's really because we're in the last year or two of this being much of a possibility that is getting me worked up about it. If we were several years younger, I wouldn't be pressed by this long-running unanswered prayer. But as the sun sets here, I'm starting to think it's going to be this Great Sorrow that I'll have to live with. And that just bums me out big time.

Biblicist, making a commitment to each other, serving your spouse does not preclude having expectations of them. As I said, I do have expectations of him and myself and he has expectations of himself and me. No, we don't always meet each other's expectations, we can and do fail to come through some times. That doesn't mean you can bail on the whole deal, of course. You seem to be saying "Expect nothing and then you won't be disappointed when you get nothing." To me, only someone who has no self-respect at all would actually carry out their marriage this way.

Yes, that is how I'm wondering, too. Certainly, *shew*, as you said, none of my hypothetical situations would happen in my marriage. But they happen to some marriages. If a friend told me one of those hypothetical situations was happening in her home, I would not say, "Yes, I knew he was a toad when you married him. Boy, that sucks for you." And I definitely wouldn't "nag" him if he was doing these things. I would leave. As far as having more children goes, I haven't nagged him about that, either, but when the subject comes up now and then, it goes the same way each time. Me: Yes, I still would like to have another baby. Him: Okay, and I still don't want another baby. That would be why the OP is titled "unanswered prayer". If it's "no for the moment", it's been a loooong moment. And there isn't much "distant future" left for us. This is why I'm getting messed up in the head over it. We're at the end of our time horizon. More because of his age than mine, but even my time horizon is late in the day. So if it isn't soon, it isn't ever, unless something very unusual happens. (Say, gaining custody of neices and nephews in the event of a tragedy.) No, this is not the "fix". It's not that I want a baby, it's that I want another child to raise. It's not that I want to just be around kids or take care of them, it's that I want to bring them up from little to big. I like the whole long deal of it, the learning to talk and learning to read and learning to ride a bike. I like their soccer games and their swimming lessons and herding them around at the library (but not the supermarket so much!). I like for them to have a group of siblings to grow up with; for mine, it will be a small group. I hope for them one day to flock home for Sunday dinners with their own clans and that happy chaos of a pile of grandkids running around. *Sigh* I need to stop; I'm getting sad.