Tuesday, September 9, 2014

A Life in the Balance

Strange day as a pro-life counselor at the abortion mill yesterday. Many women took our literature. Many seemed conflicted, and looked tearful. One who had aborted last week and was there for a checkup talked with us for quite a while. She was filled with remorse, and told us she would not do it if she had the choice again. She will be followed up by one of our grief counselors. Two women chose life. I spoke at length with a man who had dropped a woman off at the mill and then was sitting in his car. He mocked me, laughed at me, challenged me with many questions, but then fell silent, and seemed to be listening. He went back in the abortion mill and both he and the woman left before the abortionist arrived. God's word is convicting, and powerful. For now, it appears that couple's baby is safe.

A young woman was walking down the street. I approached her, since sometimes women do indeed walk in for an abortion. When they are walking down the street, I walk to meet them as far from the mill as I can, and I sometimes have several minutes to talk with them.
"Are you here for an abortion?" I asked.
"Oh no," she said, "I have four children! It is not easy but I would never kill them. But my sister is pregnant...and she is thinking of aborting her child."
"Let me give you my name in this pamphlet," I said, handing her our Tiny Hands literature that shows fetal development and verses to support letting the baby live, "You tell your sister that we will help her if she will give us the chance. Have her text me."
"I will," said the young lady, "I will show her this right now."

I waited all afternoon and finally got a text. It was from the pregnant woman. She was in dire financial need, but she was willing to meet me at our Monroe H.E.L.P. mobile RV today for a free ultrasound. I promised I would give her a list of resources that could help her. I gave her phone numbers immediately of Christian and public organizations that can help with utility bill assistance, her pressing need. Two Christian women, Facebook friends, texted me with significant help financially towards her electric bill if needed.

"Do you want to keep this baby?" I texted to "C".
"I want to, but I am considering abortion," she responded, "But then again, it's like mixed emotions."
"I understand," I told her, "Please give us the chance to show you other options and stand alongside you through this."
"OK," she said.

When I was talking with the man in the truck yesterday, the mill bouncer was also engaged in verbal battle with me. He asked some very good questions, the age old one about God's soveignty and free will. This is a tough issue to battle in a 2 minute exchange in front of an abortion mill, but we must fight where the battle rages. Basically, he asserted if God controls everything, then God is in control of him being a bouncer helping usher women in to kill their babies.
"So," mocked the bouncer, "I am going to hell because I am a bouncer and God made me a bouncer?"
"No, you are going to hell if you choose to refuse His gift of eternal life through Jesus' sacrifice. And if you believe that He died that gruesome death on the cross for you, you will love Him so much that you will desire to do what He wants of you."
"Then why am I here if God doesn't want me here?"
"Because you are disobedient to His call."
For some reason, both he and the man in the truck fell silent at that. One never knows what strikes a chord in people. Maybe he was just tired of talking, but for the rest of the time I spoke, he was silent.
I told him that God is indeed in control of everything, but He gave us free will, the choice to choose Him...or not. Otherwise we would be a bunch of mindless robots who love Him because we have no other choice. If we don't go to Heaven to be with God for all eternity, it is because we choose not to be there. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

So, at any rate, today I go off to a new and different person, but the same battle. Join God, or rebel against Him? I was trained to counsel on the RV a couple of weeks ago. This will be my first time doing so. A baby's life is at stake, so I ask that anyone who is so moved would please pray that God's hope and presence and mercy and comfort would be apparent and that this mama would choose life. I also pray that the Christian community would rally around her to provide her needs, and then support her to choose a better path, God's path, from this day forward. She can choose life or not, God or not. I pray she chooses life in Him and through Him.

Thank you.

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Psalm 119:105 

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Matthew 7:13 

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

Proverbs 3:6

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Mark 1:1-45 

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

John 14:6 

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Mark 1:3 

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”

Hebrews 10:26 

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,

2 Peter 1:20-21 

Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Proverbs 3:5 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

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