The Power of Sin in the Absence of God’s Spirit Within

I have tried and tried, honestly and through hours of contemplation, to understand how someone could find purpose or joy in directing women into an abortion clinic and telling them NOT to talk to people handing out resources to help them choose life. I cannot understand how anyone could believe that is a positive, productive, or righteous thing to do.

After years of being on the sidewalks of the SE’s busiest abortion center, we Cities4Life counselors know that many women are conflicted even as they drive into the parking lot of the abortion center. The ones who talk with us, go on the mobile ultrasound unit and see their baby, explore their conscience and faith, and then learn of all the help and resources available, overwhelmingly choose life. We receive texts all the time from mothers thanking us for stopping them from making a disastrous mistake. They uniformly describe their new baby as the biggest blessing of their lives.

So how could a so-called ‘pro-choice’ advocate find joy in obliterating any choice but abortion?

Yesterday, a conflicted woman stopped her car to take our literature and talk with me. It was clear they were considering what I was offering. And then the ‘pro-choice’ volunteer told them not to stop and talk, to ignore us, to drive in and park, and that we were crazy. The woman kept our literature but drove in. 

As she walked towards the clinic, she held our literature. A clinic escort stopped her, told her she could not bring our pamphlet in. Without asking, she snatched it out of the woman’s hand, and tossed it in the trash.

I turned to the ‘pro-choice’ lady who had waved the car in and proclaimed us “crazy” for offering resources that could save that baby.

“Does it bother you at all that you are preventing someone from learning about the resources that might help them choose life instead of death for their baby?” I asked.

“Nope,” she answered, “I sleep like a baby at night.”

“Not like these babies,” I said, pointing at the abortion center, “Because they will all be dead.”

She didn’t say anything more.

I have been studying Romans 7 and 8, trying to discern exactly what Paul is saying in those chapters about the power of sin to deceive and derail. There are things he says that I am struggling to understand, but this verse is clear: 

Romans 7:25  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! ...

It is in Christ alone that we are delivered from the power of sin. Otherwise, we are as deceived and calloused as that ‘pro-choice’ worker who felt that she was helping women by obliterating any chance of them accessing the resources that would help them choose life.

This is the struggle out there every day. It is a battle for souls. A battle to choose life or death. A battle to choose God or Satan.

“If heaven is filled with you people,” the ‘pro-choice’ lady said, “I want to go to Hell.”

My fear is she will get her wish, but my purpose is to try to dissuade as many people as possible from following her there.

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Romans 7:21-25 NIV

[21] So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. [22] For in my inner being I delight in God's law; [23] but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. [24] What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? [25] Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.