“If you and your Cities4Life team had not been there, my baby would be dead.”—Izzy, mother
Yesterday, several thousand Christians from almost 200 churches in the Charlotte area gathered with Lovelife Charlotte to celebrate life and pray for the end of abortion. I had dashed home from a week out of town caring for my new grandson. I wanted to attend the event and be on the sidewalk with our Cities4Life team in front of the abortion center to offer women tangible help and the hope of God. I was exhausted as it has been twenty years since I have been caring for an infant full time. God has a good reason for ending fertility in the aged.
I am glad that I pushed through my fatigue to be there.
As I arrived on the sidewalk, few others were yet there. The sun was just peeking through the trees. It was frigid. But the worship team for the Lovelife Prayer March was already singing. I was a good distance away from the stage, but I could hear them. As cars carrying abortion-minded women began streaming in, the sounds of praise music to God drifted across the crisp blue sky. One car slowed down at the entrance to the parking lot. The young woman driving the car looked at our small team, then drove on. I don’t know if she ever returned, but I pray that in that moment, God spoke to her and she decided to heed His call to save her precious child.
Later, I was called on stage to hold a beautiful baby girl and stand beside her mother. It was a great and humbling honor to do so. I had been the one privileged to slip our literature into the hands of the conflicted mother, Izzy, as she drove into the abortion center parking lot a year ago. She read the literature, God spoke to her heart, and she left. Three months later she called me as my name and phone number was on the literature. Cities4Life, Lovelife Charlotte, and countless loving Christians in our network have helped her. She is one of the most grateful women I have ever met, and it is a delight to see her blossoming in her role as a mother and as a child of God.
At the end of the Lovelife Prayer March yesterday, she asked if the pastors there would gather around her. She wished to dedicate her precious child to the Lord. Right there. Next to the abortion center.
What she had once intended as a place of death transformed now in her heart as the place of life.
And that is my prayer. May this place of death be vanquished and replaced by life. May the promises of God so overwhelm the pressures of the world that women would flock to HIM, not abortion, and Satan and death would be overcome
in their lives,
in our city,
in our nation,
in our world.
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Genesis 50:20
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Hebrews 12:11
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
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