My granddaughter turned seven months old and has a new swing at her home in Tyler, TX. Candice, my daughter-in-law, will be a dentist in that city while my son begins work on a PhD in church history. How fast the days are going…at least for grandma. I helped watch Axia while the movers carried the boxes and furniture into their new home. While Axia napped I picked up my iPad and caught up on some Facebook posts from friends. I saw a video that afternoon on a friend’s post that left images I go to sleep with, wake up with in the night, and think about during the day.
I have known I needed to write this blog for several days, but I have not looked forward to this moment. Every now and then God will not turn me loose. I will link to the video, but you need to understand that it will not leave you if you watch it. It is real, it is graphic and it is truth – but some of you should not watch it. So, please read the whole blog post, pray and then do as God would lead.
Why have I wrestled over this post for several days? Why have I chosen to write it? Let me answer those two questions and then you can decide what to do.
My blog posts go out to a lot of people, but my primary audience is Christian. The video will be painful for anyone who has had an abortion, anyone whose child has had an abortion, and for some of you who have lost babies before they were born. I never want to hurt people and I know this video has the potential to cause pain. So why am I going to include it?
As I watched my granddaughter sleep and compared her life to the life in the video, I came to the clear understanding that the only real difference between the two babies was that one baby was wanted, and the other was not. I spent the summer writing Bible study lessons out of the Minor Prophets. When I think back on those weeks of study and writing, the most potent truth that I learned was this: God typically brings judgment and discipline most decisively to the people who are supposed to know better. That is why I am writing this to you.
The youth pastor at one of our churches told Jim, “You will never see a pregnant girl at the neighborhood’s high school.” At first Jim thought the youth pastor was a bit naïve, then realized that he was referring to abortions. A deacon sat in his office one day sobbing and asking for prayer. Meanwhile, his wife and daughter were at an abortion clinic “fixing” the problem. The wife and daughter were back in church a week later, continuing to teach and minister as if a child had never existed. And that story is repeated daily in our country.
This blog post, and the horrible video I will include, is written for those of you who will face the choice. If you think your daughter’s relationship with her boyfriend is unbiblical and a child might be created, pray, sit down with her and watch the video together. She needs to know that she could make a baby and might be faced with a situation that has no easy answer. If a friend has shared her situation with you and is considering allowing, or even paying for an abortion, pray then sit down and watch this video. Abortion is the easiest choice in the moment – but it has lifelong consequences.
When Christian parents enable an abortion, then move forward at church as if nothing ever happened, they announce to their child that faith is merely superficial and not reality. It might seem that you have enabled your child to have a better life, but if faith is not real and powerful, it is not a working faith. If God allowed a baby to be created, God chose for your child to own that consequence. Do not help your child avoid the work of God in his or her life. Do not help your child to move forward with a life that is burdened with a terrible lie. It is a baby. The only question is how to give the baby the life it deserves.
Jim has written a lot of great resources on this subject. The Denison Forum exists to offer biblical truth, even when that truth is painful and hard to hear. I also want to recommend one of our favorite websites on the subject: ONLINE FOR LIFE offers help for anyone who has dealt with, or is dealing with, the choice to abort a baby.
Please know there is never a sin that God cannot forgive. Please know that God judges and disciplines his children when they sin. Please know that I, and every Christian you know have experienced God’s grace, God’s forgiveness, as well as his judgment and discipline. As an older, and hopefully wiser Christian, I can honestly say the best choice for your life is always going to be the choice that God will bless. Those are the consequences that you should always choose, those are the consequences that you most want.
For any of you who have remained neutral on this issue, I will close with this video. Remember what I have said about it. When my friend sent it to me it came with the heading, “Still support abortion?” Watching it will answer that question for you.
Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline and understanding. -Proverbs 23:23
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