Sanctity of Life
Tom Shrader delivers a Sanctity of Life Sunday message marking the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, presenting medical, scientific, and scriptural evidence that life begins at conception and that abortion is a sin. He draws on Jeremiah 1:5, Job 10, Psalm 51, and Matthew 6 to argue that God forms and values human life from conception, and he challenges the congregation with statistics showing that a significant portion of abortions are obtained by women who identify as Christians. The message closes with pastoral warmth toward those who have experienced abortion, directing them to forgiveness in Christ, specific counseling resources, and the love of their church community.
“Abortion is a moral issue, and especially for those of us who are Christians, God will meet our needs — economic needs, emotional needs, relational needs, spiritual needs.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: National Right to Life Sunday - 2005
Recorded: 2005 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 47 min
Themes: sanctity of life, abortion, forgiveness, sin, life, conception, healing, human dignity, post-abortion healing, struggling with guilt, seeking forgiveness, woman facing unplanned pregnancy, parent, pro-life advocate, wrestling with past sin, seeking counseling
Scripture: Jeremiah 1:5, Job 10:8-12, Psalm 51:5, Matthew 6:25-26, Psalm 37:25, Psalm 68:5
Theological Themes: imago dei, biblical anthropology, sin and repentance, scriptural authority, redemption, life begins at conception, grace and forgiveness, human personhood
Full Transcript
Welcome and Announcements
Good afternoon, and good to see you. You are the proud, the few, the non-football fans — that is what you are. We were jammed this morning, and I couldn't figure it out. We were filled at 8:30, filled at 10:30, and I kept asking, what is going on? The football. So you are the real believers, and we are glad you are here.
Grab the bulletin, and let's work our way through it. I want to deal with just a couple of things that are in here. If you happen to be with us for the very first time, I would point out that the response tab detaches and is a vehicle you can use to communicate with us. If you are here for the first time, would you take a second and complete that registration form and drop it in one of the boxes as you leave this afternoon.
There are a lot of things in the bulletin that are absolutely worthy of your attention, but I want to highlight a couple of them. If you are new to the church and would like to know a little more about East Valley Bible Church, there is a class designed for exactly that. It is called Getting Plugged In, and the next class begins February 13th — details are in the bulletin.
If you are thinking about getting married and plan to be married here at East Valley Bible Church, it is required that you attend the premarital class. The next one begins in just a couple of weeks, so you need to mark the response tab so we can get back to you with all the details. If you were a part of East Valley Bible Church financially last year, your tax receipts are complete. You can pick those up in the courtyard right after the service. By law we have to have those out by the end of this month, so you have this week — and perhaps next week — to pick them up, and after that we will mail them to you.
We are also excited about Friday night, February 18th, at 7 o'clock right here in this building. We are going to invite you to join us for a time of praise, prayer, and fellowship — a time to come together and sing praises to the Lord and enjoy the many varieties of music you hear here Sunday after Sunday. Gary will be leading that night. It will be a time of praise and worship, a time to come together corporately and pray, and then we will head over to the conference center and have something fattening to eat, which will make it truly Christian. Mark that on your calendar: Friday night, February 18th, 7 o'clock in this room.
A couple of other quick items. If you ordered and prepaid for the Vatibakam book from last week, those books are out in the courtyard — please pick those up this afternoon. Also, one of our staff members received an email this week. It was very brief and simply said, "Hello, I heard Tom is no longer the pastor at East Valley Bible Church. I find that hard to believe, but I wanted to find out the truth from you." Now, maybe that is prophetic — I don't know. But it is interesting to watch how things get started. As far as I know, everything is just fine, and I simply wanted to give you a heads-up on that.
Sanctity of Life Sunday
This is a special Sunday for us. This Sunday marks the 32nd anniversary of one of the most tragic events in the history of this country: the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade. I want to talk about that today, perhaps from a slightly different perspective than we have in the past. I want to use a couple of commercials you may have seen running in the local area over the last few weeks, and then at the close I want to get really up close and very personal as we talk about this.
Let's pray together. Father, thank You for the gift of eternal life that we find in Your Son, Jesus Christ, and for the gift of life itself. You have come that we could take this physical life and enjoy it abundantly. But one in three pregnancies are terminated before that baby ever has a chance to enjoy life, and that is an awesome thought. It is my prayer today that You would drive the enormity of that moral issue home to us. There will be people who, as we talk here this afternoon, will inevitably feel guilt and perhaps even shame, yet I pray that I adequately communicate my passion but my compassion as well. Remind us that all sin is forgiven by Your Son, Jesus Christ, and on this solemn occasion, use this to awaken us, to remind us, and to touch our hearts. We pray it in the Savior's name, amen.
A Commercial Worth Hearing
Over the years, humanity has made terrible mistakes. People were treated as less than human — even killed — because they were a different skin color, because they were a different faith, because they were unplanned, unknown, and helpless. But over time, we are slowly learning that we are all God's children, created in His image. To disregard the value of human life, whether through hate or indifference, is wrong.
All human creation, regardless of race, religion, abilities, or stage of human life, has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — a right to love and be loved. As Americans, let us cherish the sanctity of life, because we know how it feels when others treat us as less than human.
That is one of the ads you may have seen over the last few weeks. It is Sanctity of Life Sunday, and in that context the scope is wide. It deals with the value of life from conception all the way through death — how we approach that life and the value of each and every human life. I am so far from an expert in this field that I probably don't even need to say that. I want to focus within this wide spectrum —
The Scope of Abortion in America
This afternoon I want to deal specifically with the issue of abortion. I intend to inform some, remind others, and it is my hope to both challenge and comfort you. As I prayed about this, I hope you sense and hear in my voice a passion regarding the sin involved in this topic, but also a compassion for those who have experienced this horrific sin — some who need to confess it, some who have and still feel extraordinary pain. One of the great things about my job is that I get stretched beyond my comfort level all the time. Over the years I have had conversation after conversation with ladies who are trying to help me understand what it is like to have participated in this particular sin and its long-term effects, and with gentlemen as well. Hopefully all of that can be brought to bear in these forty minutes or so.
I know that the minute we talk about abortion, there are some who immediately think politics and would say the church has no business in politics. I want to suggest to you this is not a political issue — this is a moral issue, and we have the right and the obligation to address it. In fact, there would be something wrong with us if we ignored it. It is, beyond a shadow of a doubt in my mind, the greatest moral issue of our day. It is one that years ago sent many of us, myself included, out into the streets to picket and to march, and it seems that over a period of time we have either grown used to it or felt that the effort was futile. But I want to talk about it here today.
A Date That Lives in Infamy
January 22nd, 1973 was the day that will live in infamy for many of us. It was the day the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in this country. I find myself grappling each and every time with how to help you get your arms around the size of this. U.S. News and World Report writes this: "The statistic is astonishing — 43% of American women will have an abortion in their lifetime if current rates are sustained. That would mean that, for better or worse, abortion is as common a life experience for women as divorce. More than three times more common than breast cancer, it would mean that more than twice as many women will have abortions as get college degrees." Forty-three percent — that is the number, and that seems to be across the board the figure we are willing to use: 43% of women will have or have had an abortion in their lifetime.
The War on the Unborn
Abortion has been referred to as a war on the unborn, and going down that track may help us see the scope and size of this issue. If we talk in terms of war — American war — and look at the casualties in American wars, they look like this: in the Revolutionary War we lost 25,000 people; in the Civil War, almost half a million; in World War I, 116,000; in World War II, 407,000 Americans were killed; in Korea, 54,000 Americans lost their lives; in Vietnam, almost 59,000. In this war on the unborn, the number is somewhere between 40 million and 43 million babies who have been killed.
Let me hammer the size of this once more. As a country, we are told we are just about reaching the point where we are not willing to accept many more casualties in the war in Iraq — we are at roughly 1,300. If you multiply that number by three, you get roughly the number of babies killed every day in this country. Did you get that? Take all the casualties of that year-and-a-half war and multiply by three — that is how many babies are killed in this country every single day. Multiply it by 86 and that is the number for one month. Multiply it by 1,000 and that is the number killed each year in this country.
As we learned more and more of the horrific suffering and death from the tsunami disaster several weeks ago, if you take that number and multiply it by six, you get how many babies are killed each year in this country. If you think back to September 11th and the Americans who lost their lives in those Twin Towers, take that number and add 600 — that is how many babies were killed that very same day in this country. It is a staggering number.
What We've Been Missing
Let me share one of those advertisements that poignantly reminds us of how many babies have been killed: "If you were born after 1973, about 30% of your friends and relatives are missing. Since the Supreme Court approved legal abortion 30 years ago, nearly one of every three babies was aborted. That means 43 million U.S. children, teens, and young adults are missing. While we know how all of them disappeared, we will never know what they had to offer. Life — see what we've been missing."
Isn't that an amazing number — one in three pregnancies, roughly, ending in abortion? It is a profound thought: what has happened to those children, their potential, and what it means to our country and our society.
Resources for Further Study
There is a great deal of information available for you to read on this topic. You can simply go on the web and begin to search and you will find all sorts of helpful material. I have a book I use all the time called *Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Questions*. Someone gave me a copy several years ago and this is now my third copy — they seem to disappear around here. We are an honest church with thieving staff, and these books keep disappearing, so I bought another one and keep one at home and one in the office. Randy Alcorn is the author, and I would encourage you to seek out more information by going to Google and typing in Randy Alcorn, which will drive you right to his website as well. Randy also has a newer book out — the first book I mentioned is more of a reference book, while this newer one is designed to be read.
The Church Must First Speak to Itself
Multnomah has published a book in their Today's Critical Concern series called *Why Pro-Life?* It has been out about a month or two. I went ahead and purchased 150 to 200 copies, and you can buy one in the office after the service for five dollars, which is a great price. The book approaches the issue from a scientific and medical perspective far more than a biblical one.
In this book, the author Randy makes an important point. He writes: "Two-thirds of Americans' abortions are attained by those who identify themselves as Christians. 18% of all US abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. That means nearly 250,000 abortions each year are performed on Bible-believing women." He then says this: the abortion issue is not about the church needing to speak to the world — it is about the church needing to speak to itself first, and then to the world.
Those are the two tracks I want to go down today. For the first part, I want to make the point that life begins at conception and that abortion is therefore wrong — wrong in every circumstance. I will make that point and use some data to support it, and I encourage you to go deeper if you would like. Then I want to come back and talk about the issue of abortion within the church itself, and get close and personal with you as a pastor and shepherd.
What Science Says About Life Beginning at Conception
Here is what we consider to be true: people are formed, known, and valued by God in the womb. You would expect me at this point to go straight to Scripture, and I will in a moment, but first let me read to you what those in the medical and scientific professions have said about this issue.
A professor of obstetrics from the University of Pennsylvania writes: "I have learned from my earliest medical education that life begins at the time of conception. I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood, and any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life."
A professor of genetics from the University of Descartes in Paris — the very one who discovered the Down syndrome chromosome — writes: "After fertilization has taken place, a new human being has come into being. This is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. Each individual has a very neat beginning, and it is at conception."
A professor from Harvard Medical School writes: "It is scientifically correct to say that an individual life begins at conception." A professor from the Mayo Clinic writes: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." A professor at the University of Colorado Medical School offers this insight: "The beginning of a single human life is, from a biological point of view, a simple and straightforward matter. The beginning of life is conception."
Another pioneer in the area of fertility writes: "I oppose abortion, and I do so first because I accept what is biologically manifest — that human life commences at the time of conception — and second, because I believe it is wrong to take an innocent human life under any circumstances."
A Personal Glimpse: Life in the Womb
I am sure you get things in the mail like I do — birth announcements, those little cards with a picture of the baby and all the statistics. We always put them up on the refrigerator for a while. I love that. We had tons of Christmas cards, and a lot of times from people we do not even know, but it is so wonderful to get the pictures and letters.
A couple of weeks ago I received, in a sense, a birth announcement from a friend of mine. His daughter is pregnant, and he sent me an email with a couple of pictures. It is his first grandbaby, so he is beginning the picture-sharing a little early. Take a look at these pictures.
That is 11 weeks. You can see a head, feet, and hands, and development clearly beginning to take place. The heart is already beating. And there — that is 15 weeks. When Susan and I were pregnant with Sarah, I remember them bringing out one of those ultrasounds and saying, "There it is. There's your baby." I thought, "Really? Right there?" In my whole life I have never taken enough of anything to make that look like a baby. But I am not left wondering anymore. There is the head, the hands, the feet.
Development from Conception to Fifteen Weeks
Let me tell you a little about what that baby has been through so far. Eight days after conception, that baby's heart began to beat. At 21 days, the heart began to pump blood — and not just any blood, but its own blood type. By the end of four weeks, all the major systems and organs had begun to form. The eyes were beginning to develop.
At 42 days, brainwaves could be recorded, the skeleton was completed, and reflexes were present. The mouth, eyes, ears, and nose had all begun to become distinct. Legs and arms were visible. It is at that point — at the end of eight weeks — that an embryo is now referred to as a fetus.
At nine weeks, that baby begins to squint, swallow, move its tongue, and make a fist. At 11 weeks, it begins to spontaneously breathe and move, has fingernails, and all the body systems begin to work. And that is what you are looking at right there.
Life in the Womb
That baby in that picture weighs several ounces. Here is what is significant: 88% of all abortions take place from that point you see there, backwards. At that point in the picture, the mother would not have yet begun to feel the baby move. It is a staggering thought, and every day in this country 3,700 of those babies are killed.
Here is what we believe: we believe that people are formed and known and valued by God in the womb. I am clearly not a scientist or a doctor — I did not even play one on television — but it is obvious to me that that is a baby. It is not a squirrel. It is not a dog. It is not a hamster. It is a human.
What Scripture Says
You would expect me to go to Scripture, and I will, just briefly. Jeremiah gives us an insight in Jeremiah chapter 1, verse 5. The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, and he says, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."
Job is praying in Job chapter 10, and he says this as he speaks to God: "Your hands shaped me and made me. Remember that you molded me like clay. You clothed me with skin and flesh, and you knit me together with bones and sinew, and in Your providence You watched over my spirit." Psalm 51, verse 5 — I expect you know that verse. The psalmist writes, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." He is not saying he was conceived in some illicit relationship. What he is saying is that from the very beginning of conception, he was a sinner.
Let me ask you the obvious question: who are sinners? People. The Scripture goes on and on, and I will just let those passages sit there for you to simmer on, to study, to look up. You will find so much data there. What I have discovered is that there seems to be a forming consensus that says life begins at conception. I heard the president of the National Organization for Women say that there is no question that life begins at conception.
The Argument from Common Sense
So how do we begin to deal with this? It seems to me a matter that is pretty simple — from science, from Scripture, and from common sense — that it is wrong to take that human life.
I remember reading Judge Bork writing about a time when he was pro-choice. He was pro-choice, and his wife came to him with what he recorded as a very simple argument that changed his mind. She said: suppose your aunt was in the hospital and in a coma, and the doctors came to you and said there is absolutely no chance she is ever coming out of this. There is a faint heartbeat, there is a flat brainwave, and we would like you to grant us permission to pull life support. That is a really hard decision.
Then she reframed it. Suppose the doctors came to you and said your aunt is in a coma, and she is going to stay there for seven months, and at the end of those seven months she is going to come out of that coma alive and vital and vibrant and filled with vigor. Would you pull the plug? Never. And she said: that is exactly what you have with a baby in the womb. You simply let life continue to grow, and you get that baby out of the womb.
Why Women Choose Abortion
We do not have to guess why women have abortions. Let me give you what they share with us statistically. Seventy-six percent say a baby would change their life — why that is not a hundred percent, I do not know, because a baby is going to change your life radically. Sixty-eight percent said they cannot afford a baby. Fifty-one percent said they are not in a stable relationship.
Now, you might notice that adds up to well more than a hundred percent. Women were allowed to give two or three choices in these surveys. The vast majority of those having abortions landed in this area: this is a major inconvenience to me, this is going to change my life, I am not prepared for this moment, the father is gone, the marriage is not solid, or we do not have the money. By far, and it is not even close, those were the dominant reasons given.
Look at the gap between those answers and the next ones offered. Thirteen percent said the baby had a health problem. Seven percent said it was their own health issue. One percent said they were a victim of rape or incest. As you follow up on those statistics, you will find that most of the health problems with the babies either take care of themselves or can be addressed fairly easily, and the same is true for the health issues of the mother.
The Hardest Cases
I said at the beginning that I would be opposed to abortion, and I can hardly imagine a more difficult instance than rape or incest. The last time I taught this at Priority Living — and we have a pretty interesting mix there, a lot of businessmen and women, a lot of sharp people — I taught this issue, and I expected some commotion. There really was not any.
When I finished and was putting my things away, a man came up to me and said, "That is a pretty hard line to take." I said, "I suppose it is, but I think it is right." He said, "I know it is right." Then he said, "Have you got a second?" I said sure, and he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a picture of a little girl. He had taken her fishing, and there was fishing line all over her — he must be a fisherman about like me. She was so cute, and I will admit I am a sucker for little girls. I said, "God gave you a very pretty girl. I bet she is a sweetie."
He said, "What nobody knows is that my wife and I were on vacation, and she went out jogging, running through the park. A man pulled her into the woods and raped her. And this little girl, whom we love so much, is the product of that awful, hideous moment."
God is a great God, is He not? He uses even suffering and pain and heartache. I cannot imagine going —
The Reality Within the Church
Some of you have experienced the moment when a doctor walks in and says there is a physical problem with that baby — that it is less than perfect. I can't imagine facing that. And yet you would tell me now, as you love on those kids, that you wouldn't trade them for the whole world. In fact, sometimes those are the very kids who seem to bring the greatest joy.
Abortion is a moral issue, and especially for those of us who are Christians, we must trust that God will meet our needs — economic needs, emotional needs, relational needs, spiritual needs. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount and says, "Therefore I tell you, don't worry about life or what you'll eat or drink or about your body, what you'll wear. Is life not more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" If you are struggling with that — if you are trying to figure out whether you are more important than a condor — the answer is yes. What Jesus is saying is that God will meet your needs.
The psalmist confirms this in Psalm 37: "I was young, now I am old, and yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." And Psalm 68 declares that God is a father to the fatherless. Dad may be gone, but God will fill that role. He is the potter and we are the clay, and we have no right to say to Him, "What are you doing?"
What We Believe
After all of this, it comes down to this: we believe that life begins at conception, and we believe that taking an innocent human life is a sin. What I want to do now is deal with the size of this problem — and the idea that this is not simply a problem out there that the church needs to go and attack. It is a problem that is in here.
I quoted earlier an article from U.S. News and World Report. Let me give you their closing thoughts. They write: "Women are willing to discuss the issue of abortion, but they rarely talk about their abortion. The reluctance to talk stems not only from fear of others' reproach, but from the fact that many women haven't completely made peace with their decision." I love you, and that is why we are going down this road.
The Secret Inside the Church
Statistically, about one in six of you ladies in here have had an abortion, and some would say the number is probably closer to one in four. It may be one of the most closely guarded secrets in the entire Christian community. Many of you would have had that procedure performed when you were unbelievers. We attract to our church many men and women who come to Christ after their teenage years and early twenties — a season when a great deal of sin and pain takes place — and this may have been part of that story. And subsequently, God has saved you, and yet something is still lingering inside.
It may even be that this happened to you as a believer. I got to thinking about this recently, so I went to talk to one of the staff members in student ministries — someone who was a student here, then a volunteer, then an intern, and is now a full-time staff member. I asked him how long he had been involved in student ministries, and he said eight years. I asked him: in eight years, across junior high, high school, and college — a ministry that has grown to around 650 students — how many girls had gotten pregnant? He said two.
There is no way that only two girls out of 650 students over eight years have gotten pregnant. There is simply no way. There have to be students who suddenly found themselves in that situation — frightened, wanting to hide, embarrassed — and so they ran and had an abortion. Or they went to their parents, and their parents said they had to do it, driven by shame, guilt, embarrassment, and fear of the judgment that would come upon the family.
The Courage It Takes
It takes a great deal of courage for a girl to keep that baby — especially in an environment where, inevitably, there will be someone who judges that sin more harshly than his own, who fails to take the log out of his own eye while trying to surgically remove the speck from hers. I want you to know that if you are sitting here and your heart is bubbling up and you want to respond — if this is something you have never told anyone — you need to act on that.
Voices From the Clinic
With that, I want to show you one more video clip. Watch this, please.
*"It was strange. There were just so many girls in there. I felt alone, which was an odd feeling. I think I really knew deep down that what I was doing was wrong. I would have an eighteen-year-old son today had I not gone through with the abortion.*
*Walking into the clinic, I was just very emotional. I was with my girlfriend, and I really don't remember a whole lot, other than that they didn't ask for ID or anything — and I was seventeen. I was underage. I really didn't know what to expect, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, I really don't want to do this, but this is the only option I have.*
*It was like an overcrowded doctor's office — everybody just waiting for their name to be called, and nobody saying anything. Everybody had a very sad feeling. It was very stale, very cold.*
*I could never even say the word abortion, because they never used the word abortion. So 'termination' was okay with me. I was told — just from a friend who called the clinic for me over the phone — that it was a termination and it was just a blob of cells. I wanted to believe that, because I was just so scared and so terrified that I was even in that situation."*
Responding to Abortion with Truth and Grace
I was herded into a room with a bunch of other women. There must have been about a dozen of us, and there was a woman in there with us who was the counselor. The counseling consisted of just going around the room, telling us your name, and asking are you sure you want to do this, or do you think you want to do this. I just remember crying so hard that I could hardly catch my breath, and I had a pregnant nurse helping me, and she just said to me, "Are you okay?" It was clear that I was not okay, and that I was very confused and very distraught and really a little out of my mind.
When it was finally my turn, the woman who took me back basically said, "Now you know that this is for the best, and it'll be quick and simple, and nobody will know, and you'll be able to get on with your life." Then we went and changed, and we went into the other room for the procedure. We didn't see the doctor. We didn't see a nurse. We didn't see anybody. The first time I saw a doctor was when he came in to actually do the procedure. He didn't say anything more to me, didn't give me any additional information, did the procedure, and left.
I remember laying on this table, and I just remember another nurse — a totally different nurse — holding my hand. They had music in there. I don't even remember the doctor. I don't even remember seeing his face. I don't even remember anybody talking to me. I just remember her holding my hand, and I remember noises. We were whisked off to a holding room with other women moaning and crying, to make sure an hour went by, and then we were up and out the door. He said, "Go home, and you'll be fine."
I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was Daddy's little girl, and I didn't want to change. I was eleven to twelve weeks pregnant. My baby had fingers and toes and was fully formed, and my baby could feel. I don't think anybody realizes what they're stepping into when they go. I think they're looking for a quick fix. I think they're looking for just a way out of a situation they could never imagine themselves being in. It was horrible. It was really horrible. Now I have to live with the consequences for the rest of my life.
Abortion Is Sin, But Not the Unpardonable Sin
Let me talk about how we respond to this. First of all, it's important to understand that abortion is a sin. We don't want to mask that. We don't want to avoid that. We're not trying to run away from that. At the same time, it is not the unpardonable sin, and there is hope.
If you're sitting there saying, "I can't relate to this, this isn't my sin," well, you have a sin, and whatever that sin is, there is one way of redemption and forgiveness, and it's Christ and Christ alone. I would encourage you not to try to mask over the past, but to acknowledge it, accept that you have sinned, and accept the cleansing that you find in Jesus Christ and in Him alone. Maybe you have been in bondage over this.
It has been an intense week for me. I've talked to so many different women — one who actually moved here from another state decades ago to run away from this, hoping no one would ever discover that she had had an abortion. She said, "I can't run away from it. I can't get away from it." Another woman came up this morning and talked about her Christian daughter who, one day when they were alone together, said, "Mom, three years ago I had an abortion." The mother had been wondering what had changed so much in her daughter, and now she knew.
Resources and Ways to Get Involved
Please grab your bulletin. I want to point out one resource that is available to you there in the center column. There is a website — SilentNoMoreAwareness.org — along with a name and a phone number. I met with Joan and talked about this last week. I said I would put her name up on the screen, and she said, "If you put it on the screen, there are some women who are so sensitive to people's perception of them that they don't even want to be seen writing this down." So I want to provide you that number. It is a number you can call where you will get a person who can relate to what you have been through, who will love you and care for you. You are also welcome to talk to anyone here on staff.
Maybe part of your response is simply to get involved somewhere. There are all sorts of agencies out there. You can make it very simple — just call the Crisis Pregnancy Center over at Southern and Extension, and Haley will answer the phone and plug you in. There are all sorts of options. Maybe you would like to become more politically involved. There are all sorts of people looking for ways to address this problem through the legislature, through laws, and through the courts. You can visit azpolicy.org, the Center for Arizona Policy, or simply go to Google and type in Lynn Munsell, and you will find all that information.
As God moves you and touches your heart, you may want to become involved in different aspects of this extraordinary problem, which shows absolutely no sign of letting up. There is no way that the courts or the law, in any reasonable and foreseeable future, are going to change this. And you know what? That is okay. Because we want to change it one heart at a time and one life at a time.
Aligning Your Private Life with Your Public Life
I want you to pray. I also want you to make certain that your private life and your public life match up. I said this before, and I understand I am out on an edge and have zero empirical data to support this point, but I have a lot of common sense and suspicion. I cannot fathom that we have had but two girls get pregnant in eight years across junior high, high school, and college. You cannot afford to have your private life separate from your public life. It is a huge issue. And we have a huge God. This may be a fight that we will fight and fight and fight and fight, taking small, incremental steps toward seeing change.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for the life that we find in Your Son, Jesus Christ. That is what we talk about here week after week, but today we talk about physical life — the gift of human life that You extend to us. You make man in Your image and Your likeness. God, thank You for the gift of life.
It is truly staggering to contemplate that one-third of all women who become pregnant find termination of that pregnancy in abortion. Father, we pray that this sin would be driven from our land and that You would use us. Some, on a day like today, feel connected and they are ready to go — they are mobilized, ready to be plugged in. Others are saying, "I want to pray for these people; this is not my thing." Others have, at least in their own mind, had their sin exposed.
God, help them understand that this is not the unforgivable sin and that You love them. Let them know that they are in a church with a body and with a family that loves them. God, sin is awful, disgusting, and an abomination to You — yet let us forgive and love and encourage and build up one another. We pray this to You here tonight, in Jesus' name, amen.