The
Shepherd and the Sheep Dog
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| A day in the life |
Every good shepherd
needs two things. Can anyone think of the first one? Every good shepherd needs
some sheep. Otherwise he would just be some guy standing in a field. Secondly,
every good shepherd needs a sheep dog. The shepherd has his crook, or staff, that
he can use to prod and guide his sheep along with, but if he uses that staff to
whack his sheep they are going to be afraid of him. A sheep dog comes along and
does everything the shepherd tells it to do—it bites and barks at the sheep to
get them going where it wants them to go. The sheep hate the sheep dog, but
they love the shepherd. Today I’m going to play the role of the sheep dog and
talk with you about something difficult, and try to direct and guide you in a
direction. I’ll try not to bite, and hopefully, you won’t hate me when its over.
Just a few weeks ago, January 22,
was the 42 anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decisions of Roe vs. Wade
and Doe vs. Bolton. Hand in hand, those two cases opened the door for legal
abortions in all 50 states, through all 9 months of pregnancy, for any or no
reason whatsoever. When the Supreme Court made its decision on Roe vs Wade,
they very arrogantly believed that they were settling the issue for good. When
the decision was made, and legal access to abortion was the law of the land,
Protestant churches viewed abortion as a birth control issue, stepped back from
the fight, and let the Catholics handle it. Like Pontius Pilate, we washed our
hands of it, while millions of innocents were led off to be slaughtered.
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| Just doing my job. |
Josef Stalin said, “One death is a
tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” I have some statistics for you.
Since January 22, 1973, over 57 million babies have been legally aborted in the
United States alone. At this time there is an average of between 3,500 and
4,000 surgical abortions every single day. One out of every three women in the
US between the ages of 13 and 45 will have had an abortion. Since 1980, over
1.3 billion babies have been reported to have been aborted worldwide. That
number does not include countries and states that do not report their abortion
numbers, like California. 1.3 billion is also 6 times the earth’s population at
the time of Jesus. And finally, between 1882 and 1968 3,446 African Americans
were lynched in the United States. There will be more African Americans than
that aborted in the United States in less than 3 days.
Want to hear another reason why our
churches remain silent? Church leaders either have had an abortion in their
past, or are afraid of rehashing the pain of abortion in their congregants.
This is because 65% of all abortions are performed on women who claim
Christianity as their religious affiliation. It breaks down to 37% Protestant
and 28% Catholic. Studies have shown that every abortion affects 24 people. I’m
going to lowball that number down to 6—a mother, a father, and two sets of
grandparents. That means for every 4,000 women who have had an abortion there
are 20,000 other people affected by it, too. If 65% of that 24,000 are Christians,
then there are 15,600 new men and women in our churches today that are affected
by abortion. There were 15,600 new men and women yesterday, and there will be
15,600 more tomorrow. And the next day after that. If there were 6 people
affected for every one of the 57 million babies already aborted, there are
222,300,000 Christians in our churches who have felt the pain of abortion. And
yet, I don’t know of a single church that offers post-abortion support groups.
It seems we’re content with speaking on the sanctity of life one Sunday a year
and committing to pray for our leaders. I would argue that if the government
came out with a law that made it legal for non-Christians to kill Christian
children under the age of 5, we would be more aggressive about it. I would also
argue that if someone ran into the sanctuary and said “There’s a crazy man in
the nursery with a knife!” we all would run to the nursery to stop him, regardless
of whether or not we had any children in that nursery. I am here to tell you
that this week a man will fly into Pensacola, kill about 30-40 children, and
then fly home Friday afternoon. If the Christian church does not stand guard
outside of the abortion facility and say, “This is wrong!” we might as well put
up a sign that says that we approve of what goes on there. Will you be willing
to stand guard with us?
If you’re like me, I was willing but
I had no idea what I could do to help. I became involved with a group called 40
Days for Life. This organization was started in College Station, TX when a
young church secretary wanted to do something to stop Planned Parenthood from
coming into her town. She called a meeting of pro-lifers in the area and they
started a 24 hours a day prayer vigil that covered 40 days. When they were
finished, they were amazed at what God had done in that time, but thought it
was over. Word had spread about what they did, and people started doing their
own campaigns in their towns. Since 2007 there have been over 650,000 people
who have participated in 3,336 total campaigns, in 27 different countries. 107
abortion workers have quit, 59 abortion facilities have closed, and the best
news of all is that 9,699 babies have been saved by the direct actions of 40
Days for Life.
Pensacola’s next 40 Days for Life
campaign kicks off February 18th, and is primarily made up of
prayer, fasting, and community outreach. Our goal is to have a constant prayer
vigil held outside of the facilities between the hours of 7AM and 7PM. Many
times we are the last prayer for the baby going inside the facility, and the
first prayer for the healing of the mothers and fathers coming out of the
building. The prayer vigil is a large part of what we do, but it is not the
only thing we do. There is also fasting. You can fast one meal a day, or fast
from social media, or electronics. Whatever God is leading you to give up, give
that up and use the time to pray to end abortion.
Finally I can’t finish without
saying this: yes, abortion is a sin, but it is not the unforgivable sin. When
our churches remain silent on the issue, even if it comes from the good motive
of not wanting to rehash bad memories, all it does is solidify in the minds of
post-abortive women and men that what they did was so wrong that no one will
even talk about it. Pretending the wound isn’t there doesn’t make the wound go
away. The only way the wound will ever heal is by taking the bandage off, and
turning it over to the Great Physician. Abortion breaks the 6th
Commandment—You should not murder—but there are nine other Commandments that
condemns us all to hell apart from a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
