This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on 1/21/24. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Jamie Mitchell: Hello, friends, and welcome to Stand In The Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, Director of Church Culture at the American Pastors Network. Today is a second program dedicated to discussing the pro-life movement and highlighting a unique ministry attempting to push back the effects of abortion on our nation. We’re doing these programs hoping to educate the challenge, but also to inspire you, your pastor, and your church to take time on this coming Sunday, January 21st and focus on sanctity of life. Even though in 2022, our famous now Dobbs decision overturned Roe V. Wade and the federal legalization of abortion, abortion is still accessible, and now state governments need to weigh in on their position regarding life.
The Dobbs decision was a monumental battle, don’t get me wrong, but the war rages on. The church needs to engage in this battle, and today we want to have a conversation about the church and the important role that we have to turn back abortion. And to help me, I’ve invited Josh Kappes, who is the Vice President of a marvelous ministry that I’ve had the privilege to be involved with, known as Love Life. Love Life’s central mission is very simple, mobilize God’s people to love life enough to leave their homes, their church buildings, and reach out with the love of Christ to women who are considering abortion. Josh, I hope I communicated that properly. Welcome to Stand In The Gap, my friend.
Josh Kappes: Thank you, Jamie. I am so excited and I am so grateful for this opportunity to be on your program and as a pastor to speak to pastors and encourage my brothers around the nation. I’m grateful to be here.
Jamie Mitchell: Well, Josh, I want to discuss the Ministry of Love Life, we’re going to do that for the lion’s share of our program, but I first want to take a moment educationally and really share with our audience about how abortion has impacted this country. In a video on your website, you stated that this is the moral issue of our day. Amen to that. I believe that with all my heart. From 1973 to today, what has occurred in our nation because of abortion?
Josh Kappes: Well, from a statistical basis, well over 63 million human beings have had their lives taken in the womb, and as a result of that, the people who were involved in that decision, mothers and fathers, family members, doctors, abortion clinic managers and owners have also become a part of that and are dealing with the guilt and the shame, hardness of heart, and conscience that comes with that. I’m reminded of a quote by John Piper. He said, “Satan is more than happy to send millions of babies to heaven each year if he can bind even more mothers and fathers in guilt and shame for the rest of their lives.” And so we see the impact of that not only outside of the church, but inside the church.
And then, ultimately, Jamie, we have a culture of death in our country. If we cannot value life in its most vulnerable innocent stage and we create reasons subjectively as to why they don’t have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then what’s to say that we don’t arbitrarily apply other ways in which we devalue human beings outside of the womb. And we see that through pornography and all sorts of ways in which our culture and our communities today devalues human beings and, even more importantly, Jamie, the image of God on those human beings in a variety of ways in our culture today.
Jamie Mitchell: Wow. Josh, I started in the ministry in the early 1980s and we were just starting to become aware of the issue of abortion. The church, sadly to say, was initially slow to respond, but even today I see a resistance to speak on this issue. Why do you think that Christians don’t get involved with the battle against abortion as we need to?
Josh Kappes: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of answers to that, Jamie. And I want to say from the get go, we’re a ministry to the church and primarily a ministry to pastors. When I actually stepped out of my role as co-pastor of the church that I planted and came on with Love Life, I did so because I had a heart for pastors and I had been deeply impacted by Love Life and I wanted the same journey for other pastors. So we don’t bash pastors, but I believe that this issue does begin in the pulpit. I think pastors have been co-opted by this rhetoric that you can’t talk about it because it’s too political and there are certain things that the church should not weigh in. The problem with that is that the culture is not restrained in how it is discipling and educating Christians around this issue.
And so if abortion is really all we hear is from the news and from politicians, but we don’t hear from our pastors, our shepherds what God says, what is the heart of the father for people and for children? And, Jamie, you know this as well as I do, when you read the Bible and you see the heart of God for children and God’s purpose for children, that he has ordained praise from the mouths of infants and babes that the kingdom of heaven, it is to be received as a little child and if you harm one of these little children you should be cast into the sea with a millstone around your neck, man, we need brothers in the pulpits around the nation saying what God says and helping people to understand this is not activism. This is not Republican or Democrat. This is Christianity 101. This is neighbor love. This is the good Samaritan.
Abortion clinics are the only places where we know when and where broken and hurting people are showing up and innocent people are scheduled to die. And so it is reasonable that we as the church see these places as legitimate mission fields where broken and hurting people are at, and we can bring the hope of the Gospel and the help of the church to these people.
Jamie Mitchell: Amen, Josh. I think I mentioned to you just before we went on the air, statistically, 2023, 2.9 million people died in America. When you look through that list, they list 700,000 because of heart, 600,000 because of cancer. What’s obviously missing is the abortion figure. When you throw in the 1.1 million babies that were aborted in America last year, it raises our number up to four million people died last year, and 25% of that number was through abortion. We have work to do, beloved. When we come back, I want you to hear about Love Life. I want you to hear about ways that you and your church and pastors, you can get involved. This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue. This is a spiritual issue. This is a missional issue and we want you to be a part of it. So come back. After our break, join Josh and I as we unpack a little bit more on our pro-life special here at Stand In The Gap.
Well, welcome back. Thanks for coming back and joining us. My guest today, Josh Kappes from Love Life. He’s the Vice President of that ministry, a pro-life ministry that gets the church engaged in the process of saving the lives of pre-born babies and ministering to moms and dads who’ve had a joy to be a part of our Love Life chapter here in Raleigh. So, Josh, what is Love Life, how did it start, and what exactly is your mission and purpose?
Josh Kappes: Yeah, it’s a great question. The ministry was founded back in 2016 by a Christian business owner. A few years before that, he had been invited by another Christian business owner down to a meeting that happened to be in front of the largest abortion clinic in the southeast here in Charlotte, North Carolina. And the Lord really opened his eyes that day to the reality of what was taking place in his city. One of his largest clients was across the street. He never even knew that abortion clinic was there. And the Lord broke his heart but also opened his eyes to the reality, if we really believe it’s a life in the womb, why is the church not here? There was a handful of Christians there that were doing great work, but by and large, the church wasn’t there. So fast-forward a few years down the road, the Lord gave Justin a strategy from the Book of Nehemiah to mobilize the church.
You see that in Nehemiah chapter three. The phrase “next to” is used over and over and over again as the people of God took their place on the wall, worked together in unity to rebuild the wall in record time, and that’s what our ministry is based off of. So our mission is to unite and mobilize the church to create a culture of love in life that will result in an end to abortion and the orphan crisis. And, Jamie, the way that we do that, the way we mobilize the church, and by God’s grace we’ve mobilized over 1,000 churches since 2016 and have seen over 5,300 babies saved from abortion as a result, the way that we’ve done that is we have a 40-Week Journey of Hope that we do every year where we host peaceful prayer walks at local abortion clinics every Saturday for 40 straight weeks from mid-February to mid-November.
We ask pastors to adopt at least one of those weeks and we walk their church through a four step process during that week based on Nehemiah’s story. And those four steps are hear, pray, go, and connect. So Sunday morning, the church hears of the tragic truth of what is taking place in their city. There’s a presentation and the pastor preaches on life typically on that Sunday. Then they’re challenged to commit to pray and fast on Wednesday, attend the prayer walk on Saturday. We have a code of conduct. We ask people not to engage with anyone involved in abortion. We try and keep it peaceful, prayerful, worshipful. And then at the end of the prayer walk, Jamie, is the important part because we are telling people, “This is not the end of your journey. This is the beginning of your journey. Here are several different ways that you can get involved in ongoing ministry around the issue of abortion.”
And, Jamie, I want to connect this to your question earlier when you said, “Why aren’t Christians involved?” I think one of the things that we have seen hinder the church is, a pastor will preach a sanctity of life message. In fact, that typically is coming up here in the next few Sundays. They’ll preach a message, but there’s very few action points after that. It’s like we tell people about the reality of abortion and this tragedy that’s happening, and then it’s like, let’s pray or you can give some money to the care center and rightly so, and then we go to lunch. And I think we inoculate people when we tell them about this terrible thing that’s happening, but we don’t give them practical things to do. And that’s really where Love Life is a help to the church because we’re offering practical ways for people to do something about the issue of abortion. And it’s for everyone. Everyone can do something.
I think sometimes the pregnancy care center movement, the church has used that almost like an out. “Well, we give money to the care center and we check that box and so we’re pro-life now.” But there’s really much more that we can do to roll up our sleeves and get in the ditch. So we train people to mentor families who choose life to do discipleship with them. We train people to do sidewalk outreach to offer the hope of the Gospel and the help of the church. We do post-abortive healing, so we help people start post-abortive healing in their churches or get people connected to post-abortive healing. And then we’re also partnering with organizations around foster care and educating the church on foster care and adoption to care for the orphan outside the womb as well.
Jamie Mitchell: Well, Josh, my wife and I have done this numbers of times in Raleigh where we live. Just a personal testimony. Number one, you’re exactly right. We’ve been giving to pro-life organizations. A matter of fact, I helped start a crisis pregnancy center in the 1980s. That’s how long we’ve been doing it. But I have to tell you, there’s something really unique about actually going and standing across the street from the local Planned Parenthood where you are watching young women and older women go in and there is something that touches your soul. And then to actually do the work of spiritual warfare, Josh, I know you probably hear this from people, but when I was there and I began to pray, it was as if this heaviness, this weightiness came on me knowing that they were potentially taking the life of a human being literally yards away from where I was standing. That’s the kind of thing that we need God’s people to do. And you’re exactly right, Love Life provides that entry level, that very simple way. And so the commitment to a church is not an overwhelming commitment, is it?
Josh Kappes: Correct, yeah. I’ll often say we provide tracks for the church to run on. And so when you partner with Love Life, we make everything as turnkey as possible and as easy for the pastor as possible. We’ve worked really hard to develop our products and processes, so when that pastor says, “Yes, I’ll take a week,” we just need him to use his voice and we really do a lot of the heavy lifting on the logistics and working with his church family to make sure that they have a profound experience. And that’s really is what it is, Jamie. The first time that I went down to the abortion clinic with Love Life, I was undone. But the neat thing about it was I wasn’t undone just about the wickedness that I saw. It was the stories of life transformation that they shared with me as well, where it was like, “Yes, we have to be here. God shows up when we show up,” and lives were being so deeply impacted.
I called my co-pastor and said, “Man, we got to do this. We’ve got to partner with these guys.” And man, our church has been so deeply impacted by Love Life. Regardless of my role with the ministry even before I came on staff, our church was deeply impacted in a variety of ways, and we can talk about that later. But I agree with you, brother. It is an entry-level way for the church to get involved. Everyone can come and pray. Everyone can come and worship. We have people in wheelchairs, in all sorts of different types of circumstances that come to our prayer walks across denominations. We are a evangelical Christian organization. We work only with evangelical churches. But there is a variety of denominations that participate and it’s amazing to see pastors from these different churches that wouldn’t necessarily work together are now working together, partnering together, standing shoulder to shoulder with one another, getting to know each other, and it’s building a unity in the body of Christ in these cities where we’re at.
Because unity is formed in the battle. It’s formed when we link shields together. Some of these secondary and tertiary issues go by the wayside when we say, “Jesus is Lord. These children are his. He cares about them. He cares about their parents, these people who are involved, and we’re going to do something about it. We’re going to link arm in arm and join together as the body of Christ under the banner of Jesus.”
Jamie Mitchell: Josh, we’ve got about a minute or so left. Tell our audiences. They’re listening. They may say, “But we don’t have a Love Life chapter in our city or in our region. We have a Planned Parenthood office. We know where that office is.” How can churches band together? What can churches do? Could they start a Love Life group and begin the 40-Week Journey of Hope in their region?
Josh Kappes: Absolutely. I would encourage folks to go to lovelife.org, browse around on our site there, and then if they’re interested in coming to one of our boot camps, we do, really, it’s an immersion in our ministry three times a year on West Coast, East Coast, and center of the country. We bring folks in from around the nation to learn how to launch Love Life in their city. And so we look for people who are galvanizers. Some of our best directors are former pastors. And so yeah, we look for people who are highly relational. They’re galvanizers. They know how to relate to pastors. They can motivate people to get involved. And so yeah, if Love Life isn’t in your city, but you know you’ve got at least one clinic, maybe more, we’re always looking to expand.
We went from one city to four cities from 2016 to 2018, and then when COVID hit, we’ve exploded across the nation. And so now we’re in over 20 cities around the U.S. and we’re looking to launch four to five more cities this year. And so we’re excited about that. And so as the Lord leans and moves on people’s hearts, please reach out to us. You can also just email us directly, info@lovelife.org, and let us know you’re interested in bringing Love Life to your city. Our Director of Expansion will follow up and get in touch with those folks.
Jamie Mitchell: Hey, pastors, church leaders, let me tell you, one of the things you should be able to do is take your young people, take teenagers with you, take your kids with you. Start building that value of life and a disdain for abortion in the hearts of our evangelical young people. When we come back, we’re going to talk about houses of refuge, another element of Love Life. We’re talking about life here at Stand In The Gap Today today. Well, thanks for staying with us on this special Stand In The Gap Today as we are concerned about the value of life and the important role that the church can play in saving babies’ lives.
We’re talking with Josh Kappes of the ministry Love Life, and Love Life mobilizes believers 40 weeks a year to do peaceful assembly around an abortion clinic, to pray, and to hopefully make contact with women considering abortions. Josh, there is something new that Love Life is rolling out and it caught my attention. When you and I were at a pastor’s conference together, Houses of Refuge, what is this new program? And tell us how pastors and churches can get involved.
Josh Kappes: The House of Refuge Initiative I am very passionate about for several reasons. When I first started with Love Life, I went to a pregnancy care center in Raleigh, Jamie, where you live, and the director there told me that four women from a very well-known conservative evangelical church had come through their care center in a year, rejected their help, and went through and had an abortion. And that started this eye-opening reality to me that abortion is not just a problem outside the church. It’s a problem inside the church. And I asked myself the question, why is this happening? Why are people who are, whether they’re Christian or not the Lord knows, but they’re at least attending our churches, why are they running from us? Why are they running from the church when they find themselves in an unplanned or crisis pregnancy or even in a medically complex pregnancy?
And so that birthed the House of Refuge Initiative, and the ask of a pastor is very, very simple to become a house of Refuge is this, we ask the pastor to read the House of Refuge statement at least twice a year from the pulpit. And it’s a very simple statement. It can be read in less than 60 seconds. And it basically says, if you or someone you know has an unplanned pregnancy, we are a house of refuge. This is a safe place for you to come. Here is what we believe. Here’s what we won’t do. Here’s what we will do. And if you’ve had an abortion in your past, it’s not the unforgivable sin and we want to help you find healing through Christ. He reads that statement twice a year and then he gives us a rep from the church to ensure that the church has a plan to respond when people come forward.
We train that rep, we work with them to equip them. In fact, we just hired not too long ago a director specifically for the purpose of training reps inside local churches to make sure that they’re ready to respond. And so the way that we frame this Jamie is, we want to prevent abortions from happening within our churches. We want to provide healing to those who are suffering from a past abortion. And we know there are many men and women sitting in our churches week after week suffering in silence dealing with guilt and shame wondering, am I even a Christian? Can I be forgiven? Can God use me because of something they’ve done? Gosh, even 50 years ago, we’ve had people share stories with us of when they had abortions years and years and years ago. People don’t know, their husband doesn’t know, or it’s a secret that they’ve kept from people. Man, God is setting people free, Jamie, around the nation as pastors are using their voices to speak redemptively about abortion.
So we train that rep, we equip them. And I forgot my third P. The third P is we’re protecting the unborn in our cities. And I’ll tell you how we’re protecting the unborn. When a pastor tells his people that, “We are a house of refuge,” now when they’re out, wherever they live, work, and play, they’re missionaries for the unborn. If they hear a neighbor, a co-worker, or a classmate talking about an abortion or taking their daughter for an abortion, they’re encouraged and emboldened to speak up and say, “Hey, you don’t have to do that. Our church is a house of refuge. We’ll help you.” And just in our church alone, Jamie, two moms chose life this past year as a result of people in our church intervening in their stories and letting them know, “You don’t have to do this. We’ll help you.”
And in fact, the very first Sunday, this was a few years ago now, that I read the House of Refuge statement to our church, there was a young girl who found out the night before that she was pregnant. She wasn’t married. And she said, “When I heard you say that statement, I felt like God sat next to me in that service.” And we got to disciple her, her family, her now husband through that process, and we’re still walking with them and they’re actually about to have their second child now. So it’s amazing when you just clear the air and you take out the theater of the mind and how the enemy works in the theater of the mind, “Hey, they’re going to kick you out, they’re going to judge you, they’re going to gossip about you.” And let’s be honest, that has happened in the church over the years. But we get to change that and we get to say, “You know what? We’re not going to do that. We’re going to love you. We’re going to walk alongside you. We’re going to disciple you.”
And what’s interesting, Jamie, I didn’t have to tell her to confess her sin. She knew she sinned. She confessed it on social. She confessed it to the church. She speaks at prayer walks now. And because there was an environment for her to bring sin into the light and just realize being pregnant is not a sin. A baby is not a punishment. You may have made a sinful decision that got you in that position, but let’s be clear about this child is a blessing. And now we want to be a part of your journey and help walk with you through this.
Jamie Mitchell: Josh, I’ve always said that sin abounds because of opportunity and anonymity. Because the opportunity to sin or to act on my sinful impulses or act on my wrong thinking, but also anonymity that I can hide it, no one will see it. And so one of the things as a pastor and as somebody who has talked about this for a long time, one of the keys to turning back abortion and really helping women is the fact that they need to know that there is support. There’s going to be help. A lot of times they’re rejected by their family. They’re rejected by their peers. They are going to lose out on finishing high school or finishing college or starting a career or finishing an athletic career, whatever it may be, and when they begin to hear that there’s hope and there’s support.
But it is hard for me to hear, Josh, that abortion is happening so rampantly in the church. And I don’t know what the statistics are, I know that you probably know, but I’ve heard that there is a greater percentage happening in the church than we want to admit. What can pastors do to get their churches involved with House of Refuge? And Josh, again, I’m here to challenge pastors, why wouldn’t a pastor want to do this? What roadblock is standing in his way?
Josh Kappes: A lot of pastors, that is their response, “Man, why wouldn’t we do this?” And we’re so encouraged when we hear that. Others, obviously, leadership structures are different, so they need to speak to their elder board or their directional team or whatever it may be. And let’s be honest, there is a cost involved. Not everybody likes when we talk about abortion from the pulpit. Again, because, “Well, it’s too political. You shouldn’t talk about that, pastor.” But I really believe, and the way the statement is written, we give churches the ability to tweak that statement as they see fit, to fit their context. But man, when you speak biblically and redemptively about abortion, first and foremost, you please the Lord and that’s the most important thing. But then, secondly, people who genuinely desire to be right with the Lord, they’re going to receive it. And those who fight against it, they need discipleship or they may not even know the Lord potentially.
So I would encourage pastors to go to lovelife.org/refuge. There’s some explainer videos on there, and you can get the process started about learning more. That’s lovelife.org/refuge. Jamie, the statistics that you mentioned, according to a Life Way Care Net study that was done, 40% of women, there was 1,200 women surveyed, were attending church at least once a month at the time of their abortion. 0% said the church had any bearing whatsoever on their decision of whether or not to abort. That’s a huge problem and, again, it’s why I believe the solution begins in the pulpit. It’s not the entirety of it, but it begins in the pulpit. We have got to enter into the conversation and disciple our people biblically because they have clearly been discipled by the culture in terms of sex and sexuality, and then also connected with that, this issue of abortion.
I mean, you just look at what happened when Roe V. Wade was overturned. How many pastors were sheepish about celebrating that? Some even almost upset. It was strange to me and I think by and large it’s because we have been educated by the culture on this issue rather than the Father’s heart. Jamie, one of the most convicting passages of scriptures in the Book of Ezekiel is where God rebukes Israel for taking his children. And that’s what the text says, “You took my children whom you bore to me and you offered them to idols as food.” God’s heart is grieved deeply. And this conversation around abortion, it typically revolves around the mother or the child, but the person that’s often left out is God himself.
And if we begin asking, what is the heart of the Father? What is God’s heart on this? What is God’s view of life? What is God’s view of children? What is God’s view of sexuality? That’s what needs to be said from the pulpit. I don’t have to promote a party when I talk about abortion. I’m promoting the glory of God and the image of God, and I am helping to shepherd my people according to the truth of the Bible.
Jamie Mitchell: Yes. Yes. Josh, you are exactly right. We need to start asking, what does God think about this? Instead of, what does the world, what does my voters think? What does my congregation? When we come back, on our last segment, we want to hear some stories from the front line, testimonies of God’s hand at work through Love Life so that it will motivate you to get involved. Come back and join with us in just a few moments. Well, this has been a great hour of learning how to engage in the pro-life movement and save lives through the ministry of Love Life. Josh Kappes has been with us and he’s going to share with us in just a moment some stories of life change. But as we were ending that last segment, there was two personal stories that I wanted to relate, and, pastors, I want you just to listen carefully, church leaders listen carefully.
Numbers of years ago pastoring a church, there was a young gal in our church and she grew up in our church, I knew her as a child, I watched her go through her teenage years, and when she became a young adult, she had a lot of struggles. I ended up talking to her when she was in her early 20s and as we talked she finally revealed that when she was 15 years old she got pregnant and her mom, who was a devoted member of our church, a committed believer, her mom took her to get an abortion. I was shocked as a pastor when I heard that. It just blew my mind. And then I realized that this poor gal had been struggling in her walk with God all of these years because of the latent guilt that was upon her.
Second story, in recent years, I’ve been doing a lot of ministry in a retirement communities, and during one of our church services, it was Sanctity of Life Sunday, a few years ago, Josh, you’ll be interested in this, Sanctity of Life Sunday, mostly 80 year olds, and we took time to acknowledge sanctity of life, pray for people considering abortion, whatever. And an 80 some odd year old woman, she had been attending our church service regularly, gets up and leaves. And days later, she reached out to me, furious, furious that we would talk about abortion in church. And what was so evident was either herself or her daughters or family members had, had an abortion and here in her 80s, she was still weighed down.
So Josh, this is why we do this, to educate people, to warn them, to encourage them, but we don’t want people to live in guilt, and not only saving babies’ lives, but saving the heartache in people’s lives. And probably through Love Life, you have seen tremendous stories of life change and rescue and liberating people from their guilt. Josh, encourage our people as we come to this last segment. What ways has Love Life seen that impact in people’s lives?
Josh Kappes: That’s a really hard question to answer because there’s so many amazing stories. I’ve had a front row seat to Miracles over the last almost six years now that I’ve been on staff. I want to start first with something related to what you just said. There was a pastor in Washington state who bristled at the statistic that I shared with you that 40% were attending church at least once a month at the time of their abortion. He didn’t believe it. And so on a Sunday morning, he had a message, and basically at the conclusion he asked people if they had been impacted by abortion in their family to come forward for a time of prayer. And every single person in his congregation got up except for two people and came forward for prayer.
In the weeks that followed that, they saw an unusually high amount of people coming to faith in Christ. And one of our leaders out there asked the pastor, “What do you think happened?” And he said, “I believe that when people came forward that Sunday, they rid themselves of shackles of guilt and shame that day and there’s a freedom and a revival that’s come to our church.” There’s another story of a gal named Izzy. We share her story often. She came to the abortion clinic, I believe it was in 2017, and she cracked her window down enough, just enough, for one of our sidewalk team members to put a pamphlet in her window. She took that pamphlet inside the abortion clinic, she began to read it, and there was a scripture verse in there that convicted her. She had. Had four previous abortions in her life, and she said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
So she walked out that day. She chose life for her baby. We connected her with a mentor. Later that year, she came back to our final week of prayer in November. We call it our Celebrate Life Prayer Walk. All of our churches are invited back to it. And we actually own the land next door to the abortion clinic there in Charlotte, Jamie, and on that land next door to the place where she was scheduled to die, her baby, Nazareth, was dedicated to the Lord that year. Pastors laid their hands on her, dedicated her to the Lord, and now Izzy actually serves on our staff. She’s our mentor coordinator in Charlotte. She helps connect moms who choose life with trained mentors in local churches here in Charlotte. She’s a part of the ministry. She’s in a church. She loves Jesus. She’s a worshiper. Her little baby, Nazareth, is a worshiper of the Lord.
She got up in front of her church the other day and sang the Enemy Thought He Had Me But Jesus Said, “You Are Mine”. She’s five years old and, man, when I watched that video, my eyes got a little misty, Jamie, watching that. But that’s the kind of thing that you get to see when you enter into darkness, you bring the light of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit into these places. And, Jamie, many moms have said to us now, as I mentioned, over 5,300 moms that we know of have chosen life, many have said they wrestled with the decision on their way there. They prayed for a sign. They were looking for a way out. And when they saw our teams there, they said, “You were that sign. You were the way out. You were the answer. Literally, a few months ago, a girl literally was standing next to my truck as we drove by the clinic to talk to our team and she said, “You guys were the answer to my prayers this morning.”
And I think that’s encouraging but, at the same time, Jamie, there are still a lot of abortion clinics around the nation that do not have a consistent Christian witness out in front of it. And so I think about all of those moms who are looking for that sign, and they are praying for a way out. They feel abandoned and alone. And not every woman is in that state. I don’t believe every woman is necessarily a victim, but there are many who are desperate. And if the church isn’t there, they go through that decision and they’re left with that decision for the rest of their lives. And so that’s why our ministry exists, Jamie. We’re mobilizing Christians into the number one moral issue of our day, not as activists, but as followers of Jesus, motivated by the love of Jesus for the glory of Jesus.
And when that happens, lives are changed. There was a gal in California. She had been a Christian two years. She was saved out of Buddhism. She got involved with our ministry and started doing sidewalk outreach, she was outside of an abortion clinic, and she just felt the Holy Spirit telling her just to stay there for a few more minutes. And this other woman pulled up, shared her story, and she said, “I don’t want to do this.” It was just before Good Friday. She chose life, went to Easter, and now she got saved Easter Sunday and is following the Lord. And so that’s what happens, brother, when the church shows up.
Jamie Mitchell: Josh, thank you my brother. Listen, check out lovelife.org. They will be encouraging to you and you can get involved with them. Do not forget Sunday, January 21st, coming up this week, Sanctity of Life Sunday. Encourage your pastor. Call them up. Tell them to listen to this program. Tell them that this Sunday, we need to lift up life. We need to do it every Sunday. We need to do it every day. And until tomorrow, thanks for listening. As always, live and lead with courage, and especially in regards to standing up for babies in the womb. This is Jamie Mitchell. God bless you. Have a wonderful rest of this day.
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