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May/June 2019 Faith Fellowship Choose Life Vol. 86, No. 3 THEOLOGY DISCIPLE-MAKING INTERNATIONAL MISSION His Mercy is p. 3 North American p. 12 p. 16 Great Mission: Restructure Reaching the Unreached CLB www.CLBA.org CLB Living with Abortion 4 Anonymous FF Help and Healing Melinda Gardner FAITH & FELLOWSHIP 5 Volume 86 - Number 3 Walking Home fizkes/iStock Adrienne Droogsma Editor In Chief/ 6 Troy Tysdal Graphic Designer: Resurrection [email protected] Daniel Berge 8 Contributing Editor: Brent Juliot [email protected] CLB Copy Editor: Aaron Juliot [email protected] Cover Photo: F cusROY HEGGLAND Resurrection/azur13/iStock olesiabilkei/iStock All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise Changes Proposed Missionary Update indicated, are taken from the HOLY for WMCLB Danny B. 11 Cheryl Olsen 18 BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, NAM Restructure CLB News 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used 12 Paul Larson 19 by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com Cultivate re:Think The “NIV” and “New International New England Brent Juliot 14 Michael Natale 20 Version” are trademarks registered in The Bronson Family/2018 the United States Patent and Trademark Reaching the Unreached Office by Biblica, Inc.™ 16 Ethan Christofferson Quiet Moments Email prayer requests to: [email protected] tell us that it is God who knits a child together (Psalm 139:13), and even that the Leap for Joy infant John the Baptist leapt for joy in his TROY TYSDAL mother’s womb when he first heard the voice of Mary—the mother of his Lord KristiLinton/iStock (Luke 1:44). A few years ago, I was approached by a couple considering As the Church, we are created to stand against evil. We are an abortion. They wanted a pastor’s opinion, so I gave them created to speak truth... and forgiveness. The truth is that abortion one. I told them that God values life—so much so that he ends the life of a human being, and we should be unwavering in our sent his one and only Son to be crucified for the sins of opposition to it. But that is not the end of the story. We have been the world. The young couple seemed conflicted. “But, it’s given the gift of Christ, and the power of Christ can wash our sins legal!” replied the young man. away. About a year later, the governor of my state vetoed a bill Perhaps that is the message you need to hear today—it is the requiring doctors to ask women seeking an abortion if they message that all sinners need. Whatever your sin, no matter how big would first like to see an ultrasound. I watched on social or how small, the blood of Jesus is enough. media as several friends rejoiced over the veto—with one May your soul leap for joy—for your Savior has come. friend writing, “I’ve never been so proud to live in this state!” Rev. Troy Tysdal is Director of Communications and Prayer for the Church These comments came from intelligent people, but of the Lutheran Brethren and serves as editor in chief of Faith & Fellowship magazine. intelligent people who have been deceived. The Scriptures 2 Faith & Fellowship Glimpse His Mercy is Great RICH IVERSON I was standing outside the abortion clinic in the fall of the year. It was Wednesday, abortion day, which meant about twenty women would enter the clinic and end the lives of their unborn children. We were a group of fifteen people, standing in protest outside this clinic, and praying against the injustice of what was happening inside. Some of us were urging these young women to change their minds, offering to help them make a life-affirming choice. One young woman approached the clinic, her head down, her hands covering her ears, as she walked toward a decision that she would live with for the rest of her life. I felt such sorrow for this young woman. What voices does she hear as she lies down at night? Does she understand Andrii Yalanskyi/iStock that the Lover of her soul has nothing but that voice of deception as she was in the of Christ is not enough for our sin. His grace for her? I know the destroyer of abortion clinic before she ended the life mercy is great and his love is relentless. souls longs for her to remain in bondage of her unborn child. Then immediately He loves us with passion—the passion of to lies of death and shame. after the abortion, while recovering in the One dying for his lost children. We have In a different venue, I listened as six clinic, Satan switched tactics, and began the privilege of walking with others and post-abortive women shared their stories to accuse her. She heard lies like, “You telling them this freeing message of grace of loss and healing. They told how God have done what is unforgivable” and “No and truth. had freed them from the lies that kept one will ever love you.” them in shame for years. It was raw, Never before had I heard someone Rev. Rich Iverson is the Associate Pastor for painful, and beautiful, as these women describe the work of our enemy with Faith @ Home at Bethel Lutheran Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. told how the good news had set them such clarity and pain. It is what Satan free. Jesus forgives sinners! does. First he deceives us into sin, and One woman told how she had bought then he continues with his lies, accusing the lie that an abortion would solve her us afterwards. He has come to kill and problems—that she would be able to destroy, while Jesus has come to give us continue on with her life as though nothing life. had happened. Satan was the deceiver, We speak against the lies of the deceiver telling her that abortion was nothing to because we love people. We refuse to buy worry about, that she could get on with her the lie that to be pro-life means you are life as it was before, if she would just end anti-women. We speak against the lies her pregnancy. She remembers hearing of the deceiver who says that the cross www.ffmagazine.org 3 fizkes/iStock Living with Abortion ANONYMOUS had an abortion nine years ago. It still guardianship. I went as far as presenting also my heart and mind. I left that clinic haunts me to this day. The abortion myself before a judge and making my empty, alone, and hopeless. The choice providers convinced me that abortion claim of why I needed to be emancipated to kill my child in the womb should have Iwould fix my situation. They convinced from my parents in order to have this been unthinkable. I wish I had known me that it would open up doors to great process accelerated. We discussed my then what I know now. Abortion can and opportunities. But really, it tore me apart dream to go to college after high school will destroy a woman’s soul. It destroyed to my core. and how that would not be possible with my soul. Before that day when I sat in the clinic a child. I never went on to college after high with a positive pregnancy test, I had never I was on a mission. I was so distracted school. Instead, I became a drug addict heard the word abortion. Surely, I had by the process to abort that I never took my senior year of high school. I had lost no idea what it meant. They portrayed it the time to acknowledge the pregnancy as all hope. I used everything I could get in such an elegant way—as if it wasn’t a human growing inside of my womb. I my hands on to numb the pain. My life something that involves death, but will refused to look at it this way and I was not completely spiraled downhill following give you back the life you want. This is told otherwise. my abortion. absolutely positively wrong. I made a decision prior to arriving It took a lot of time, a great amount of I chose abortion out of fear. I was so at the abortion clinic that I would NOT courage, and some pretty amazing people focused on the fear of having a child that look at the ultrasound. I wouldn’t admit to help me come to terms with the truth. I never feared what I would feel after it at the time, but I knew that if I saw the All I saw for years, when I looked in the aborting my child. I made this decision baby that was growing inside me I would mirror, was a murderer. Five years after very quickly. NOT be able to proceed. I thought I had my abortion, I finally confessed my sin to It was scheduled for two days before outsmarted the truth. God. my eighteenth birthday. I was not legally As a woman, I have been designed to I believe God has taken my baby to an adult and was still under my parents’ procreate. This involves my anatomy, but heaven, but it has been four years since 4 Faith & Fellowship Help and Healing MELINDA GARDNER It was called Whatever Happened to the film series predicted has become reality. Human Race. Back in 1980, it changed Our culture has changed. The issue used my life. Bethesda Lutheran Brethren to be, “Is it a baby?” With current medical Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin showed technology we can see the baby in the this five-part film series that brought to womb.