Ready to Quit?

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Sometimes quitting sounds so good.  I mean, honestly, do you ever feel like you want to quit?  I know I’ve felt that way.  No matter how much I believe that unborn babies—and all human beings—are worth fighting for, it can seem too hard some days.  It sounds a whole lot easier to just lay down this burden we carry and let another take it up.  It would feel so nice to forget about all the evil we’re trying to stop.

Or would it?  Would we really feel good if we left the voiceless innocent in the dust?  We’re not just fighting for a good cause here.  We’re fighting for people who literally cannot stand up for themselves.  If we go away, they have no hope.  They can never speak up and protect themselves.

We cannot quit.  We cannot end our efforts.  It’s ok to admit discouragement, disappointment, and hardships.  It’s ok to feel overwhelmed.  But it’s not ok to give up or quit.  Too many lives depend on our commitment.

Still, a resigned attitude—Ok, ok, I guess I’m in this to stay because I have to be—isn’t the kind of attitude our movement needs.  Trust me, I’ve questioned exactly what God is doing before.  I’ve wondered why He doesn’t hurry up and end abortion.  But I’ve learned that people blame God for way too many things.  People have a free will; we have a choice.  And sadly, too many people use their choices to keep abortion legal.

I’ve also learned that faith in God and faith in truth prevailing isn’t about expecting a certain outcome exactly when we decide that it’s essential.  True faith is recognizing that God does indeed have a plan.  The victory over death was already won on the cross, centuries ago.  Sometimes God doesn’t ask us to fight to achieve victory.  He asks us to fight as a test of who we really care about and Who we really follow.  He uses us to save lives—whether it be one or countless many—in the process.  And one day, abortion will end.  That is a surety.

I believe we will see abortion end in our lifetime.  I believe we will see death’s doors close and accept no more children.  I believe we will see life valued.  I believe we will see society welcome babies as the precious little ones they are.  I believe there is hope.  I believe in a God Who works miracles.  I believe.

I’d challenge you not to overlook how you truly feel inside about working on the pro-life issue.  If you are rearing to go and out-of-your-mind excited right now, that is AWESOME!!  We need people to feel like that!  If you never get discouraged because you’ve already learned what faith and hope are, hang on to them!

But, if you do occasionally question the length of this battle; if you wonder what will happen one day; if you are asking if you really have the strength to keep trying—examine your heart.  Find out why you are really fighting.  Remind yourself of the truth you believe.  And picture all the nameless unborn children who cannot utter a single sound in their own defense.  I know that you, like me, do not want to leave them behind.

Doubt, discouragement, and hopelessness will attempt to plague most of us.  But we have the choice to reject these monsters and send them back to the pit where they belong.  We can make the choice for hope.  We can choose Hope itself in Christ, Who first came to earth as an unseen unborn Child.  We can choose to believe.  We can choose the attitude of faith.

Doubt sees the obstacles,
Faith sees the way!

Doubt sees the darkest night,
Faith sees the day!

Doubt dreads to take a step,
Faith soars on high!

Doubt questions, “Who believes?”
Faith answers, “I!”

–Author Unknown

 

Victory is Coming…A Personal Letter

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Dear Friends,

By now, you have likely heard the news coming from Mississippi.   Although the vote was the closest yet for Personhood, it did not emerge victorious this time.  Yet, a great battle was waged in Mississippi that stretched to the corners of our nation and beyond.  Lives were changed and saved. Beliefs were challenged and hearts transformed.  You inspire us, Mississippi!

I will admit something very personal to you.  As the sponsor of the 2008 Colorado Personhood Amendment, I was incredibly disappointed—to put it mildly—when we lost.  I had truly believed we would win.  My faith in God was shaken.  For two years, I had difficulty accepting what had happened.  I questioned God.  But through prayer, God’s great goodness, and the support of my family, I learned a key truth.

If we fight expecting to win, we may be discouraged.  If, instead, we fight to proclaim the truth, we will always have hope to hang on to.  We will have the strength to go on.  After all, where are we told that our only purpose is to win every battle?  My Bible tells me that I am called to cry out for the innocent and to speak up for the truth.  That, in itself, is a great victory.

Now, three years after our first loss in Colorado, I’m back, along with many others who have been here all along.  We’re going to come at this yet again here in Colorado.  I have a deeper understanding of our good God and an even greater determination to end this evil.  Please join me, once more.  Details will follow soon.

Now is not the time to stop.  It is the time to push forward, harder than ever! Civil rights movements are never recognized as civil rights movements until they win.  Ironic, isn’t it?  Until we win, we will be mocked and truth may be cast aside by some for a little longer.  But, one day, we will win.

You have been a part of this victory all along.  You have stood firm.  You have spoken  for those who have no voice.  You have rescued innocent lives sentenced to death.  You have been a watcher on the wall in our generation.  You have said, “No more!” and you have followed your words with actions.  We will be calling on you to act once again.

Civil rights movements often take years to win.  Take, for example, South Carolina’s ballot initiative to allow women the right to vote.  It took seven times on the ballot for this to win.  Seven times.  Surely, we can be even more committed to an issue that touches innocent children.  William Wilberforce fought for twenty years in England before slavery was stopped.  Winning can enable us to save many, many lives.  We cannot turn back.

We are committed that no baby will be left behind.  But this commitment goes far deeper than an Election Day victory.  Win or lose, babies are saved.  At what other time do we get a chance to let our voices be heard in the media, in our small towns, big cities, and statewide?  The 2012 Personhood Campaign in Colorado will be the perfect opportunity to speak eloquently in the defense of all innocent human life.  We have a platform.  We must take this chance to speak again.  And we speak by acting.  By acting now.

No matter how many years we work, do not be discouraged.  Do not lose heart or give up hope.  Great movements, throughout history, have been great battles.  They have been long battles that require sacrifice.  Many would see obvious reasons to quit.  But we see no such reason.  Through victory and through loss, we are proclaiming the light of truth in our corner of the world.  We are obeying the call to stomp down injustice and give the voiceless innocent a voice.

Please join us, once again, in 2012.  We need you.  A great battle requires many soldiers.  A great movement requires many essential parts.  You are a soldier.  You are an essential part.  We cannot promise victory in Colorado in 2012.  But this we can promise:  together, we will raise a voice for the innocent so loud that it will reach the very gates of Heaven and storm the gates of Hell.

Stand true for life!

Kristi Burton Brown

For Your Encouragement:

‎“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”- Harriet Beecher Stowe

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“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent” -John Calvin

“So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.”  –William Wilberforce

Yet Another Federal Court Agrees Life Begins at Conception

This time, Alliance Defense Fund has the story here:  http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/4920.  In basic detail, a federal judge in Indiana upheld the provision of the new Indiana law that requires women to be told  that “human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm.” 

Now, of course, this statement is not a novel, new scientific fact.  It’s basic science.  But, as you likely know, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court claimed to believe that medical professionals didn’t agree on when a human was a human.  Today, federal courts are increasingly ruling that human beings are human beings from the very beginning.  They are also increasingly disagreeing with Planned Parenthood’s claims that basic biological facts are “misleading.”  See ADF’s press release for more info on this…

Of course, this ruling raises the questions we want to hear asked in the public, in the media, and in the courts:  how can a human not be a person?  And how can a human person not be deserving of full protection under the laws…including–and especially–the right to life?  We are so tired of the contradictions concerning life in our society!  Life should be valued and protected at all costs.

I honestly believe that abortion will end in our lifetime.  And I pray to God that it will.  What an incredible injustice…and, in our society…what an incredible contradiction.  Some laws–like the Indiana one–recognize unborn children as full human beings.  There is also a major federal law that recognizes unborn children as persons (more on that coming soon!).  And yet abortion is still somehow, unthinkably, legal.

Michelle Bachmann on Pro-Life

Ok, now this is a good position to take!  This is what we need to hear our politicans say.  Notice how she specifically states that government cannot take away the right to life.  This is certainly more extensive of a statement from a national politician than I’ve heard in a LOOOONG time!

I am 100 percent pro-life.I’ve given birth to five babies, and I’ve taken 23 foster children into my home. I believe in the dignity of life from conception until natural death. I believe in the sanctity of human life…

And I think the most eloquent words ever written were those in our Declaration of Independence that said it’s a creator who endowed us with inalienable rights given to us from God, not from government. And the beauty of that is that government cannot take those rights away. Only God can give, and only God can take…

And the first of those rights is life. And I stand for that right. I stand for the right to life. The very few cases that deal with those exceptions are the very tiniest of fraction of cases, and yet they get all the attention. Where all of the firepower is and where the real battle is, is on the general — genuine issue of taking an innocent human life. I stand for life from conception until natural death.

~ Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota) stating her pro-life position during the GOP 2012 debate hosted by CNN, as quoted by LifeNews, June 14

Winning the Battle or Choosing to Fight: Which is More Important?

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Of course, I’d say both are important!  The difference is that winning the battle really isn’t in our hands.  We can’t control the results of what we do.  But, no matter what…we CAN (and we must) choose to fight. 

What do you think?  Have you ever found personal victory in the midst of loss?  Would you be willing to share your experiences?

So many times in life—and in the pro-life battle—do we focus on winning; do we believe we will win, and center our hopes on that?  Perhaps our hope should be on Jesus alone, the Author and Finisher of our faith.  He is the Author—He writes the story, not us.  And He finishes the race, not us.  And yet, we are certainly called to run the race with endurance.  Another concept to ponder is that we do not live by our faith alone, but by “the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  (See Hebrews 12:1-2 and Galatians 2:20.)    

Many times, we start well, but do we finish well?  Do we carry out our charge until the very end?  We have to give our heart’s passion and our life’s dreams over to the only One Who can finish well…and perhaps it is this realization alone that allows us to truly finish.  Otherwise, there will always be work left undone.  It is by allowing Him to be the Author and Finisher that we hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.  Enter now into thy rest.” 

Remember, too, that a servant often does the small things—the details—letting his master weave it into the finished project.  I am reminded of a short poem my mother wrote down as a young woman:  “God—He is He, and I, I am only I.”  How profound…

Of course, Christ has already won the victory…we only have yet to see it.  But perhaps our focus should be on the choice to fight the battle, not the hope to win it.  We do not lose that hope, but it is not our focus.  How true that we should do what is right, simply because it is right.  Love allows us to fight a battle and lose.  The order of faith, hope, and love—love is truly the end.  (I Corinthians 13)  It puts self away. 

It is when we lose ourselves and can say with King Arthur of Camelot, “There is no pride left in me” that we can fight no matter how many times we lose.  This is because we do it for love, not for hope or faith, and not for victory.  Faith allows us to believe that our Lord wins in the end; hope gives us that glimmer of our dream when we become weary (for we always know victory is somewhere around the corner); but faith allows us to keep on keeping on regardless of the visual outcome we see.  Time and time again.  Time and time again. 

 My life is but a weaving between my God and me,

I do not choose the colors He worketh steadily

Oft’times He weaveth sorrow, and I in foolish pride

Forgets He sees the upper, and I the underside.

Not till the loom is silent and shuttles cease to fly

Will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful in the Skillful Weaver’s Hand

As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.

by Benjamine Malachi Franklin

Footnote: Thanks goes to my Pastor, John Smith and the Dean of my college, Roger Magnuson for some of 
the thoughts here.

Reasons Not to Have an Abortion

**If you are a girl or woman who is being pressured or threatened into having an abortion, please read this article.

**If you are a guy who is trying to stop an abortion, please read this article. (Some of the info in this article may also help parents or friends who are trying to stop an abortion.)

**I also recently wrote an article called “10 Reasons Not to Have an Abortion” that you might find helpful. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Seems there are so many reasons out there today justifying abortions; giving reasons why women should be encouraged to have them; explaining why they’re not so bad after all.  And many of the reasons out there for why we should NOT have an abortion are long, drawn out, not persuasive, and admittedly preachy.  I’d certainly agree that God uses different statements and reasons to touch different people’s hearts…no doubt about it.  So please don’t take this post as saying that we shouldn’t keep telling people that every new baby is a special creation of God.  We should.  Some people may even need to hear that if they have an abortion, they’re murdering their child; a unique human being with the same right to live that each of us enjoy.  However, is calling someone a murderer the best way to convince them to save their child from death and themselves from emotional and probable physical trauma?  Not always…

So here’s THE CHALLENGE:  What are three unique reasons you can think of not to have an abortion?  Think of persuading people gently…but not too gently =)  We still have to speak the truth!  We just must remember to speak it in love.  We absolutely want to save every child’s life!!!  But we also absolutely want to save every woman (and man that’s involved) from a lifetime of irreversible hurt.

I’ll start off with a few reasons and resources to back them up.  Please send me YOUR THOUGHTS!!!

1)  Someone else out there would love to adopt your child and give her a wonderful home…a home that you can choose!  http://www.bethany.org/  I have not had personal interaction with this organization, but I have heard they do good work.  There are certainly other great adoption agencies out there.

2)  You’re not alone!  Other women have been where you are and they have made a different choice.  www.standupgirl.com and www.pregnancyline.com.

3)  Giving life to a child makes you a hero.  A nine-month sacrifice of your body is totally worth it to let another precious life have a chance to impact and change our world.  http://www.virtuemedia.org/ and www.standupgirl.com.

4)  Late term abortions are absolutely awful.  Early abortions are awful.  All abortions are awful.  Have you ever read a description of exactly what happens during an abortion?  Go here to find out.

5)  Many former abortion doctors and Planned Parenthood workers are leaving their jobs because of what they see.  (Read UnPlanned by Abby Johnson who gave up being a PP director after seeing an ultrasound). 

• Dr. Brewer:  “I can remember…the resident doctor sitting down, putting the tube in, and removing the contents.  I saw the bloody material coming down the plastic tube, and it went into a big jar.  My job afterwards was to go and undo the jar, and to see what was inside….I opened the sock up and put it on the towel, and there were parts of a person in there.  I had taken anatomy, I was a medical student.  I knew what I was looking at.  There was a little scapula and an arm.  I saw some ribs and a chest, and a little tiny head.  I saw a piece of a leg, and a tiny hand and an arm, and you know, it was like somebody put a hot poker into me.  I had a conscience, and it hurt.” [1]
• “I remember seeing the baby move underneath the sack of membranes as the caesarean incision was made, before the doctor broke the water.  The thought came to me, ‘My God, that’s a person.’“[1]
• Dr. Nathanson:  “[A]s a result of all this technology—looking at this baby, examining it, investigating it, watching its metabolic functions, watching it urinate, swallow, move and sleep, watching it dream…treating it, operating on it—I finally came to the conviction that this was my patient.  This was a person!  I was a physician, pledged to save my patients’ lives, not to destroy them.  So I changed my mind on the subject of abortion.”[1]
• Dr. Bruner:  “Instead of some mysterious thing inside her belly, a mother and her family can now identify a little human being.”
• Dr Levantino:  “I’ll tell you one thing about D&E…You never have to worry about a baby’s being born alive.  I won’t describe D&E other than to say that, as a doctor, you are sitting there tearing, and I mean tearing—you need a lot of strength to do it—arms and legs off of babies and putting them in a stack on top of a table.”[1]
• OB/GYN Staffer Henry:  “The saline, a salt solution, is injected into the woman’s sac and the baby swallows it.  The baby starts dying a slow, violent death.  The mother feels everything, and many times it is at this point when she realizes that she really has a live baby inside of her because the baby starts fighting violently for his or her life.  He’s just fighting inside because he’s burning.”[1]

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[1] See David Kupelian & Mark Masters, Abortionist Whistleblowers Tell All, WHISTLEBLOWER, Jan. 2003 8,(emphasis in original).

IF YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION

Photo from this site, with more info about this little baby.

If you’re a woman considering abortion, please consider that you have other options. I know, you’ve probably heard that. But please read on. Abortion – no matter how great it seems in the moment – is a decision with very lasting and painful effects. Read what other women have to say about it! Please at least go to this site, where you will find a helpline, a way to chat online, or a way to email someone who can help you. Or, the site can help you find a pregnancy resource center in your area where you can go for emotional and material support, as well as often a free ultrasound – which you should totally see!

You can also comment on this article – I’ll see it before anyone else does – and I’ll be happy to email you back and help you however I can. Also, please consider that every woman should know the truth about abortion before she ever has one. Go here to see a video (or here – and read the description below the video!). Go here to read about abortion. Please be informed.

A 4-D ultrasound photo of a baby at 8 weeks…check out more photos at this link. Amazing!!

You can also read this article or this one if you’re wondering why not to have an abortion. There are literally at least 101 reasons! At least check it out! A baby is a baby from the very beginning – her heart is beating at only 21 or 22 days! His brain waves can be read at only 6 weeks! And her little heart is crying out for you – her mother – to love her and give her the precious gift of life. I’m here for you, and so are many others – really. If you’re a dad who needs help, check out this advice article, and feel free to contact me.