Beautiful and Powerful Gospel Conversation with Distraught Young Man

Offering Practical Help Outside Planned Parenthood

To specifically answer your question, we're not out here to shame or judge or anything like that. We're out here to offer help. We know that people didn't win the lottery and then come to Planned Parenthood.

I hear you. So we have the money and resources to help them. And so what we do is say, hey, if you want to choose life for your child, then we're going to come alongside of you and you're never going to have to buy a diaper, a wipe, we'll help you with rent, we'll help you with your car payment.

That's super cool. Yeah, that's what we're doing.

No, I can't disagree with that.

Well, like I said, you're definitely not pregnant. So what's going on?

I don't know. I've had experiences here before with a significant other. And I just, I don't know. Ultimately, I'm just here to think about things. I don't know. I almost want to go in there and talk to him, but I'm not sure that's a really good idea.

Are you coming from a place of anger, though?

Because I don't want you to go down there and be all angry because I don't want to.

Like, I can't say that I don't feel that emotion to a degree. Yeah, yeah. So you came here to speak to them about what? No, that's what I'm saying is I didn't even necessarily come here to talk to them.

I came here to be around buildings. Got you. Got you.

Dang, brother, that is deep. That is really deep. So you had a baby and you brought someone here. I didn't have a baby. No. No? No.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. So what happened? I mean, I just, I don't know if it's necessarily my position to talk about the whole situation. I was taken at a time and I would hate to bring her up in any way, shape or form.

Conviction, Resentment, and Forgiveness Before God

Yeah. So what do you feel that is on your chest then? Without having to mention specifics, like what do you feel culpable for?

I don't know. I feel, I guess, resent me for not sharing my opinion. Or I guess I should say. Yeah. On the entire matter.

I've been there, bro. I'm 45 now and I don't know how old you are, but I mean, I used to support this organization. You know, I did. I came here and got tests myself. You know, we're all in different places of our life and you might be being too hard on yourself because it sounds like who you were then isn't who you are now, if that's fair.

Yeah. And what do you know about forgiveness?

I know that people deserve more of it. That's for sure.

Personally, for what you've done in your life, what do you know about forgiveness? What have you been told?

I've been forgiving people my whole life. That's all I know about it. I mean, between you and God, right?

So I think a lot of this conviction that you may have stems between you and your relationship with God. So what do you know about forgiveness between you and God, man? Because sometimes what we do is we try to forget that this is the truth, right?

Jesus Christ took on flesh. And I'm not talking about the Mormon Jesus. I'm talking about the biblical Jesus. This is God took on flesh, died on the cross for our sins, right? He was held accountable so that we, when we have faith in him, stand before God and justify for his perfect righteousness.

But what we tend to do as people, man, when we forget about Jesus, when we forget about what he's done, we don't have faith in him. We try to make ourselves the ones who are placed on the cross. Oh yeah, I got you.

And I think you're doing that, man.

Romans 8:28 and God’s Purposes in Suffering

In a way, you're not wrong. I'm telling you, I don't even know where to start. And that's a problem. I've mixed emotions, to say the least, about it. Because just what I've seen as a child specifically, it gets to a point where, I don't know.

You know what God says in the Bible about things we've been through in our past? I've had a rough past as well. He says none of it was purposeless. He says in Romans 8, 28 that. He says, yeah, no, this is what God says in this word.

He says, God works all things together for good, for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purposes. And that's a promise, not from man, but from God, the creator of the universe, the all-sustainer and all-good God.

And to think about the beautiful thing that we have in Jesus, man, is that if you have faith in him and trust that he died for you, that he actually had you in mind when you were on the cross. That he actually cares about you personally and what you're going through.

I mean, he took on flesh and actually did go through temptations, but he was without sin and unborn so that he could actually bear the weight of our sin. He tells you today, through people like us, that give it up.

Give it to Jesus. He says, you who are weary and heavy burdened, right? He says, come to me and I will give you rest. You don't have rest right now, man. You don't have rest. I think Christ offers you that hope and he extends that through his people preaching the gospel to you.

I think you need to come to faith in Christ.

The Only Way to the Father and the Difference Between Christianity and LDS

Where do you live? I'm from Orem, actually. From Orem? Wow. Wow, you go really far to get here. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just trying to kill the gas in my car, too. It's pretty old. I just barely got my new one.

So I need to refuel and make sure that I can maintain it. Get some good gas in there?

Yeah. Yeah. How'd you, how'd you, did you grow up, like, LDS or what? Yeah, I grew up very LDS. Yeah. Your parents are like that? My parents do believe in LDS. Yeah. Do you know the differences between physical Christianity and the LDS faith?

It's a lot, but... Yeah. So you know, you're, you're pretty familiar, right? I know a lot of religion. I'm relatively familiar. Do you believe Jesus when he says that he is the only way that peace with God is found in the way that you have known life?

No one comes to the Father but him.

Do you believe in the LDS faith? I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the LDS. I think... I mean, I should, I should look into it more. Yeah, I understand.

I understand. I can tell you with 110 certainty that Jesus is the only way. And I can tell you the while you live in your life right now, it shows that he is truly because right now you don't have peace, my friend.

God does offer that peace, but he also offers us to overcome in struggle. That it's not purposeless, that we can actually be conformed more into the image of Christ, be more like him through the things that we've been through.

Church, Faith, and the Parachute Analogy

Yeah, I really want to see the good idea. A lot of what you guys stand for, I definitely agree with you. Yeah. When's the last time you've been to church, man? Uh, I want to say last year. Last year? We actually... I've been thinking about going a lot this year, to be honest with you.

Dude, so right there, that guy, that's, he's a pastor. I'm a deacon of a church and we have Apologia Church. We meet at a building called Mission Church. It's off of 10600 and the I -15. Not too far from Orem.

We actually have a couple of families that come from Orem. And we actually just did the church plan about five or six months ago. You're more than welcome to come to church. I drive all the way there from Ogden.

You know, I love that church. And one of the coolest things is it's so brand new that if you walked in there, nobody'd be like, who's the new guy? Because we're all new guys and girls, you know, everybody's so new and we're just kind of getting to know each other.

This would be an awesome opportunity. There's the church email and the church phone. You could text it too if you ever want more info, man. We're a bunch of, you can't see us, but we're a bunch of tatted up crazy Christian men.

Yeah, we're not. We've all got pasts, man. So, so what's your hang-up with Christ? What is it?

I mean, I honestly, from what I've heard and what I've seen, I don't necessarily even refer to it as a hang-up. But, I don't know, I've been thinking about myself like that. So, I don't know, I'm glad that I'm here and I'm glad that I have a lot of things to be grateful for.

But, it's a bit of lessons that I've received from the religion that I grew up in alone. But, I don't know, I'm glad that I have a home. It's hard for me to think about anything else, especially with everything going on.

Yeah, you're just grateful for what you got.

Exactly. And I don't know, I'm, I'm just here to dwell for a second. I'm not saying that I don't have faith, though. Right. My name's Andy, by the way. I'm Brian.

You say Jackson? Hey, nice to meet you, Jackson. Brian. Let me tell you something about faith, right? I explain it like I did to my kids years ago. It's a pretty good analogy. When you have a lot of faith or a little bit of faith, it really doesn't matter unless you put it in the right object.

I've always used the, the analogy of like this backpack. Let's just say I'm wearing this backpack. I go to the deepest, darkest jungles of Africa and I tell somebody to jump out of an airplane with my backpack and it's a parachute.

And if they pull this cord right here, they're going to live. If they put all their faith in this backpack, they're dead. Or I could hand them a real parachute and I could say, listen, I know you don't believe me and you got a teeny tiny bit of faith, but if you put that teeny tiny bit of faith in this parachute and you pull this cord, they're going to live.

And the whole reason to go that stupid long story that's pretty elementary is to say that the Jesus of the Bible is, is the object that you have to put your faith into. No other Jesus can save you. No other good works can save you.

No other religious, you know, religion can save you. We could all try to save ourselves and that's just putting on a stupid backpack. If you put on the true Christ, if you put on, you know, and you put your faith in him, even if you've got like the teeniest faith, like of a mustard seed, you're going to have eternal life and you're going to have peace with God.

That's a dumb analogy. I know. Yeah. So this is a baby Nicholas. His mom, Shea and his dad, Jarek, were on their way in here a while back, a little about a year ago or so and cussing me out. And I'm just like, Hey, we're here to help you.

I've got the money and everything, the resources for you guys. And so they go inside and then Jarek comes back out and he's like, did you mean it? Like you'll, you'll really help us. I said, yeah, man, what do you need?

Well, we need a place to live. So our organization got him an apartment. Well, we need, uh, we need some money for food. We need this, we need that. So we walked through their whole pregnancy with them.

And now they're two of my best friends. You know, um, this is Michaela. Her mom doesn't speak a lick of English. She's not even from this country. And, uh, but we got a translator and told her the same thing.

We can help you. What do you need? And she had needs and we were able to meet their needs. And that's why we stand out here. A lot of people think we're here to protest. Protestors don't have anything to offer.

We're here to offer not only our time, but our money and our resources towards people who just probably need it the most. You know, if they're considering going to Planned Parenthood, they need, they need help.

Warning Against a Different Jesus and the Call to Faith

Yeah. So I go to what Brian was saying about a different Jesus. Like we're warned in scripture too. In second Corinthians 11, uh, Paul warns us. He says, there's people who come and preach a different Jesus, a different gospel, a different spirit.

There's no hope that comes from it. And the beautiful thing about the peace that you can have in Christ, man, is coming here to dwell. You could actually, instead of, instead of that, of trying to atone for your own sins, you can actually place all of that on the true and living God, right?

You can dwell on Jesus and actually experience freedom from your sin, right? To worship God in spirit and truth. That's what Jesus says that you can have today. It says, when you hear the gospel, don't harden your heart, right?

You, you, who knows, man, you a month or two months from now, you could actually be out here with us trying to help women save their children. You could, you could be doing that. You know, there's freedom in Christ.

You can have freedom today. If you place your faith in the true son of God, Jesus Christ. That's what I want for you because that's what's going to solve your problem. I can't, I can't. And so, you know, there's not, there's not a, there's not a step two or a step three.

That's it. It's not clean yourself up. It's not start, stop swearing tomorrow. It's not, Hey, you need to go purchase a shirt and tie. I mean, there is no, it's the only thing like there is no step two to this process.

So yeah, we care about you, dude. We see that you're, you're going through some stuff right now, man. And I think God put us together today for a reason. I think that this divine appointment took place for a reason that you drove a long way, get some gas out of your car.

You're starting a new job. Yeah, there's a lot, but there's a bigger part of it is what I'm saying is this wasn't by accident that you met us today. And I hope that we see you again, man. Yeah. You got that card, man.

Reach out, please. Please do. Okay, brother. Thanks Jackson.