EAN: Blessings of The Narrow Road

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It's an honor to be here, grateful for, I mean really, truly, the privilege to be a part of this work,

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I mean, the work that is happening here with this group of believers and this organization is, in terms of what's taking place with Sins Row vs.

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Wade, this is unprecedented. And what you're seeing here, the kind of moves forward, the kind of faithfulness with a commitment to Christ and His Lordship and the

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Gospel and the Word of God is premier. If you're new to this, if you're just here tonight, maybe just learning about all this, you have to understand something, and that is that God is moving in some powerful and significant ways in this fight.

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There are giants, truly one of the giants is in this room tonight, that have been fighting this battle for the lives of pre -born children for decades, faithfully, outside of abortion clinics, literally with the ashes of the recently murdered babies who are being incinerated, the ashes falling on their head while they're preaching the

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Gospel outside of abortion clinics. There have been giants of the faith who have been fighting this faithfully, preaching the

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Gospel outside of abortion mills for a very, very long time. Giants of the faith who have really led the way for us in terms of faithfulness in going to legislators and pleading with them and calling for an immediate end to this and for justice to be established immediately.

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The problem was, it wasn't as effective as we'd want it to be, it wasn't as much of a large movement as we'd want it to be, or you would expect it to be with Christians who are pro -life, right?

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If you go to the average Christian church and you say, you know, do you want to protect human beings in the womb? Everyone's going to say yay and amen, if you say are you pro -life, are you for life, are you for choice,

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Christians are going to say I'm for life, let's protect these children. So you would think that this would be something with the

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Christian church in the West or the Evangelical church in the West that we would have had significant moves forward and yet it wasn't taking place.

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For decades these people fought as heroes, heroes, but largely silent, largely not in the front.

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And God has chosen over the last decade to do some incredible things where the church of the living

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God is leading the way now with smaller numbers, for the moment, and almost no budget to speak of.

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Things are happening now in this movement, not only thousands and thousands and thousands of children are being saved every single year because of the hundreds of churches that are outside of abortion clinics on a daily basis, preaching the gospel, pleading for the lives of the pre -born, offering to help and to love and to care for and even adopt these children.

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So many children are being saved on a daily basis because of the church going to the abortion mill to preach the gospel.

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But not only that, in just the last year, you need to know this because this is very, very important, in just the last year, the last two years have been awful, amen, okay, in many ways, but just the last year, 2021, through the work of Bradley Pierce, Abolish Abortion Texas, End Abortion Now and other organizations, we have been able to get bills of equal protection to abolish, to end, to criminalize abortion in Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and more states are coming as I speak.

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And you have to understand in the history of this movement of Christians trying to fight against this and trying to preach the gospel and trying to have an impact in this area, this is unusual.

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You have to know that, you have to understand that, please embrace that and give glory to God for that. It is very unusual, why?

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You have to understand that Christians, myself included, we have for so long been self -professedly pro -life and when we look across the landscape and we say we want this holocaust to end, we look to the pro -life industry, the pro -life organizations who are fighting this battle and have been for so long, we assume that's our team, right?

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Christians are sort of instinctively, yeah, I'm pro -life, that's my team, right? Those are the guys fighting the battles right there and that's my team.

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You have to understand that from a Christian perspective, with the word of God at your feet, with a concern for the lordship of Christ and a concern for the gospel itself, you have to understand that the pro -life industry is self -professedly not

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Christian. They will say explicitly and without embarrassment, they will say we are not

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Christian organizations. We are fighting this neutrally, we're fighting it from a biological perspective, in terms of it's human life from conception, we need to protect that, they don't live consistently with that claim, mind you, but they will tell you we are not doing this as Christians, we're not doing this with the gospel, we're not doing this with the bible as the ultimate authority.

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If you don't believe me, because I know that's shocking to us many times, I encourage you to go to Apologia Studios, that's our platform and we have the leaders of the pro -life industry, the leaders, president, vice president of some of the largest organizations on the planet, with their own lips in an interview with us, saying exactly what

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I told you. And with their own lips telling the world, and again they're not embarrassed by this because this is their world view, telling the world that we believe that mothers and fathers who kill their children through abortion are themselves victims.

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They do not want to call abortion murder, they're not working to ultimately criminalize or to end abortion.

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That's the situation we find ourselves in. And so what God has done in the last ten years is something significant, something very significant, there are so many faithful Christians in this fight, and that's just the point, it's

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Christians from the church who are leading this battle with smaller numbers and with almost no budget to speak of.

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We're doing the most damage, all to the glory of God, because it's the gospel that's at the center of it.

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In the last, yes, big praise to God, in the last ten years,

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Christians have been going to the abortion mills, preaching the gospel, but getting out into the public square, fighting against the issue of abortion with the gospel at the center, with the authority of Christ and the word of God as the central reference point.

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That's the difference. The pro -life industry does not want to do that, will not do that.

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This movement that's taken place has led to films like Babies Are Murdered Here, Babies Are Still Murdered Here, films that have been seen hundreds of thousands, even millions of times, or by millions of people across the

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United States of America, a film that has changed the landscape, that has opened the eyes of Christians to the command of God to rescue these children who are being led away to the slaughter.

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So many Christians are now getting involved. It's led to Christians getting involved to the degree that they're going to their legislators and they're preaching the gospel to their local legislators and they're calling them to obey

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God's word and to establish justice immediately for these pre -born children.

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And God is using his word to open the eyes and the hearts of these legislators across the country, to actually do what is right before God, to do what is consistent with their own profession, that they believe that it is human life from conception, to go from that point to say, yes, we need equal protection for all human beings.

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And they're putting in bills now for equal protection, that is, these are bills of abolition. These are bills that are not playing around the edges, these are bills that are defining human life from conception, all humans, no matter the color, no matter the size, no matter how they were conceived, deserve our protection.

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They deserve dignity and respect and love. And that is what's happening right now. And brothers and sisters, can

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I encourage you? It's happening because of the church. It is happening because Christians are fighting this fight now, explicitly as Christians, with the word of God as the foundation.

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And brothers and sisters, look at the fruit, fruit from faithfulness.

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I think oftentimes when we fight these battles, let's be honest, I said this earlier today, oftentimes what we have to really contend with in our own hearts and minds is cowardice.

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Let's be honest, it's okay to be honest about that. The fear of man plays into it, the desire to please others, a fearfulness of being that overt in our

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Christian commitments. We live in a culture today that denigrates the word of God, denigrates the Christian worldview, despises

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God and his law, and so we're afraid to speak up in the public square explicitly as Christians. Makes sense to me why the pro -life industry fights the way that they do.

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Here's why. It's easier. It's easier. You make more friends, less enemies.

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But if you think as a Christian, you have to think about what Jesus says. He says, whoever's not with me is against me.

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That's a hard thing to take in because it's a this or that with Jesus. You're either with me or you're against me.

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So Jesus doesn't allow for neutrality at all. Neutrality is a myth anyways, nobody's neutral, that's impossible.

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But Jesus says you're either with me or you are against me. And Jesus does say, woe to you when all people speak well of you.

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If that's what we're trying to gain, followers, if that's what we're trying to gain, respect, then we're not going to live in a faithful way.

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But what's amazing is over the last decade, God has moved in such powerful ways with Christians.

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You know what's amazing about this too? The thing that's, I think, so powerful is some of these pro -life organizations that all of us have been giving money to for so long to say, hey, fight that battle, please save those children, do your duty, thinking that they're on our team and on our side.

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They at times have received millions and millions of dollars in whatever state they're working in to fight this battle.

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And they'll get bills that say, this was one bill they were actually praising this last year.

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I saw it, couldn't believe it, but at this point I'm not surprised by it, praising themselves and asking their followers for more donations so they continue to fight in this way, praising a bill that they were able to get in that said you can no longer kill your baby in this state with sharp instruments.

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You have to use suction or poison or some other method to kill the baby other than sharp instruments.

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And I saw the word go out from this organization praising themselves, look what we did. Look at this victory.

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Brothers and sisters, that's evil. It's evil. And it's okay as Christians to stand up against something without compromise and say that's evil, it's wrong,

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God hates that, it's partial, and it's not justice. In my own state this year, in Arizona, we put in a bill of equal protection in January.

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It was a bill that every pro -life leader should agree with because it's totally consistent with their profession.

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Every pro -life legislator and leader says we believe that it's human from conception.

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And by the way, that's an undeniable biological fact. Not only do we know from scripture it's human from conception, it's the image of God, God uniquely fits us together in our mother's womb.

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Yay and amen to that, but it is something that you cannot dispute any longer. It's human from conception, fully human, distinct and unique from the moment of conception.

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We put the bill in that said equal protection from the moment of conception. By the way, Bradley Pierce wrote that bill for us.

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So praise the Lord for Bradley Pierce. We wouldn't have, listen, we wouldn't have been able to do it without him.

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You need to know that he's that important for this fight. He is that important. So we put the bill in and the pro -life industry in Arizona, much larger, much more well -funded.

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I mean, we have pennies compared to what they have to fight their battles. They told the co -sponsors of the bill that went in, there were ten of them, nine or ten of them.

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They told them don't pass that bill, get off the bill, pass our bill. Our bill was equal protection. Our bill would have criminalized and ended abortion in the state of Arizona like that.

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Passed justice immediately. And it was justice consistent with their profession. Their profession was as human from conception, all humans should be protected.

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So that's their bill, right? It wasn't because they have a foreign worldview and different commitments.

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So they said don't pass that bill. So they killed our bill of abolition in Arizona and then they said pass this one.

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And their bill said things like this. You can't kill a baby in the state of Arizona in the womb for the express reason that it has a genetic abnormality.

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So in other words, what's that mean? You can kill the healthy babies in Arizona, just don't kill the children with Down syndrome.

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But you need to understand this. All the money that went into those organizations to fund that injustice, all the money that went in to pay for that, it was a moot point.

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Because in the state of Arizona with that bill, do you know how you get around it? All you say as a mother in the state of Arizona with that bill is

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I'm not killing it because it has Down syndrome, I'm killing it because I hate it. And you can still have the abortion.

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They put another thing in there that said you can kill your baby in the state of Arizona, you just have to give it a proper burial.

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Which isn't a problem. It's not like the mother is asked to go to the funeral of the baby. All that happens is the abortionist packs the cost of the burial into the cost of the abortion.

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They said one more thing. Repeal of Arizona Statute 13 -3604, you know what that was?

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In the state of Arizona, it has been against the law for a mother or a father or an abortionist to kill a baby via abortion since Roe v.

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Wade. It has always been against the law in Arizona. Our law has never changed. Roe is not a law. It's a court opinion.

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Congress makes laws in our country. But everybody fell lockstep with the opinion of Roe v. Wade, but it was still criminal in the state of Arizona.

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So the pro -life industry in the state of Arizona, with all the money that they received from people, Christians like us, saying please fight these fights for us and end abortion in the state, they put in a repeal of Arizona Statute 13 -3604, which was the statute in Arizona that called abortion a crime.

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They repealed it. Thus, they decriminalized abortion in the state of Arizona. That's a fact.

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This isn't a conspiracy theory. And everybody asks the question, why would anybody do something like that?

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And the answer is that the pro -life industry is not fighting this battle as Christians, but the word of God is the foundation.

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They're not trying to criminalize abortion. They aren't. And that's frustrating.

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I'm on this side of it now. As a pastor who's fighting this battle, who's raising up churches with other

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Christians that are working with us within our church to save children at the abortion mill and to put in bills of equal protection, on this side of it,

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I understand and see so much. But I have to just quickly explain to you, I started this fight not very long ago.

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It's been less than a decade for me. I was a pastor of a church that came out of a drug rehab.

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It was all a bunch of ex -drug addicts. We were known in Phoenix as that drug church. You had to walk through a cloud of smoke when you came in on Sundays.

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Everyone's outside smoking cigarettes. That doesn't happen anymore. You're all welcome to come. It doesn't look like that anymore.

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Sanctification is taking place. We were a very small church. We had no money. But God was moving in incredible ways, saving people from their sin, changing lives.

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And I was the typical pro -life pastor. I talk about pro -life stuff once a year on Sanctity of Life Sunday in January.

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We give our money to the pro -life organizations because they're fighting these battles for us. And then

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I began to get challenged by seeing Christians going to the abortion mill. These were people that no one had ever heard of.

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They were no names. They didn't have big platforms. I just started seeing pictures come across randomly across my feet of a woman who was at a hospital holding a baby with a mom.

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And then the next week, I see another picture of the same woman with a different mom and another baby. I'm like, what's this all about? Then I find out that this woman has a ministry where she just goes to the abortion clinic, preaches the gospel, offers to love and help these women.

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And I had her on the radio show. I say, hey, come on the show, tell us what you're doing. And while she's on the show with me, she's telling me she's been in this for like 20 years.

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And she says, yeah, and we've saved 365 babies. And I was like, what? Three hundred and sixty -five babies?

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That's unreal. You're really saving these babies' lives? She's like, yeah, you're seeing them. And she said, 365, last year, last year.

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So this woman has been used by God to save thousands of children from death. So that challenged our little church of a bunch of ex -drug addicts that, wait, we can go with the gospel to this place and preach the gospel and save children from death?

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At the same time, John Speed, one of my heroes, and Marcus Pittman were working together on a documentary called

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Babies Are Murdered Here. Marcus gave me an early release to watch it.

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I dropped my kids off at their homeschool co -op. Homeschool woodpeckers, unite. So I dropped my kids off at the co -op.

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It's early in the morning. I get the link. I'm one of the first people to see this. I'm in my car and I'm watching

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Babies Are Murdered Here. And I wet. And I don't mean like, kind of cried.

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It was a mess. I mean, I couldn't breathe. And it was because Rusty Thomas, a man that I did not know, who did not know he was being filmed for a movie, gave a sermon.

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And in that sermon, he used the word of God to cut into my soul as a pastor.

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It challenged me to my core. We played it for the entire church. And my church said, we're doing this, we're going to fight.

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Our first day, we went to the abortion mill. We went to a Planned Parenthood in Phoenix, North Phoenix. Our first day, we went to the abortion mill.

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We didn't know what we were doing at all. We just knew this was murder. We love these women and fathers.

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We knew the gospel and we would do anything to help. We were offering to pay for everything. And guess what?

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We didn't have any money. But you know what we knew? We knew that God was going to provide it.

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If we're going to rescue a baby, we'll do anything to get the money to take care of us. So we meant it. But we didn't have it.

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We just trusted the Lord. He's going to provide it. He's going to be faithful. We're going to save these children's lives. So we were out there, first time, totally nervous, started preaching the gospel.

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We saved two babies that day. Two babies. So God blessed us with the ability to have a large platform and to have cameras and audio and live streaming devices.

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So all we started to do is we started putting the camera up when we went to the abortion clinic, preached the gospel, and the whole world got to watch.

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There were times when in an hour we had 25 ,000 views on us outside the abortion clinic, saving children, preaching the gospel, interacting.

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And then we started getting people, churches, contacting us saying, hey, how do we do that? And our first response was,

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I don't know. The second response was, it's pretty simple. This is the truth from God's word.

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Here's the situation. You know the gospel. It's the thing that changes the world. You know you want to serve them and help them.

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So go out there and say those things. And so more churches started going out because of our witness and started saving children as well.

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Then it got to the point where the Lord made it clear to us that we needed to do something that was more significant, more meaningful, where we actually were getting to the goal of abolishing abortion.

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We couldn't keep going to the abortion clinics to save all these children when there is a river flowing there from the legislature.

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It's like trying to drain a river by just going in with buckets, right? You got to at some point put a dam there and stop it.

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So we knew we needed to do something more significant, more meaningful. So we started End Abortion now in about 2016.

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We didn't have any money to do it. We weren't a large church.

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All we knew was God's given us the gift to do this. Here's what we can do. We said, Lord, if you want it to happen, you have to provide.

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We will absolutely do it, but you have to show up and just give us what we need to make this happen. And so when we said, yes,

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Lord, we'll do it, the next day we got a phone call from someone who did not know us personally. We didn't know him.

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He just said the Lord had put it on his heart to call us to see if we had anything that we needed help with financially.

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We said, oh, well, it's funny you ask, because the Lord just laid it on our hearts and gave us permission to do this with all the things we can do, but we don't have the money to do it.

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We're a small church. We can't fund this. We can't do it. He said, oh, great. My wife and I wanted to give you $250 ,000 or something like that.

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That's what God has done, by the way, from the beginning of our church. We don't have anything. We say, Lord, we'll be faithful. He says, I got it.

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And they show up. So we started End Abortion now. And since we started it, we have raised up over 800 local churches who are out regularly preaching the gospel, saving lives.

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At this point, my staff tells me, Pastor Jeff, you've got to be more straightforward with what we've done.

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It's probably somewhere around 40 ,000 or 50 ,000 children have been saved. And since that time, not only are we raising up churches to go and save lives where they're being taken at the abortion mill with the gospel.

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That's the key issue, with the gospel. We've been able to also train

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Christians to go to their legislators to challenge them with the word of God and to challenge them to put in bills of equal protection to abolish abortion, to end it immediately.

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And we are getting more states added. I just found out last week, we were in Colorado, didn't even expect it.

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We went and met with a legislator in Colorado who says that he will put the bill in for equal protection in the state of Colorado. So we have one more state.

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We have more states right now that are about to launch a bills of equal protection. I want you to hear something.

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That's what God is doing through the church. But can I challenge you with something tonight? I really want you to hear this because it's just the truth.

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God has blessed our ministry in tremendous ways, at Apology of Church and in Abortion Now to be able to impact the world with teaching and on the street evangelism and all of our stuff saving lives and everything else.

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But you really have to know something. And I don't talk about this often because these people don't want credit. But everything that has happened in Apology of Church happened because somebody else paid for it.

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Somebody else said, I can't go to the abortion mill, I can't go to the legislature, I can't do those things, but God has blessed my family to be able to actually provide in this way, to fight in this way.

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Apology of Studios. People are coming to Christ literally on a daily basis through the content we have going out through Apology of Studios.

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Whether it's with the cults, whether it's with atheists, the debates we've done, whether it's the teaching ministry, whatever the case may be,

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God is using it consistently every single day, every day. But we didn't do that.

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The Lord laid it on our hearts. We said, yes, Lord, we'll do it. And then literally, another story, the next day, some random person calls me and says, hey, you guys praying anything right now?

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Yeah, the Lord was laying it on our hearts to do this, but we can't really financially do it. That's funny because I wanted to give you $35 ,000.

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And that's how Apology of Studios, by the way, just so you know, that's how Apology of Studios started. We said, yes, Lord, we can do this, but we can't afford it.

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You show up, Lord, and you make it happen so we can actually do the work. The next day, a stranger calls me and says, hey,

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I wanted to give you $35 ,000, weird. But the story is consistently like that.

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You have Christians with unique giftings and unique callings who go out and do the work in whatever way God's called them to.

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Each of us play a part. And you might think, well, I can't go to the abortion mill, I can't do this. But you may be one of the believers who can say, hey,

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I can financially fund this so that you can do the work of putting bills in to criminalize abortion, to save lives.

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We said at the beginning of this whole entire thing, you can ask my church about this. I said to the small church that didn't know what we were doing,

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I said, if we did this our entire lives at Apologia Church, went to the abortion mills every day preaching the gospel, and we saved one child from death.

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It's a life well -lived. Right? I mean, how much of a price can you put on a human life?

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And we meant it. Now, praise God to his glory. He's given us way more, way more than that.

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And right now, he is doing things within the church and with this movement that I honestly, I'm so grateful to be a part of witnessing.

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It's powerful. I know Rusty's got to be, his mind's got to be blown to see all this taking place like it is now.

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The last thing I want to share with you, I can give you the verses from Isaiah 1 and 2 where God tells his people he doesn't want their worship.

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He says that all the things they're doing, all the festivals and feasts and all the worship, that they're an abomination to him because they have bloodstained hands and they will not protect the fatherless.

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I can show you in scripture where God actually tells people, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, and he says to protect the fatherless.

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That's what these children are, by the way, who are being slaughtered, fatherless children, abandoned by their dads. Right? I could show you that, but I think you already know that God says he doesn't want the worship of his people when the worship is coming when they are absolutely ignoring all the injustice and evil all around them.

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He indicts them for it and he says, don't even bother your solemn assemblies. I don't want them. Don't fake it.

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I could show you the scriptures in Proverbs 24 where God tells people, commands them explicitly to rescue those who are being led to the slaughter, taken away to death.

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And if you say, behold, Lord, we didn't know it. He weighs the hearts. He knows.

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And he knows that you know. And he will repay man according to his deeds. But I think all of us know this as Christians, that it is our duty to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

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It is our duty to lay our lives down for others. But I think one of the most important things is to put flesh on it.

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Early on, when we did this, we were turning the camera on. I just need to tell you.

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One of the hard things for me to do at that time, just transparent as a pastor, was to keep challenging and encouraging my very young baby

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Christian church of a bunch of ex -drug addicts, be faithful, be consistent, keep going.

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Because we were getting inundated online from professing Christians from around the world that would see the content live stream.

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They would see us preaching the gospel of the abortion mill. They would see us pleading for the lives of these children and they would say, that's not the way to do that.

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That's not how you love these women. You can do it a different way. It's hard at times to overcome that when you're in the midst of it.

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You're getting attacked from the pro -choicers and from the professing Christians. But what was amazing is that we knew we're saving babies.

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So we started saving so many babies that we started getting pictures with said babies. And I'm holding beautiful little baby boys and girls and we've got these pictures of these babies.

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And what we started doing is when Christians started saying, that's not the way to do that. You've got to do it a different way. We wouldn't respond. We just shared the picture.

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Silence. And it got to the point where there were no more objections because we were saving so many babies and posted so many pictures in the comment section that no one wanted to touch it.

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And people started saying, oh no, they're saving thousands of children from death. That is the way to do it.

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So what I learned, and I'm going to try to wrap this up.

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Everyone knows I have sins in the area of time and I'm doing my best to go fast, Bradley. I learned that when you put flesh on this, it gets out of the area of theory and sort of like, hypothetically speaking, it looks like this.

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It's a real baby, a real life. Some of these I like to talk with us because the church we were at a long time ago looked a bit like this actually.

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And there was two little girls named Olivia Grace and Kara, twin girls, that during service used to run around in the middle of my preaching.

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I'd be in the middle of preaching and then Olivia Grace and Kara would be like running around in front of the pulpit and going back.

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And no one said anything to these kids who were clearly misbehaving because Olivia Grace and Kara were saved from Planned Parenthood in Tempe.

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So I think everybody was perfectly happy to say, aren't they wonderful, aren't they so glorious? But see, that's the thing.

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It puts flesh on it. This is not theory. These are real lives that are being taken, each one of these lives, one at a time.

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There's no way for us to be able to put into a comprehensible way 60 plus million babies have been murdered because it's every single life that counts.

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And it's too overwhelming for us to fully embrace. When you put flesh on it, you remember that we're not talking about something that is just in the realm of theory.

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These are image bearers of God who are being dismembered, they're being decapitated, they're being disemboweled, they're being burned, they're being suffocated, they're being murdered.

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And you have to think about it, as was said in Babies Are Murdered here, you have to think about it as one baby at a time.

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One baby at a time. And in my own life, this really came to have more flesh on it, and I'll end with this, when about two years ago,

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December 13th will be two years, we were doing the End Abortion Now conference in Arizona, and in that week, we heard, and this is unusual, it doesn't happen all the time, believe me, we heard there were three babies that were coming, mothers were coming to our church saying, will you adopt my baby, they were all still in the womb.

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The third baby I didn't really know anything about, the first one we knew had Down syndrome, and the second one was a little boy in the womb who had spina bifida, and he had the worst stage of spina bifida, there's like four types, categories, he had the worst, which was like probably a brain shunt to drain fluid into his belly for the rest of his life, he may never walk, he would maybe be in a wheelchair, he could have brain damage, he may not be able to speak, it was the worst stage of spina bifida, and so all this came during the

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End Abortion Now conference that week. And so I will let you go online to hear the full story, but it became clear that we had only a matter of days to act, he was going to be born in about a month, we only had a matter of days to act before the state took control and he would essentially be a ward of the state, even though he was still in the womb, there were some issues with the mother and drug use and things like that, but through a lot of prayer and fasting through our church it became very clear that my family was called to adopt this little boy, and so we committed, we're going to adopt a little boy who's in the womb now, he has a month to go, but he has the worst stage of spina bifida that there is, he may never walk, he's going to have a life of physical therapy, he might have brain damage, and so we were told that when he was born, he was going to be born

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December 13th through C -section because you couldn't burst the opening on his spine, there was a membrane.

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I have the ultrasounds, you see a big black hole in his spine, he had a surgical team on standby because he was going to need about six weeks possibly of surgeries, they were going to basically deliver this little boy with the worst case of spina bifida, put him immediately on his belly, and he was going to go right to the

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NICU, intensive care. No one could touch him, it may be six weeks before we can actually handle him.

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He was going to need brain surgery, he was going to have to have his back repaired immediately, so they had a team of six ready to do the surgeries and the work on this little boy.

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We were fully committed to him, he was my son, and so we were ready for this long, difficult ordeal.

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Now you need to know more about his story, his name is Augustine, that's what I called him. That's one of the ways God told me that he was mine.

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Long story, I don't have time to share because I know it's getting late. But the mother was addicted to drugs, and she didn't find out that she was pregnant with him until she was five months pregnant.

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And when she found out that she was pregnant with him, she's a single woman, addicted to drugs, the father is just completely absent, and so she had scheduled an appointment to have him killed.

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She was going to have an abortion. She was scheduled to go out of state to have the abortion, and then she ran into a

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Christian that she knew in high school named Tabitha. Tabby is my hero. Tabitha said to her, you will not murder him.

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Those are the words she used. You will not murder him. We will find a Christian family who will adopt him.

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You can live with me for free. I will pay for all of your food. You will have no cost, but you will not murder your son.

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And so what happened is she agreed, and she moved in with Tabitha, and then she went to the doctor.

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And that's when she found out that he has the worst stage of spina bifida. So they did more ultrasounds and more tests, and they gave him the official diagnosis.

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This is really bad. Then she said to Tabitha, well, now I have to have an abortion because nobody's going to want him.

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And Tabitha said, you will not murder him. We will find Christians who will adopt him.

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And so along comes us. And so we committed to adopt him. And by the way,

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I'm a pastor. I'm not rich. Even though there are websites that say I'm worth $3 .5 million,

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I'd like to know where that money is. I promise it is not. I don't even own a house.

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So that's interesting. But we didn't have the money. It was sprung on us.

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I put the word out to God's people. In 12 hours, his entire adoption was funded. $30 ,000 in 12 hours.

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God was all over this from the beginning. So moving forward to December 13th, the whole world is praying.

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Christians all around the world are praying for my son, praying for Candy and I, my wife, as we're going to take this on.

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We're super excited. We can't wait to see him. But we think we're going to see him at the NICU. And so it's funny because I know that God can perform miracles.

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Amen. He can do what he wants. He's God. And no one should stand in front of him and tell him there's something he can't do.

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But I know that we can't make demands of God and say, you come down and do my bidding. So we were just praying,

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Lord, please, if it's your will, completely heal him. But Lord, your will be done. So Candy and I are waiting for the

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C -section to take place. It's going to take about two hours. She's in the operating room. Candy says, let's go get some coffee.

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So we go to Starbucks to get some coffee. And this is the first time I ever said this. It's funny. Candy and I leave

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Starbucks. We're going back to the hospital. And she says, are you ready, babe? I said, ready for what?

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Are you ready? I said, yeah. She says, are you ready for this to be worse than we think it is?

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I said, of course. She's like, are you sure you're ready? I said, he's my son. I'm ready.

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And then I looked at her. I don't even know where this came from. I said, are you ready?

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And she goes, what do you mean? Are you ready for God to completely heal him? And she was like, well, yeah, we can do that.

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And I hadn't talked like that the entire month at all. It was just very calm.

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Lord, if you would, please heal him. Go to the hospital. Go back to the waiting room. Candy's texting

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Tabitha because she's back in the operating room. Tabitha said he's here. Candy said, how is he?

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Tabitha doesn't answer. And Candy's like, oh. And so she's texting more.

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Is he OK? Tabitha's not answering. And Tabitha comes out walking down the hallway.

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Super gloomy look on her face. No expression. She comes into the waiting room.

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She says, come with me. So Candy and I look at each other. So we're walking back.

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And they take us back. And we're walking to the operating room, which

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I'm thinking to myself, this is weird. We're not supposed to be here. We're supposed to be going to the NICU. That's weird.

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So we walk into the operating room. And there's a nurse in there. And there's his birth mom. And August is on her chest.

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And no one's supposed to touch him. So I'm thinking to myself, why is he on her chest?

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Why is anyone touching him? Because you're not supposed to touch him. And that's when the operating room breaks out and shouts.

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And they said, he's healed completely. The nurse is bawling.

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She's crying. Doctors are in the hallway. And all they're saying in the hallway is, this can't be explained.

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This can't be explained. And they're even going back to look at this. Look, you see the hole in his spine. And the nurse comes.

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She's crying. And she takes him from the birth mom. And she just takes him, puts him in a thing. She unrolls him.

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I think she did flip him. She unrolls him. And she's just showing us his back.

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She's like, look, it's not there. And he's fine. And my wife, you would have thought we were charismatics.

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Because I think she was speaking in tongues. It was screaming and yelling and crying and praying.

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And I fell to my knees and just praising God. But his name is

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Augustine. And he was going to be murdered. And it was because a

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Christian stood up and sacrificed for his good that he is one of the greatest joys of my life.

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I truly believe he's one of the greatest gifts God ever gave me. I think he is so lovely. And he is the most beautiful little boy.

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He is Iranian, Guatemalan, and a little bit of white. And he has the darkest hair.

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He has the bluest eyes. That's the crazy thing. He is Iranian and Guatemalan.

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And he has these beautiful bright blue eyes. And he is perfect and strong.

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Really, really unusually strong. And I just wanted to share that with you.

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Because I want you to hear beyond the verses that we all know. You need to do something. You have to lay your lives down for these children.

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These are real children. You know, and someone like Augustine, God spared his life.

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And God was gracious to him and gave him to us. One of the greatest gifts we've ever had as a family.

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But he's one child. Thousands will die this year in Texas.

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August is one. He's just one that was threatened with death. This is not merely theory.