EAN: Principles of Our Ministry

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So I'm the pastor of local outreach in Apologia Church, Apologia, and that just means that I spend a lot of my time out at the mills, kind of out in the front lines with our people, doing our best to save babies.

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So in abortion now is our prophetic arm to where we're getting in to the local setting, we're going to the clinics, we're preaching the gospel, we're doing everything we can do in urgency to rescue babies and then action for life is our political arm to where we're trying to do everything we can on the political level to affect change, challenging our magistrates, getting correct magistrates in positions of political power, trying to introduce bills of abolition that will criminalize abortion, so that's the difference.

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So I'm more of the end abortion now prophetic element to where I'm going to the mills with our people and trying to save babies.

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So what I want to talk about for a little bit of time is proven principles and practices for effective abortion mill ministry.

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Proven principles and practices for effective abortion mill ministry. As you go to these places of death, how do we best save babies?

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And we're not the gold standard when it comes to that. There's so many ministries out there and if I'm just going to be telling you the truth,

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I stole all this information from much better people who do this much better than us.

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But within our network, we have about 800 different churches and we have some amazing men that are on the front lines daily saving babies.

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So we get to go and learn from them, take everything that we have, we learn from them and give it to you.

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I know your pastor has been fighting for babies for 15 years, I believe, right? About 15 years, he's going to the mills.

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One of the closest mills is an hour and a half away from you. Then you have the abortionist that has a consultation business where she's killing too.

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And I would just say, if God just beam me over here to Louisiana, I think I would be out in front of that office doing the best

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I can to save babies. But when we're about to get into the fight at the local mill level, we really have to go through some thought processes.

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We really have to anchor ourself in the principles of God's word if we're going to do it effectively. Because as I've traveled across the nation and visited different abortion clinic ministries and seen their effectiveness, methodology is definitely attached to your effectiveness.

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It definitely has to do with your principles that drive your practices if you're going to save babies in front of these places of death.

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But one of the things that we need to kind of cross, one of the bridges we need to cross first is the fact that it's the duty of the church to put this great evil to death.

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God doesn't have a plan B. This is God mobilizing his people as he's done all throughout church history, as he's done all throughout the scriptures to put wickedness to his death.

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And what he'll do is mobilize his men and his people to do it. And if we're derelict in that duty, if we neglect that duty, then it just simply prolongs the suffering of those who are oppressed, right?

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He picked Moses and he picked Aaron to deliver his people out of the hands of slavery in Egypt.

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He utilizes these men as tools. And so we need to understand, it's not gonna be done by somebody else.

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It's not gonna be done at the federal level. Of course, it's not gonna be done by the unbelieving because they innately hate their neighbors because of their hatred for God, right?

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Man in his fallen state is a hater of God and he hates his neighbor because his neighbor bears the image of God that he hates.

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That's why nobody really cares about the abortion issue, right? It's whatever, these babies don't have cognitive ability, they're never gonna feel any pain, just let them die.

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It's really an affront to God, but it's based upon his hatred for God, but it tells us that we need to,

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Proverbs 31, eight through nine, open your mouth for the rights of the unfortunate, open your mouth, judge righteously and defend the rights of the afflicted and the needy.

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Proverbs 24, 11, as you've already heard, which you're gonna hear a lot more, rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter, it's an imperative, it's a command given to us by our

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Lord and master and how can we neglect it? Matthew 22, 37 through 38, love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment and a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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When people ask you, well, why do you wanna save babies? People ask us this all the time. Why don't you get a job?

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Isn't there something better to do? We just say, hey, this is just simply loving our neighbor in and out of the womb, right?

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It's conceptually not hard to wrap your mind around. Why do we do this? Because the neighbor in our womb is our neighbors.

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Before we get into the foundational principles that really drive the right practices out there in front of these killing places, we not only need to accept the responsibility to be the church and to confront the culture of death and to be obedient to Jesus, but we need to kind of face the facts of what you're getting into.

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When people would follow Jesus in the masses, he would always turn around and let them know, hey, foxes and birds have holes in their nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.

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He's like, this is not, this following me is not about comfort. It's not about getting whatever you want.

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It's not about living your best life now. As you probably already know, if you've been in this fight for a while, it's extremely costly.

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And this is not a safe ministry. It's not a fun ministry. I don't know of anybody that likes to wake up and drive that distance out to the mill.

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It's just something that I don't, it's just something we were not created to do because paying somebody to dismember your little baby, your little girl or boy is so far out of the mind of God that it's so unnatural for us to actually go to these places.

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And that's why we recoil from it. It's not a happy place. It's not a difficult place. When you go out there, you're gonna be verbally abused.

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If I had a dollar for every time somebody called me a naughty word, I'd be a rich man.

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I mean, physical abuse, you're gonna get spit on, punched, shoved, guns pulled on you.

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You're gonna get death threats. Plenty of our people, loss of employment, attack on your reputation, falsely accused of all sorts of stuff.

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They're gonna destroy your property. They're going to steal from you, which

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I've had plenty of stuff stolen out of my vehicles. And it's just in that environment because it's just so, the wickedness is just so palpable.

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It's just so thick. You deal with depression. You deal with heartache just to see mom after mom walk through those doors, ignoring your pleas.

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I mean, all you're doing is trying to lay down your life and all you're trying to do is give to them while these places of death take from them and they just shrug their shoulders and they go about killing their babies.

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It's tough. It's tough. And so we have to have this biblical mindset.

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We have to embrace biblical principles in the way that we think and we go about doing this ministry.

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If we are gonna have longevity, because I'll tell you a lot of people, they watch this on the internet, like I did about 10 years ago and they're introduced to this and they're like, man, this is not a gray area.

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These are human beings dying. I need to be involved. And they get involved in this and then they're hit really by the kind of punch in the face of the difficulty of this ministry.

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And they don't last long. And so what we need to do is we need to prepare ourselves to have longevity or be long lasting in this attempt to obey

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Jesus and rescue babies. The scriptures never, ever falsely romanticize true evangelism in ministry, right?

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It's always been hard and costly and it's gonna be hard and costly.

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Look at Paul's description of ministry. When I wanted to be a pastor and at first you're a young guy and you're just glamorizing the attention the senior pastor is getting.

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And I think as for me, I went into it with all the wrong motives. Look at all these guys just, and all these people, all their focus is on this man and they're just throwing accolades to him and you really think that that's what it's all about.

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And my pastor said, why don't you go ahead and go to 2 Corinthians 4, eight through 11.

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He said, read that and that's the description of what you're getting yourself into. It says, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

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For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

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God does not promise us comfortable lives as Christian. If we pursue, I'll be careful how

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I say this, the American dream and how our greater culture kind of explains that and defines that, it's not cohesive with following Jesus to where it's just, you just make as much money as you possibly can, which is not necessarily bad, and you do it for your posterity and then you sit on the porch with a coffee and play golf the rest of your life.

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There's nothing wrong. The Bible says God gives us the power to store wealth and we're to give to our kids and our grandkids, and that's a good thing.

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I wanna do that. But if that's the primary focus of your life and it's just really about self -preservation and the pursuit of comfort, then this type of stuff is not gonna work into that personal equation.

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Does that make sense? We have to get past this, okay, if it gets hard for me when

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I'm trying to save babies and I'm just gonna bow out, but we have to understand it's very difficult. Jesus says in John 15, 18 through 21, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

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If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you're not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

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Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is no greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

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If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things, they will do to you on account of me because they do not know him who sent me.

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As we as Christians, unfortunately what we have seen in the greater evangelical church, if we choose comfort over duty, if we choose selfishness over just simple obedience to Jesus and his commands, the command to be salt and light to the greater culture, then the most oppressed among us will suffer for it, right?

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When we do that, because we're the key. We're the key to God destroying his wicked opponents.

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We're the key to relieve the oppressed from their oppression. It's in the church.

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It's always been in the church. In 150 years ago in the slave trade, it was God using his people through the abolition of slavery, right?

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And if you track that down, it's always been God's people. It's always been God's men. And probably the some that were the most integral and most sharply used to put these evil under his feet, we don't even know their names.

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And that was probably all part of it, which I'll get into in a second. But when we learn again that when

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Christians come out of the salt shaker, like Rusty Thomas says all the time, and they simply obey

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King Jesus, then he does put these things. And even though this is an incredibly difficult ministry that I'll just be honest with you here,

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I don't like. I would be happy if it ended tomorrow, and I wouldn't even think about it again.

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But it also brings about incredible joy. Even with the End Abortion Now Network, which just a bunch of regular guys started, there's been thousands upon thousands of babies saved.

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Future men, future women, think about that. Artists and poets and construction workers.

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I mean, we're talking about generational impact on a scale that you can't even imagine. That we've already seen in just a couple years of this ministry, thousands of babies being saved.

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It's joyful when the mom comes out and she's hurling cuss words at you and abuse, and she wants to kill you.

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And then she comes back out in tears and says, she's not gonna kill the baby. So as much as I wanna prepare you for the reality of the difficulty of the ministry, which

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I know Pastor here has done that well, we should also understand that it brings about great joy.

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I got to officiate the marriage of a couple that the mom let her twin little babies live.

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They're the most beautiful brown -haired, curly, blue -eyed, just beautiful girls. And they are alive now because some

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Christians in weakness decided to stand out in front of the Planned Parenthood. And in fumbling words and fear and angst,

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God used that to save these babies. If the Christians had not been out there confronting that place, then these babies would be dead.

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And I think what holds you there and keeps you there, it's just the satisfaction and honor,

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I know as men, of doing the right thing. I'm leaving a legacy for my children.

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The Scriptures say to build an honorable name. At least I can say, no matter what happens in this crazy world that we live in, that we don't know the certainty really of anything if we watch the news, at least

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I can say as a man, I'm doing the right thing. My kids are watching me defeat this evil, and if it kills me, it kills me, but at least

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I'm doing the honorable thing. I'm doing the right thing. I'm not cowardly bowing out.

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I'm not being tempted by other vices and other things to get into just selfish pursuits.

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This is the wickedness of this day, and I'm gonna fight it. And whatever the

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Lord decides to do with that, that's really based upon his own divine will. So foundational principles always drive right practice.

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If we don't have our feet firmly planted on the Scriptures as far as our praxis, and that word really means how the

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Christian fleshes out his sanctification or obedience to the Lord Jesus. If we don't have our feet planted on principle, then our practices are gonna be horrible.

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They're not gonna be ultimately effective, and they're not gonna be God -glorifying. Psalm 11, three, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

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We have to have these foundational or fundamental principles in place that will always drive right practice.

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I can't say it enough. Right principles always drive right practice. And I think a poor example of this is much of the pro -life movement believes that the use of Scripture and actually communicating to the ladies and the men bringing their babies to die, they think that using

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Scripture and preaching the gospel and calling out is not a good thing to do. And you see that their principles drive maybe an erroneous practice.

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And I'm not hating, I appreciate all of whoever, I appreciate whoever they may be.

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If they have saved babies, I appreciate that. So I'm not necessarily hating on them. But like I said before, in which you can track down if you really study those who are saving babies is that your methodology and your principles and your practice mean everything if you're gonna save babies.

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There is definitely a right and a wrong way to go about this work.

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And we want to help you through our ministry avoid any unnecessary pitfalls kind of fallen there.

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We've fallen in holes and we don't want those that we teach to do the same. But I'm gonna go through these principles pretty quickly.

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Principle one is we work to rescue babies for the glory of God alone.

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We work to rescue babies primarily for the glory of God alone. And this seems kind of counterintuitive.

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A lot of people think it's all about the baby. We gotta rescue babies, absolutely. But I would put that on the secondary shelf of priority importance.

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And I would put the glory of God on the primary shelf or the top shelf. First Corinthians 10, 31, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.

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Isaiah 42, eight, I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

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When we think about abortion, it is an absolute destructive scourge. It's a cancer, it's our modern day

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Holocaust is destroying our babies. It's kind of hard to wrap your mind around.

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And I think that you almost automatically put it off to the side because you really don't wanna go there because of the heinous nature of it.

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It is heinous against our little babies alone, but it's a blight against God's glory. It's what it's all about primarily.

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It's a blight against the image of him inside of humanity. That's why underneath it all is a very real enemy,

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Lucifer, the devil, Satan himself, who's driving all of this. And as he's done all throughout scriptures, killing babies, he just wants to continue to do that because they give glory to God.

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But if we're gonna have, again, I know I'm using this word a lot, longevity or long -lastingness in this ministry endeavor, it's gotta be here for his glory.

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All for him. And the babies really come second if you think about it.

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We do it, this is our duty, and we leave the results to God. So if we go out to the mill, and so many people

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I've seen through a couple of years of doing this, they go out to the mill, they get a lot of one -finger salutes.

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They may get bottle, water bottles. You know, if you throw a water bottle out of a car going 75 miles an hour, the bottle is gonna go about 75 miles an hour.

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It's called the conservation of energy. So we have rockets headed at us. So they get this, and they don't see a baby saved.

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They just, it's uncomfortable for them. They were probably sweating bullets. And they leave, and that's it.

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Because their motivation was based upon results. I wanna see babies saved.

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I wanna do everything. I only think about, a large part of the time, is how I can learn from different ministries to get better results.

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We are in a baby rescuing ministry. But the drive has to be

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God's glory. So no matter what happens out there, and what he sovereignly chooses to do, I can keep on coming back, because I'm doing it for him.

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John Quincy Adams, he didn't see the results of all of his work. Our sixth president, he said, "'Duty is ours, results are the

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Lord's.'" So he started, he preached to Congress for 18 years to abolish slavery.

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Died in 1848. Of course, that really didn't happen until 1965. But he's such an awesome guy.

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I would really encourage you to study who he was when it comes to somebody who was so duty -bound. Again, they all rejected him.

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They called him the hellhound of heaven. They tried to kick him out, because all he talked about was the abolition of slavery.

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He didn't get to see the results, but he did it for God, and he did it for God's glory. We as Christians, we like to use religious endeavors, really, for our own glory, and it's something that we can't see externally.

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But if we're not doing it for God's glory, if we're just doing it for the praises of men, look what

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I'm doing, trying to gain the accolades of men, then God's just gonna totally resist everything we do.

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The Bible says that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And that's important.

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If we go into this other than for his namesake, for something other than his glory and his glory alone, he's gonna resist everything you do.

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If it's just, I'm doing it for me. I'm trying to use tools and whatever I can to get all eyes on me.

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People praising me and worshiping me. And you spend your life having to go through the difficulty of doing that.

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And when all is said and done, it all gets burned up because it wasn't for him. So his glory and his glory alone is the primary purpose.

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Principle number two, we gotta love everyone involved with child murder as we work to rescue babies.

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First Corinthians 13, one through three, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

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And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love,

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I am nothing. I give away all I have. And if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love,

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I gain nothing. If we're not motivated by love for God, love for people, if we're not going there in a spirit of compassion and goodness and grace and temperance, because I don't know if you're a dude and you've been involved in this, you know that there's a whole lot of vitriol coming your way, and that can bring out the worst in you.

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And you have to have this self -controlled spirit and this love for the people. If you were to do it, it's not only the love for the people that you're hanging out with, but the love for the women and the men and those hurling abuses at you and those spitting at you and those threatening your life and those trying to destroy you and the abortionist him or herself.

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We have to be able to love them One of the great definitions of love is love is giving at the expense of self.

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Is giving at the expense of self. I'm not there to get them there to love. How do we love practically at the mills?

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That's a good question. We love through sharing the truth according to God's word and his gospel.

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That's ultimately how we love. We pour our lives out, but we love by sharing his truth.

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Those who love their neighbors at the highest level are those who share the gospel with them because it's only through the power of the gospel that God uses to regenerate dead hearts.

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So we love them at the highest level through the proclamation and the dissemination and communication of the gospel because we're dealing with the state of their souls, which is that which is the most important to them.

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We love them not only by proclaiming the gospel and the truth of God's word to them, but we love them by speaking the truth and love with them.

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This is something hard for me. If I could just be honest with you, I have a whole family of fighters, both sides, horrible tempers, both sides.

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And I'm like, Lord, why did you put me into this ministry? Because when somebody gets in my face, the first thing

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I wanna do is get right back in your face. I have really good friends that say, I could never do this ministry because I would just go toe to toe.

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And I appreciate that. We're all not called to work in the same way or the same fashion outside of the mill.

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But we have to speak the truth and love. We have to be in the word of God, which I'm gonna talk about.

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We have to be in fellowship with the spirit of God and have him empower us to temper that fighter in you to be able to speak the truth and love.

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Ephesians 4 .15, rather speaking the truth and love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ.

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It does matter how you speak. So we as Christians, we kind of get lopsided. Jesus is the perfect example of grace and truth, right?

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John 1, he came full of grace and truth. And really, I'm not getting too far into this, but your proper

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Christology drives your proper practice. So Jesus was full of radical grace and uncompromising truth.

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He never backed down on the truth. He never watered it down. It was never a truncated version like we like to do, but he communicated it in grace.

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It's this is God's word, but I'm gonna communicate this with grace and mercy and compassion, with gentleness, with kindness.

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That's so key. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about more of that later. If we're combative and condemning and not self -controlled, overbearing, harsh, graceless, all that list

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I've been, just to be honest with you, if we do that, then we're not speaking the truth and love.

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We have to, and again, this ministry dramatically affects you. It affects your life.

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And one of the most important verses, I think in relation to this ministry is Romans 12, 21. I tell it myself all the time, to myself all the time, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

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And because as Rusty Thomas says, this truly is the gates of hell type of ministry. And the wickedness is so real and so thick.

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You can be overcome with the evil there. How do you know? It's when you respond in the flesh.

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Somebody cusses at you and you cuss at them, or you invite somebody to a fight down the road.

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You just respond in the flesh. And I have to tell you, I've had to do this.

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Pastor Jeff had to sit me down a little bit because a guy got up into my face in I think 2015.

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And thankfully somebody was recording it and I just got right back up into that guy's face. And I said, oh really?

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Well, I'm here. Go ahead and let's tussle. And then

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Pastor Jeff saw that and he said, hey, you can't do this. This is not speaking the truth in love.

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This is the opposite of Jesus' example. You can't do it. And I'm so thankful that he told me that.

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I was able to sit off to the side for a little bit and get my act together, but it's so, so important.

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And we got to walk in the spirit as my brother Scott Hoard says, if we are to not walk in the flesh or react in the flesh, it is so important.

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I cannot stress it enough. We have to be loving. We have to be self -controlled.

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Principle number three, we work to rescue babies because God has commanded us to do so. I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but when you get into this, you're gonna have your parents, you're gonna have your kids, you're gonna have your friends.

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Why are you out here? Why don't you get a better job? Why don't you do something meaningful with your life?

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What is any of this? Why is this any of this your business? And our explanation is very simple. We are

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Christians and true Christians obey the commands of scripture to love God and love our neighbor.

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So we're there for his glory. And what keeps us there, of course, is love for Jesus. Jesus in John 14, 15 says, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.

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Then again, Proverbs 24, 11 is a clear imperative. Rescue those who are being taken away to death.

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God commands each one of us to love our neighbor. So we all got to kind of play a role. If you were to ask yourself right now, if I lived 150 years ago and my black neighbors were being sold and beaten and abused, how much of your life would you use to try to help them?

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And I think every one of us have thought this. And I think we all come to the conclusion that I think a large portion of my life would be used to help them, right?

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Because of the severity, you know? And one, I'm not gonna get on a bunny trail. It's because we were taught these things and we're not taught about the evil of abortion.

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We all probably sat in classes where they showed you the pictures of, you know, the scarred backs or the

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Holocaust. They showed you the pictures of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and stuff like that. But I think we all thought, man, if I were there,

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I would have spent a lot of my time. Now, not everybody is called to serve the way that I serve, as a leader out there on the public sidewalk, but we all have to play a part of it, a part in it.

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Our good ministry friend, Jeff Rose, says this, "'Abortion mill ministry is not a calling, but a crisis.'"

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And so when we have a crisis of this magnitude, which we cannot really even really quantify, when we have a crisis like this, we have to have everybody in on it, right?

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If Iran were to attack us, if China were to attack us, I guarantee you, we would all be involved in that type of a conflict, in that type of a wickedness.

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So you gotta ask yourself, where do I fit within? I'll just tell you right now, my wife has never been out to the abortion mill, not once in 10 years.

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She just, that is not her role. She takes care of my kids. She takes care of the home. She manages that system.

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She takes care of me, and I'm so thankful for it. So I'm not telling you by saying, hey, you need to get involved.

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You need to do what I do. 1 Corinthians 12, we're all part of the body of Christ. We're all members with all different functions.

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But I would just ask yourself, where is my function when there is a crisis of this magnitude?

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Principle number four, the work to rescue babies requires constant prayer and preparation. I understand that this is common sense, but if we are not praying constantly, we will be impotent in our ministry output.

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We're relying primarily on God. He is the one that opens up hearts. He is the one that spiritually empowers us to do this.

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So we're preparing through prayer. We're preparing through memorizing the scriptures that are pertinent to this issue.

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Scriptures like Proverbs 6, 16 through 19. Revelation 21, eight.

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Isaiah 1, 15. Isaiah 5, 20. Psalm 22, nine through 10. Of course,

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Psalm 27, three. Psalm 139, 13 through 16. I think verses that you guys are very familiar with.

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But it's hiding these truths in our hearts and memorizing these pertinent scriptures. So the Holy Spirit in the heat of the moment will draw from that and you communicate these truths to the people that need to hear it.

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We have to be immersing ourself in the word of God. It's not only prayer, it's not only

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God's word, but it's also practically reconnaissance and research. You ask yourself when it comes to whatever environment that you're in, and I try to, when

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I preach, I try to preach transferable principles because we all have logistical differences in what we're facing.

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You guys are an hour and a half away from your mill. We have seven in a 20 mile radius in Phoenix.

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That's why everybody's just upset there because it's a wickedness that stains and pollutes the land.

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But it's figuring out what you can do. We were in Ireland and they said, hey, look, we don't have clinics, we have maternity wards, and we just don't have it like you do.

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And a young guy asked me that and I just said, well, the simple answer for you is you got to figure it out. I know that if we were 150 years ago in the slave issue or if we were 20th century

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Germany, we would figure stuff out to try to rescue as many as we can. We ask questions like, who is the abortionist?

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What are the laws and ordinance when it comes to amplification? Where you're allowed to stand?

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Things like this. I know the pastor here has all that information.

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So this is definitely kind of preaching to the choir, but it's not only doing this type of reconnaissance before you get into it, but it's also having the materials there to give to the women and the men, literature focused on the truth about God's word that actually reveals properly what abortion is.

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Because of course, these clinics like to conceal all that information. Life affirming institutions that we can point them to to receive adoption, medical, whatever it may be.

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GoPros are important. And I'm gonna get into this in a second. You must wear a

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GoPro, something to record what's going on. You do that because when you disseminate that through YouTube, God wakes people up as we've done at Apology at Church.

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It is not an instrument for self -glory. It's just God has used that technical device to bring people into the fight.

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But I would just say, if you're gonna wear a GoPro out there, wear it in a non -conspicuous area.

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Because when you have a big old giant camera in front of your chest, it doesn't lead to conversations.

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And conversations are the key to rescuing babies. And I'm getting ahead of myself. But get a

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GoPro. We have baby blessing bags that we give for moms who choose life. We also have signs out there.

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We'll adopt your baby. Please let us help you. In abortion now, babies are murdered here.

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Some of the most effective signs that I'm learning is from babies that are saved. So Scott over in Tennessee, he just takes pictures of the babies that have been saved and he blows them up on huge signs.

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And he says, this is what happens when you let that baby live. Little baby girls and little baby boys. Those are some of the most effective signs that you can use.

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Number five, the work to rescue babies requires us to constantly communicate the truth. Of course, always be preaching the gospel.

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We are nothing if we are not disseminating again and communicating God's word. Romans 1 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel.

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For it is the power of God for salvation. Everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. If we're not proclaiming the law and God at these killing places, what are we accomplishing?

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Because it's only through that vehicle that God changes and softens a heart. That is our sword that we wield.

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And so much, unfortunately, the pro -life movement says, don't use the gospel. I'd be going into war. And you're about to face the enemy on the front lines.

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And the captain says, throw down your weapon. You're not gonna accomplish much if that were to happen.

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But that's what happens when we don't use God's word as our primary instrument of battle in this battle.

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One of my mentors, Sherry, says this. She says, always remind them that God commands them not to murder and abortion is murder at any age and any stage.

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Preach the gospel numerous times and always share it with the moms you're able to speak directly with as well. Don't expect that someone else will do it.

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If we don't share the gospel, then we have not really loved them. The enemy, again, as you get out there, he wants everything, he's gonna do everything he can to shut down the preaching of the gospel because he knows how important it is.

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So you're gonna have people who just drunkenly get up and wanna speak or sing a song on your microphone.

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Don't let him do that. You're gonna have people who just wanna get into really weird, stupid conversations.

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Like, hey, do you know that the earth is flat? I'm trying to say babies here. I don't really care about that. And the word earth is round, it's not flat.

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But you wanna do everything you can to keep people away from the microphone, away from the amplification. You wanna have somebody else feel that.

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So if somebody's preaching the gospel at these places and somebody comes up and tries to engage them, then you just say, hey,

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I'll answer that question. And typically they just leave because I really feel that they're instrumentally going about the enemy's desires to stop the preaching of the gospel.

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We just can't ever let that component of this battle stop. Three vital components when it comes to the substance of your message, of course.

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Number one is the law and the gospel. Number two is abortion is murder. And when we call it murder, we're giving it a correct biblical definition because these moms and dads, they don't think it's murder.

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They just think having an abortion is the same thing as when you brush off the skin in the shower.

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They just have incorrect definitions and incorrect understanding of what's really happening.

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And so we wanna do the best that we can to properly educate them. So you're giving them, of course, what the scriptures say about it, true scientific and biological information about the baby, facts about the baby's development, the destructive consequences of abortion.

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This is kind of all this substance of our communication is kind of on a loop out there. If you've been out there, we're there not only to give them the truth, but we're out there to give them financial, medical, material help.

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And as Scott Hord says, go the distance with this. We are really laying down our lives. We're trying to do whatever we can to give to these parents so that they wouldn't kill their baby.

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That doesn't mean we'll let them take advantage of us. I'll tell you one thing, we've had babies saved and parents will, they'll try to milk you.

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They'll try to take advantage of you. We had a couple that saved their baby. And this guy was calling me up every week.

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Hey, I need 250 bucks. Next week, I need 550 bucks. And I'm like, dude, get a job.

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It's a virtual reality for you just to come to me to get money, you've got to work yourself to do it. So I'm not saying we just give it out willy nilly.

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We don't vet people. We do have to do that, but we do have to be willing to go the distance as far as giving.

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When you're communicating, only one person talking at one time, that's our biggest struggle.

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We have some fiery people in Apologia. We do not have a lack of zeal.

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It's amazing. And when there's a chance to talk to somebody, it's nine different people jumping on them.

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And we've been working for this for years. I don't know if we're ever going to solve it. Because you're holding a sign out there and people are flipping you off and you want to get something to eat.

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You just want to go. And then all of them, in the heat of the moment, now you have a second to talk to somebody and you want to do it.

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But only let one person talk at one time. Have the self -control to back away and say, okay,

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I'm not going to engage this conversation. God is God of order, like Pastor Luke just said. And we have to have a distinct message coming out of one mouth.

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It's important. We also have to, importantly, we have to respect law enforcement.

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We don't let them push us around, but we also try to befriend them. We don't want to make them our enemies.

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God has made men of peace, as the scripture says, so many law enforcement individuals that have been so instrumental in keeping us out of hot water.

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And when it comes to communication too, the scriptures say, do not revile when reviled.

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First Peter 2 .23, when he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

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One of the most important verses, I think, in relation to this, Second Timothy 2 .24, and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness, that God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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And they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

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Ultimately, this work is evangelistic, right? This is about the gospel getting to them. It's the gospel.

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It's the hammer of God's word on the heart of a mother that softens her towards her baby.

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It's so important. But isn't it amazing? It says, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome.

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And then he goes on to talk about the gifting of grace, the gifting of repentance. And I think these things are tied together, right?

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God's gifting of repentance to an individual, I think, is related to the non -quarrelsomeness of his servants.

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I don't know how that works out. I don't want to dive too much into that, but I think it's definitely related. It's within the same couple of verses.

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And I'm going to spend the last amount of my time, really, on this component.

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I've stolen all of this from Scott Hoard from Tennessee. So I want to connect you to him because I would encourage you with all that I can to bring him out and to just let this guy loose on your people because he's an incredible brother.

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He had his 350 and 350 first save yesterday. So he's had 351 saves.

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That's about 100 a year. He now has two to four babies saved every single week. It's amazing.

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And so I told myself, oh, it's just his context. And I'm not making light.

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We all have different kind of spiritual environment. We're in the Bible Belt here. It's definitely different from New Jersey, right?

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As far as the fertility of the spiritual landscape here and how the word of God plants itself in different parts.

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But I was looking at him and I was like, man, that's where he's at. And that's his context. And so I bring him over to Arizona a couple of weeks ago and I said, dude, you just come here.

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You just tell us what we're doing wrong and show us what we're doing right. He comes out the first day on one of the hardest mills that we work out.

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Three babies are saved within an hour. Glory to God.

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Glory to God alone. God's doing that. But methodology is not disconnected.

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It's from your effectiveness. It has to do with the way that you go about it. So I just want to go through a couple points.

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I kind of wanted to just condense down what Scott told us. And I know it's going to be a blessing for you.

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One of the biggest things when it comes to what Scott shared with us and modeled to us was leadership at the mill.

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It's training up a leader. And he's like the composer in a symphony. And he's telling people, you stand here, look, there's a car coming down the street.

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He's directing the whole musical. And that is so important. That's what I see in him.

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And as he does that, God saves babies. He's not only assertive, he's an aggressive man.

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I mean, it's amazing. When he came, we really found out that we were an information giving ministry.

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And he's more of a baby rescuing ministry. He has this sense of urgency that we need to have when it comes to saving babies.

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I mean, he's not only talking to the moms, he's talking to the baker down the street. He's talking to the mailman.

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He's doing whatever he can to connect with people because the conversation is going to lead to rescues.

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The conversations lead to rescues. So if we're going to this abortionist out here who consults, we want to get into conversations with the people that are going to lead to rescues before they go into her office.

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Or it's a gentleman or a woman? It's a woman. So it's all about connecting with these folks before they walk through the doors.

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So you got to connect with everybody. He's running, he's going to cars, and it's all with this winsome, this nice, good spirit about him.

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He's connecting, he's saying, hey, you're a Steelers fan. If he sees a Steelers shirt. I mean, he's talking about the people's hats.

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He's doing whatever he can to make connections with these people in a very kind and gracious way to where he creates a bridge between them and he doesn't build a wall.

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This is so, so, so important, and it's so connected to God saving babies.

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We have to, as I've said, and he says all the time, be willing to go the distance. So he had a lady, he was in an hour -long conversation with her, and he looked on his watch.

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He's like, well, Planned Parenthood closes in three hours. So he had a four -hour conversation with her.

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And after the four hours, he said, whoop, Planned Parenthood's closed. She comes back the next day.

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He's there. She talks to him, saves the baby. Why? Because he's willing to go the distance.

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He's really seeing this as a baby about to die. And sometimes those of us who have been so long in this ministry, we get so jaded and we're like, oh,

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I just wanna leave when we really have to have this presence of mind, the sense of urgency to go the distance with these women to do our best and to go the extra mile.

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We can't be timid. We have to evangelize everyone. We have to deescalate the mad people.

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We have to establish good relationships with these women in pregnancy centers. It is absolutely crucial.

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And lastly, consistency is absolutely essential. One of the most wonderful things about this work, you don't have to be an academic.

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You don't have to be highly educated, highly intelligent, me. God uses the base things of the world to confound the wise, the meek things of this world.

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It's just about consistency. I don't know if you guys heard of a man named John Barros out in Florida, the greatest guy you ever meet.

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I just wish I could spend all my time with him. He's like your uncle or your coworker.

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Nothing special about him. He survived cancer and he's decided as a retiree to do this work by himself.

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He's been doing it for 14 years. The first three years he spent at these places with nobody. There was no attention given to him.

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Like if there's attention given to him now, he'd spent 40 hours a week there and God used him now to save thousands of babies.

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It's not some special people, it's available people. And real quick, retirees can make the best baby rescuers because they by and large have the financial capability.

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They have the means by which they can stay out there in a consistent manner. Consistency, conversations lead to babies being saved and consistency leads to babies being saved.

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We have to move from, in our thinking as Christians, event -based evangelism to process -based evangelism.

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Sometimes we think about abortion. We're like, okay, it's January 22nd, I'm gonna get loud and I'm gonna really preach against abortion.

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I'm gonna give some money to a crisis pregnancy center, which is good because there's some good ones out there.

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But, and then we back off and we've kind of done our duty. That's an event -oriented understanding of a crisis situation, when it should be a process -oriented understanding where this is something that we have to do all the time.

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This is something that we have to put our effort into constantly.

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So it's consistency, it's showing up and retirees can do it, anybody can do it. It's just saying, hey, look, this is what

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I'm going to do. I'm gonna spend two days a week, four days a week, whatever it may be. I'm adopting a male, I'm going out.

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Come hell or high water, I'm gonna do my best to rescue babies. And if you do that, God will save babies. If the church shows up at the mill,

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I don't care who you are, employing right practices and right principles is key.

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God will save babies through your efforts. That's what we need. So thanks so much for letting me come and share

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God's word with you. I will be praying for you. I hope you understand that principles drive right practice.

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And I hope everything that I said was only grounded in God's word. I will be praying for you.

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I'm thankful you have this guy at the helm and I'm excited to see what God's gonna do. I'll go ahead and pray.

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Father, I thank you for this church. I thank you for my brothers and sisters, my brethren here. I thank you for their pastor and I'm thankful for all that you're gonna do with this church and all that you've already done.

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Thankful for the pregnancy centers and all the babies saved and they continue to be saved. And the third pregnancy center opening up now,

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I pray that you would bless that. You would protect this pastor from the assault of the enemy.

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We know that's a good sign because it means we're doing what you want us to do, but I pray you protect him, his family, and this flock from his onslaught.

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But we trust you in all that. And we understand that he's on your leash, but we also pray in our own wisdom that you protect them.

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I pray that you would enlarge their capability to give you glory. I pray these pregnancy centers would continue to rescue babies and these saints and all of us would get in this fight until this comes to an end.