Have you ever been reading your Bible, and the words seemed to leap off the page to you in a new way, bringing conviction, comfort, or instruction to your exact situation? Has God ever orchestrated something so specific to your circumstances that you knew it was a direct message from Him?
God did that for me last week in a way that made my jaw drop. He knows me fully, so He also knows that subtlety doesn’t work for me. He has to hit me over the head!
It has been one of the hardest months EVER for me at work. I am the Director of Nursing at a wonderful crisis pregnancy center called Life Choices of Memphis. One of the things I do is counsel women who are planning to abort their babies. I also carry a hotline phone 24 hours a day to help women who have taken an abortion pill but then regret it. If we can get life-saving progesterone to that woman quickly, her baby’s life can often be saved. Even though God is the one who works in a woman’s heart to choose life, it’s exciting to hold a baby, knowing that you played a small part in helping to save that baby. But it can also be discouraging to invest time, energy, and emotions into someone, only to have them see-saw back again to abortion.
The pressures on these women are tremendous. They have financial pressures, internal and external pressures, and there is often a man pressuring or even forcing her to abort. The brokenness can be a heavy load for us as counselors to share. If I were to list my job activities, “going into the bathroom to cry for a minute” would be on that list. But I love what I do, and the load has never seemed overwhelming.
Until this month. August has been quite the struggle month for me. It was an unusually busy month. But it was more than that. I’ve never seen so many women “re-abort” in one month before. “Re-abort” means that she took an abortion pill, changed her mind and started taking progesterone to save her baby, but then changed her mind BACK to choosing abortion again.
I became discouraged this month because I was looking at numbers. And my Bible study lesson leapt off the page to me last week to show me that while I have been looking at numbers, God has been looking at hearts.
The passage was I Corinthians 10:1-12, where it describes how the Israelites responded to God in the wilderness. They were complaining, falling into immorality, and even worshipping idols. They were demanding things from God, feeling entitled for God to respond the way THEY wanted Him to. I’ve often kind of skimmed over those verses. Although I definitely could improve, I really do try not to complain. I don’t struggle with immorality or idol worship. But God grabbed me by the scruff of the neck at verse 9, which reads, “Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents.” I never thought of myself as “trying the Lord” until my Bible study lesson described it this way—Are we wanting God to “bow to us or comply with us?” The word “comply” struck a nerve. Am I trying to demand something of God? Am I really expecting God to comply with my wishes? Ouch!
I had been discouraged this month because in my own self-centered way, I was demanding results from God. I was disappointed that I didn’t get what I wanted.
But God’s results are way better than my results! As much as I want that baby to live, I have to remember that an aborted baby is at least with Jesus for eternity. God’s vision isn’t just for that baby. It’s also for the heart of that mother to turn to Him for eternal salvation.
I can’t see the seeds that may have been planted by God through the conversations I’ve had with a woman, but God sees the seeds. He tends them and waters them, sometimes for YEARS before the first sprout bursts forth. He sees results that I can’t see. He is much more patient than I am.
To drive this lesson even further home, God did something incredible for me. I was looking through some old notebooks in my closet for a specific piece of writing I had written a few years ago. As I was shuffling through some folders, a folded-up piece of paper fell out. It was yellowed with age and a little tattered. I delicately opened it, wondering what it was. The minute I saw the title, my heart dropped.
It was something I had written almost 40 years ago and didn’t even know I still had it. I thought I had thrown it away a long time ago. When I realized what it was, my first thought was to do exactly that—to immediately throw it away, because I didn’t want anyone else to see it! It was ugly and raw and deeply personal. As I read it, I felt as if I were reading something written by a stranger.
It was a poem entitled “Beyond Repair” I had written during a very dark time in my life, right after my abortion. As I read the words all these years later, the defeat, despair, and hopelessness on that paper were such a stark contrast to the joy and peace I have today. And I realized something as God was giving me His “not so subtle” lesson….
Just as God had worked in my heart all those years ago to bring me to Himself, God is also working in the hearts of the women I see, even those who end up choosing abortion. Their stories aren’t over yet. I just talked to one of them an hour ago to remind her that God loves her. I am praying for more opportunities with her, but I can be encouraged that if she and I lose contact, God can bring other people and other circumstances into her life to tend to those seeds.
What God did for me, He can do for them. And He very well might do it through sorrow from their own bad choices, as He did for me. But it takes time, and I might not get to see it happen. But God sees it all.
God doesn’t call me to produce results. He is the only One who can do that. He calls me to be obedient. He calls me to be faithful. And He calls me to trust Him with the results instead of demanding to see them.
But what a sweet glimpse He gave me of the results that He worked in my own heart as He brought out a tattered, yellowed piece of paper at the exact time that I needed it.
I no longer want to throw it away. It’s kind of like a trophy, reminding me of my victory in Jesus!
What demands are you placing on God? Can you trust Him to bring results in HIS perfect timing?
What desire of your heart do you feel God is withholding from you? Can you trust that He knows what He is doing, and that He might be quietly working according to His own timetable to bring it to pass?
I’d like to encourage you to release that desire to God right now in prayer, and trust Him. He is good…Always.
