Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Changing Hearts, Upholding Life

It is so important that we hold to a perspective that life is valuable, that each person is created in the image of God, intended for fellowship with Him.  This obviously applies to life in the womb.  Job said in chapter 31 of that book:
13 "If I have despised the cause of my male or female servant When they complained against me,
14 What then shall I do when God rises up? When He punishes, how shall I answer Him?
15 Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?

Our viewpoint on the sanctity of life begins in the womb and it is important that we support efforts to protect unborn human life.  And, we also have to place a high value on the lives of those who have been born and promote that philosophy - everyone has value, each person has worth, and in Christ, we are called to show compassion toward all people, recognizing that perhaps through our love and interaction with Him, God might use us to make an imprint upon their hearts and lives.

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We are each created in the image of our Maker, and we can take steps to show that we value life, as it is ordained by God. Psalm 139 says:
13 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.

The shock and outrage over these videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of body parts from aborted babies is continuing now.  Some Congressional leaders are advocating for a vote on legislation to prevent taxpayer funds from being sent to the nation's largest abortion provider, but for some reason, there still has not been a vote.   As Jim DeMint, a former Senator who heads the Heritage Foundation wrote on The Daily Signal website:
The U.S. Senate attached an amendment resurrecting a dead corporate welfare program to the highway bill while refusing to even allow a vote to end taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.
He explains that a bill authorizing the Export-Import bank, which conservatives have been trying to
eliminate, has been attached to a highway bill, thought to be a "must pass" bill.   By the way, the Ex-Im Bank lends money to foreign companies and countries to buy products from large corporations. The tactic of attaching controversial legislation to a "must pass" bill is sometimes used in Congress to get that type of legislation passed.  But DeMint rightly raises the question:  
Why not demand that the Export-Import Bank pass as a stand-alone bill? Why must only conservative legislation be given the higher hurdle to overcome?
He's referring to Sen. Mike Lee's bill to end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood - a vote has been promised, but only as a stand-alone bill, not as an amendment to other legislation, where it would pass along with critical legislation.

So, already, we're talking about multiple revenue streams for Planned Parenthood: in addition to the alleged sale of body parts and/or so-called "fetal tissue," another source of funding for the abortion giant is taxpayer dollars; another is corporate donations.  And, large companies thought to be contributing to Planned Parenthood are attempting to distance themselves.  Last week, The Daily Signal, using information from the 2nd Vote website and app, published the names of 41 companies listed by Planned Parenthood as contributors.  Shortly after the story was published, representatives from Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Co. and Xerox contacted The Daily Signal to say they were erroneously listed and had requested that Planned Parenthood take them off its website.  By Thursday, Planned Parenthood had removed the names of all alleged corporate donors.

No doubt, Planned Parenthood is making money off the deaths of unborn children.  Crippling their operation is a tactic that can be effectively used to save lives.  But, there is an even more powerful tool that can be used to reduce abortion, and that's where you and I can be active participants:  heart change.  I believe that is going on in America today - witness the decline in the number of abortions, as polling data has shown.

In what Justin Taylor of The Gospel Coalition calls "the best 1.5 minute commentary on abortion ever heard on network news," according to the Live Action News website, Brit Hume of Fox News appealed to the hearts of Americans.  Live Action News published the commentary.  He said, in part, that the Planned Parenthood revelations "...have parted the veil of antiseptic tidiness behind which the abortion industry has for so long operated. The sight of a senior Planned Parenthood official, and a doctor to boot, discussing the market for fetal body parts in between bites of salad and sips of wine was stomach-turning."

Hume continued:
That’s because it laid bare the essentially brutal nature of abortion. Let’s be blunt: abortion involves the extraction and killing of a human life, which within a couple of weeks of pregnancy has a beating heart. Five weeks in, its hands and legs begin to grow. It is these tiny creatures, and too often ones that are far more developed, that are pulled from a mother’s womb and crushed with forceps.
Oh, but oh-so-carefully, lest body parts that can be sold are preserved. This gruesome procedure shows the extent to which we, as a people, have been anesthetized by the estimated 55 million—fifty-five million—abortions performed since the Supreme Court discovered a constitutional right to that procedure 42 years ago.
Will we as a nation not someday look upon that decision and what it has done to us, not to mention the 55 million, with horror and regret? One can only hope we will.
Some profound thoughts delivered on Fox News recently.  When one thinks about the value of life, consistent with a Biblical worldview, and the biological development of a pre-born child, this could result in changed hearts and altered decisions.  And, factor in the importance of prayer for our nation regarding this important issue and believers speaking the truth in love, and you have the components for a continued reversal of the tide of death that has been unleashed on our nation through abortion.

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