Will I Be Forgiven For Abortion?

What’s It Like to Abort Your Own Child?

If you are asking “Will I be forgiven for the abortion I had?” then you already feel the guilt of your sin. Perhaps you feel your guilt afresh as a result of the videos exposing the work of Planned Parenthood. What do you do with your guilt?

One young man I met on the street a few years ago knew this guilt. He had grown up in an evangelical Christian home. About twenty years old, he had rejected the God of the Bible and argued vehemently with me against the Lord's very existence. Our discussion somehow moved to the moral argument for God. Why is murder wrong? What about abortion? At that point, most unexpectedly, the hardened young man burst into tears. He buried his head in his hands and blurted out, “I don’t need any God to know abortion is wrong!” He rapidly recounted impregnating his girlfriend, taking her to the abortion clinic, paying for the abortion, and the guilt he had carried ever since - all while repeating. “I knew it was wrong!”

After a few moments, he gathered himself and looked up. He was as surprised at what he had confessed as I was; we both knew he had said far more than he intended to say. His guilt remained. No matter how much he tried to deny the existence of his Creator and Judge, he could not escape his guilt before God. Guilt is real. It doesn’t just go away with time.

Our culture may tell you, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t wrong.” But guilt cannot be wished away, and we know it because we cannot escape from God. When King David committed adultery and murder, he hid his sin for a time, but finally confessed it saying, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you [God], you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:3-4). Our guilt remains even though the Lord may patiently allow us to continue with life – as we try to make it appear that nothing is wrong because “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty” (Nahum 1:3).

However, the Lord promises a “guilty” verdict can be turned to “innocent.” But, we need a substitute who is qualified and willing to take our guilt and the resulting punishment of death and the wrath of God. No mere man could do it. So, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to become man, live without sin, and die like a sinner before rising from the grave. The Apostle Paul wrote, “For our sake he made him be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus takes the place of his people in punishment, and we gain his place in righteousness. Bethany Jenkins has said it beautifully with respect to this particular sin: “Abortion says, ‘Your life for mine,’ but Jesus says, ‘My life for yours—even if you’ve killed your own child.’”

Your guilt will be taken away forever if you confess that guilt to the God you have offended. Take heed to the word of God from Isaiah the prophet and believe his promise: “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool" (Isaiah 1:18). Freedom is waiting for you if you would simply humble yourself before God. If you need some sense of where to start in the midst of your confusion, these words by Dr. David Powlison can serve as a guide. Other forgiven sinners are waiting to help you too. Talk with a pastor or another mature Christian; we long for you to experience forgiveness.

The young man I talked to that night would not confess his sin to the God he denied or trust Jesus’ saving love. But his denial did not erase either God or his own guilt. I do not know what happened to him after we parted. Because the Lord is slow to anger, my friend’s life may have gone on without much visible change. But, his guilt remains if he has not yet turned to the God of mercy. Your guilt does not need to remain.

James Faris: Child of God. Husband to Elizabeth. Father of six. Pastor of Second Reformed Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ordained as a pastor in 2003.

Ayo Mary Laurent, A Royal with a Royal Inheritance In Christ and Ministry

Family and Ministry. Photo by Luis Quintero (pexels)

In Deuteronomy 8:6-7, the Scriptures commanded parents to teach diligently our children the way of the Lord. This is ultimate in Christian upbringing.

“6. Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. 7. For the Lord, your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills”

Family is the principal plan of God’s for the happiness and growth of His children. 

The fact that God Himself established families from the onset of creation and shows us various examples of strong families. It also teaches us how to have a loving, happy, and successful family. God made it very clear that families are fundamental when he created Adam and Eve. The Bible calls them “man and . . . wife” (Genesis 2:25), and the first commandment  He gave them was to "...be fruitful and multiply...", meaning to children ( Genesis 1:28).

According to a study, Christian upbringing contributed towards a number of positive outcomes as well, such greater happiness, more volunteering in the community, a greater sense of mission and purpose, and higher levels of forgiveness

God promises blessings for your children when they know and obey gospel truths: “If your sons will keep My covenant, And My testimony which I shall teach them, Their sons also shall sit upon your throne forevermore.” (Psalm 132:12).

For Christian parents, the main objective is to establish and develop in their children’s early receptive years, so they will consistently have the hunger and desire to wholly seek God as their Father. That is the ultimate goal.

Family and Ministry

The personal example set by parents is of the utmost importance! Children must see the real God through their parents.. children’s’ knowledge of God is predominately by their parents’ example. "go into all the world and preach the Gospel" (Mark 16:15). Christ made it clear that "Freely you have received, freely give" (Matthew 10:8).

Every Christian parent wants their children to grow up to love God and His Word. We know the immersed benefits that God’s law will bring to Ministry and children, both now and in the life to come—a firm and fulfilling life now, and in due course, eternal life in God’s family at Jesus Christ’s return.

Ayo Mary Laurent, Photo by Pereza Zang

In Nigeria, Ayo Mary Laurent, whose family background as a ministerial one, her late dad, was a Senior Evangelist of The Celestial Church of Christ, the mum, a Minister of God, and her grandmother Elderly Princess Florence Oni is the Chairperson of the very renown Cherubim and Seraphim prayer movement, white garment church with Headquarters in Osun state Nigeria is an example of Christian upbringing and ministry.

She is today, a devout Christian, an ordained minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and an anointed evangelist from the Zion International School of Evangelism. There is no richer inheritance that parents can give their children than to see, hear, and experience the fullness of the blessings that come from choosing obedience and fulfillment in God. 

Parents who are in ministry and devote the time and the commitment—showing genuine love and interest in their children—will receive a reward that will bless them, and their children, to the end of their days! "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them" (Psalm 127: 3–5).

Children stepping in parent’s tracks, taking the mantle of leadership on the great commission is of great joy to parents and Hosts of heaven.

Pandemic: Can it Help Renew Home and Family Life?

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, a little-noted but interesting trend is occurring—home improvement stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot have seen their sales rise higher than expected as a result of people spending more time at home and deciding to take on new or long put-off projects around the house.

I can personally attest to this. My wife and I decided it would be great to raise our own chickens so we could have fresh eggs for our family and be more self-sufficient. We went about researching how to raise chickens and got five baby chicks, who are now two months old and are able to live outside. Our extra time at home has allowed us to devote more energy to our chicken project, which is now involving my retired parents and family friends who are all helping us build a chicken coop and put up fencing to protect them from predators.

All of this to say that the pandemic is leading me and many around the country to think more about how we can cultivate our homes, which in turn can lead to new and perhaps unexpected projects that can draw our families closer together as we work with each other to accomplish them.

There is also something deeply satisfying about working with our hands to improve our homes. This reminds me of something profound recently written by John Cuddeback:

We have lost something today, but we can get it back. Our very humanity calls for living and working in our bodies, with natural things, regularly. This means all of us. We have been separated from our own humanity, from our proper homeland, and we are suffering, even if we have never known anything else.

I say we can ‘get it back’—not because we ourselves have necessarily had it before, but because it is our birthright. Our own ancestors had it; we need it; and we can still do it, even if differently, and by fits and starts.

It need not be the work of our profession or work that makes money. It just needs to be real and regular, preferably in our home.

Each of us can make our daily lives more human by choosing the tried and true forms of human work. Certain kinds of work have shown themselves to be rich and reliable as especially human modes of acting.

Here is a short list we might consider:

1. hand-crafting in natural substances: wood, stone, metal or fiber

2. caring for the earth, plants, or animals.

3. preparing and preserving natural foods

4. any aesthetic work with hand tools, such as drawing, painting, carving

5. Miscellaneous such as cutting, splitting, and burning wood for heat  

It seems to me that doing these kinds of projects by hand is intimately connected with family. When we share in these activities with our families and teach ourselves and our children to do them, we are not only helping our homes become more self-sufficient during uncertain times, we are also participating in a primal familial bonding and formative experience that has the great potential to increase love and unity amongst each other while at the same time building character.

Families in the modern age desperately need to share in this type of formative bonding with each other. As Yuval Levin has recently written, there is a distinct sense in which the breakdown of the traditional family structure in our time has contributed to a breakdown in character formation that is essential for an individual to become a healthy, thriving member of society. He writes:

…The family forms us by imprinting upon us and giving us models to emulate and patterns to adopt.

The family does all this by giving each of its members a role, a set of relations to others, a body of responsibilities, and a network of privileges. Each of these, in its own way, is given more than earned and is obligatory more than chosen. Although the core human relationship at the heart of most families—the marital relationship—is one we enter into by choice, once we have entered it that relationship constrains the choices we may make. The other core familial bond—the parent-child relationship—often is not optional, to begin with, and surely must not be treated as optional after that. It imposes heavy obligations on everyone involved, and yet it plays a crucial role in forming us to be capable of freedom and choice.

In this sense, the institution of the family helps us see that institutions, in general, take shape around our needs and, if they are well shaped, can help turn those needs into capacities. They literally make virtues of necessities and forge our weaknesses and vulnerabilities into strengths and capabilities. They are formative because they act on us directly, and they offer us a kind of character formation for which there is no substitute…  

One potential positive effect of the coronavirus pandemic is that it gives families an unexpected occasion to renew our focus on our home life and build strong, formative, and lasting bonds through shared home-cultivating activities. Let us not waste the opportunity.

Cred. Source:

–Family Research Council