Reimagining Pro-Life: 30 Days With Save the Storksنموونە

HEART //

How incredible it is that God would call us His children! Because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, God has brought us into His family and has given us true life in Him. As a family, we have the privilege of being co-heirs with Christ. One day, when we see Him face to face, we will finally see and savor Him fully as we share in His eternal inheritance (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

But we don’t have to wait until we reach the Kingdom to share in and shout out His glory. Today’s verse reminds us that suffering for His namesake is a necessary part of the Christian life, as much as the ‘good stuff’ is. If Jesus is the exact replica of the glory of God (Hebrews 1:3), and the crescendo of His life was a victorious death on the cross, then we can share in God’s glory today by dying to ourselves, serving others, and anticipating resurrection in areas of our lives!

In other words, for Jesus, compassion IS the good stuff. 

Let’s break the word compassion down a little bit. Its original definition comes from the idea of shared suffering: the compassionate person is someone who ‘suffers with’ another person. Truly, no one is more compassionate than Christ — who suffered for us! Though we cannot bear the sins of others (which only Jesus can do, and only He has done), we can bear the burdens of others. 

How does the Bible call us to ‘suffer with’ and bear the burdens of one another? Think about the second great commandment that Jesus gives us in Matthew 22. He calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves. This means that we should be willing to feel what they feel, and we should be willing to put ourselves in their place and alleviate any suffering they may be experiencing! As followers of Jesus, our hearts should be consistently touched and moved by the suffering of fellow humans. 

We are God’s children, and He has given us everything we need to be His hands and feet to those He has called us to serve. We become more like God when we engage our hearts with His and begin to care about the people that He cares about. Putting others first doesn’t always mean giving up life as you know it, or giving thousands upon thousands of dollars to orphans, widows or unborn babies. It can mean leaning into the lives of young people in your church or volunteering time at a local Pregnancy Resource Center! 

However, when we open our hearts, caring about the vulnerable people in our world, we will be driven to live differently. ‘Living differently’ — compared to the self-focus so prevalent in our world — is a very good and godly thing. 

// WORK  

When our hearts become engaged passionately with an issue as serious as abortion, often it can cause feelings of anger and hopelessness. 

That’s why we need to ask God to help us to respond to men and women facing an unplanned pregnancy as Jesus does — with compassion. Speaking with compassion doesn’t mean that we become afraid to tell the truth about abortion. It means our words are filled with supernatural kindness, and it means that love and action always follow close behind our conversations. 

Real compassion means co-suffering with others. It means paying attention to the needs of abortion-vulnerable women in our communities— even when it might feel overwhelming. 

This week we want you to take on the empathy challenge of fasting all negative speech. . . . No gossip. No complaints. No criticism. No judgment or bitterness. Let’s practice letting go of these words, just for a week. Let’s practice being further defined by love and inviting the compassion of Jesus to fill that empty space in ways we may have never imagined. 

As you process what this week’s challenge may look like for you, think back to how Jesus spoke to the woman at the well in John 4. He didn’t hide from the truth. He told her the truth about her sins. But even as Jesus did so, He gave her a new way to live: a life based on Himself, the Living Water. Pray that God would make you truthful, gentle, and kind in your speech this week. Ask that He would make you willing to co-suffer and act with compassion.