Reimagining Pro-Life: 30 Days With Save the StorksVoorbeeld

HEART //

When Jesus fed the five thousand, He took ‘not enough’ and made it into more than enough. At first, all that the disciples could see was a huge problem. Jesus saw an opportunity. He used the tiny offering of a little boy to make a monumental difference. The little boy had what we like to call ‘youthful enthusiasm’ — the imaginative energy that children and young people often possess, even in the face of gloomy circumstances. He didn’t know what could come of his underwhelming offering, but he did something that many of us miss: he simply stayed close to Jesus. Carrying around his simple lunch, that mundane thing he was given, or worked for, or that he needed for his day, plus following Jesus equaled a miracle.

It’s easy to feel like we do not have ‘enough’ to offer to Jesus: enough time, enough resources, enough energy, enough money. We often compare ourselves to others and ask why we even matter. What we must realize is that He alone takes our short (and often, seemingly insignificant) lives and uses them in His cosmic plan to change the world! All that Jesus asks of us is to be willing. We must stay close to Him and readily give all that we have to Him, fully confident that He is capable of doing great things with ordinary people. There is always enough to go around when Jesus is around. Because of the great God we serve, abundance can and should be our attitude — even if what we have to offer doesn’t look like much!

All throughout Scripture, God uses normal — and even inadequate! — people to carry out His mighty works. He used a shepherd boy to lead Israel in His ways; He used a teenage girl to birth His own Son; and He used some common fishermen to start the early Church. Look to the Bible when you need a strong reminder of God’s ability to make ‘meager’ into ‘mighty.’ He can take the most normal things in our hands and turn them into a miracle for us and for others. 

So, what’s in your hands? 

// WORK

Often, God uses the overwhelmingly ordinary to bless the many. What small or ordinary things of yours — your talents, resources, or gifts — might God want to use as a blessing in the lives of others? Make a list in your journal. No matter how inadequate you may feel, you can be sure that God can and will use your small ‘loaves’ for the Kingdom. All you need to DO is to BE willing! 

As you carry around your bag of burdens this week, remember how blessed you are. Ask God to reveal the ways that you can give whatever simple gift you may be carrying in your life to help abortion-minded people or pregnancy resource centers in your area. In order to best encourage women to make life-affirming choices, we have to be willing to come through for them practically. Being willing means our desire to offer hope and love leads to bringing ourselves and our resources into the lives of those in need. We encourage them to make a choice for life because we will come alongside them in that decision, by helping to sustain life through the variety of life-affirming options available at pregnancy resource centers and even through our own sacrificial giving. Get to know the pregnancy center in your community! Many offer more than just free ultrasounds and pregnancy tests, but also diapers, baby clothes, formula, parenting classes, counseling or budgeting classes. Some even do free or low-cost prenatal care. How can you offer whatever is in your hands to whatever good work God may have already planted in your city?

Be encouraged — you won’t be the very first ‘ordinary’ person that God will use to do extraordinary things in the fight for life.