I’ll never forget this day, this past semester. I sat in a prayer room in our dorm at Moody Bible Institute, tears flowing, praying again and again, “God help me feel my passion for pro-life work again.” Sitting on the floor of our dorm prayer room, I couldn’t understand why I was feeling this way, or better said, not feeling the way I wanted to. The timer on my phone went off, reminding me that it was time to leave to Planned Parenthood. I picked up my Bible and notebook, went up to my room, grabbed our signs and resources for our prayer walk, and got ready to go out with a group of Moody students to Planned Parenthood for our third prayer walk this week, still not feeling even close to the height of passion I normally do. My heart just wasn’t breaking for abortion the way it should, and I didn’t feel like going to Planned Parenthood. Babies are being ripped apart limb by limb there, and I just felt tired and apathetic. I knew that 2,363 babies are murdered every day in America, but I really didn’t feel the weight of it as I should. As someone who is deeply passionate and feels things deeply, this was really hard. In the quietness of my heart, I begged the Lord to help my heart feel the weight of abortion as we were walking towards Planned Parenthood. But I get there and stood outside the clinic, overwhelmed by my lack of overwhelming emotion. Why wasn’t my heart breaking over abortion the way it should? Was it burnout? Was it physical exhaustion? I was standing outside a building that rips apart babies limb by limb every day. I should’ve been crying, but my heart was not breaking the way it should, and the way I’ve felt it break other times. I stood there and prayed once again for the end of abortion in Illinois, but if I’m being honest, my heart struggled to believe that that could ever actually happen in a city like Chicago, where anyone can walk into a CVS or Walgreens and get the RU-486 abortion pill. The clinic worker laughed as she joked about abortion. Woman after woman came out of there just having had an abortion. People on the street yelled at us. A woman asked for one of the pamphlets we were giving out and then ripped it up right in front of my face. Someone on the street walked by and said he’s “so glad the babies in there are dying.” The clinic workers tried to stop us from talking to the women. During the school year, we go there three times a week, and still, every day, this place continues to do the same. I glanced over to the side of the building where the dumpsters are and know that the sight of that should leave me crying, but the tears weren’t coming. I asked God to break my heart for the lives lost here, but stood in frustration, not at all feeling the weight of all that happens here. I stood there exhausted as I watched the workers laugh at us and people on the street continually siding with a “clinic” that’s dedicated to murder. There are so many of them and so few of us. I want to be moved to tears over abortion, but instead, I stand there questioning if anything I’m doing is really making a difference. Does what we’ve been doing here 3 times a week even matter? What do I need to do to feel that crazy intense passion of ministry again? I left exhausted.
Ministry is life-giving, it honestly really fills and energizes your soul. Very little compares to the intense joy and satisfaction I’ve found through opportunities I’ve had to serve in different ministry contexts. Sharing the gospel with these women on the streets of Chicago energizes me in a way that is hard to describe. The intense satisfaction of ministry is truly incomparable and amazing. But the life-giving nature of ministry is not limited to the feeling of the joy of ministry (even though the feeling is pretty amazing), it is in how ministry conforms our hearts to Christ. The ultimate joy of ministry is not formed by a feeling, it is rooted in union with a Person- Jesus Christ. He is just as worthy of all of our devotion, time, and effort (heart, mind, and soul) on the discouraging, apathy-filled days as the days where we feel the height of passion. He wants us to lean into Him, rest in Him, and be conformed to Him through all that we feel. In fact, it is often the hardest days of ministry, the days when we are driven to our knees in tears, that our communion with Him is the most life-giving and intimate.
I came back to my room and opened my Bible to read Proverbs 24:11 again. It commands us to “rescue those being taken away to death.” I remind myself, that this is a command, not an option. It doesn’t say, “rescue those being taken away to death if you feel like it today. What if even one life is saved, and what if that child grows up to know the Lord, and one more person is worshipping in Heaven? If the life of one unborn child is saved because God uses our presence there, all of this was worth it.
As Christians, everything about how we live is to be governed by the fact that our lives are not our own. Regardless of how we feel day to day, every decision we make, and how we spend our time and energy, we are to live for the glory of God and the furthering of His kingdom.
Abandoning Comfort
One of the many things I absolutely love about Moody Bible Institute is how committed the professors are to pour into the lives of students, investing in them; their lives, their passions and their growth beyond the classroom. The mentorship, discipleship, and time that professors give to students over office hours, through a cup of coffee, or even a meal is phenomenal and it has truly been a blessing to learn from some of the most knowledgeable, yet humble theologians I have met. As I sat with one of my professors talking through navigating lack of passion in pro-life ministry, he reminded me of how feelings are just as much in need of sanctification as everything else. In his class, he often articulates the feelings-driven society we live in as the following: “Where Descartes said, I think therefore I am, our generation lives by I feel therefore I am.” As I sat to talk through passion in ministry, my professor reminded me of the need for these babies’ lives to be saved, and once again encouraged me of the immense importance and need of the work I am doing outside Planned Parenthood.
2,363 babies are murdered in abortion clinics in America every day. I’m home for the summer right now, and as I went about my day in Windsor today, babies were ripped apart limb by limb by abortion doctors in that Planned Parenthood in Chicago. Because my heart is deceitful above all else, there will be many days when I will actually never be able to feel the weight of abortion as I should.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
On the harder days of ministry, I can’t, and shouldn’t try to wait for my feelings, which are tainted by the effects of the fall, to catch up with responding to the command to rescue these children. In fact, this might be a really unpopular opinion, but I don’t actually believe pro-life work is a calling. I believe it’s a command that every Christian should be fulfilling. That being said, the way in which each Christian may be led to be involved in the fight against abortion can and will look very different, but I really do believe everyone should be doing something in this fight. Some of the ways that could look like is being faithful in prayer regularly for the end of abortion, or financially supporting those who are actively on the frontlines of the fight, or getting involved directly.
If I knew that a child was going to be murdered a few houses down from my house, the last thing that I would stop to contemplate is if I feel like rescuing this child before I immediately pick up the phone and call the police. There is a need, a really great need in America today. The number of lives lost to abortion has surpassed every genocide in all of history. The command to defend their lives and be faithful in prayer for the end of abortion cannot depend on the height of our passion or how we feel day to day. Our feelings will always gravitate towards the pursuit of comfort because every part of ourselves is tainted by the fall. That means the Christian life is to be a daily fight against our inclination toward comfort. The pursuit of comfort cannot co-exist with furthering His kingdom. We have to push back against our own feelings and fight for faithfulness to the Lord. Echoing the words of A.W Tozer,
“Every advance that we make for God and for His cause must be made at our inconvenience. If it does not incovenience us at all, there is no cross in it. If we have been able to reduce spirituality to a smooth pattern and it costs us nothing-no disturbance, no bother and no element of sacrifice in it- we are not getting anywhere with God.1”
I find great encouragement, conviction, and hope in reflecting on the lives of those missionaries, martyrs, and heroes of the faith that have gone before us laying aside comfort and leaving behind a far-reaching impact. I don’t think Elisabeth Elliot felt like going back as a missionary to reach the very people who martyred her husband, but she knew the need to reach them with the gospel required such a response. I don’t think John Wycliffe felt like risking his life for his work, but he knew there was a need for the Bible to be translated, and that need governed his response to his circumstances.
Reflect on the Incarnation
I definitely get some interesting reactions when people hear me say that my favorite words of Jesus are when He said, “I thirst” (John 19:28). I will definitely love to write on these two words more in another post because the area of theology that has been the most fascinating to me recently has been the Incarnation. The simple profoundness of these two words, “I Thirst”, is absolutely beautiful and deeply comforting. These two words ring hope like very little else. The beauty and mystery of the Incarnation, of God taking on flesh to be united with humanity, is absolutely perplexing and so fascinating. It is also one of the most comforting truths of theology. What joy to know we have a High Priest who sympathizes with us. Is anything more beautiful than knowing that Jesus, fully God and fully man, lowered Himself to hunger, thirst, tire, and weep. Our God knows exactly how we feel, even when we can’t always put into words how we feel. How encouraging is it to know that our God lay in a manger on the very ground He created. How beautiful is it to know that our God took on flesh and knelt to wash the feet of sinners.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
In speaking of the heart of Christ, Dane Ortland beautifully reminds of the following,
“Let’s not dishonour God by so emphasizing his transcendence that we lose a sense of the emotional life of God of which our own emotions are an echo, even if ours is a fallen and distorted echo. God is not a platonic ideal, immovably austere, beyond the reach of meaningful human engagement. God is free of all fallen emotion, but not all emotion (or feeling) whatsoever-where do our own emotions come from, we who are made in His image?2”
The humanity of Christ is so deeply comforting that it pushes us to abandon comfort in pursuit of gospel faithfulness. As we are tempted to sacrifice ministry effort and passion on the altar of convenience, let’s remember what Christ went through for us. In light of the cross, any sacrifice we make for furthering the gospel cannot compare. The pure love of Christ on the cross drives us to push ourselves in every area of life, regardless of how we feel, it moves us to serve Him with whole-hearted devotion.
“And twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him” (Matthew 27:29-31).
“Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.” (Luke 23:34).
Let’s let the compassion of the heart of Christ overwhelm us with comfort; so much so that we run from any pursuit of comfort apart from living whole-heartedly for Him. Fight apathy by seeing Christ’s heart in the Incarnation. He knows our hearts even better than we do, He sympathizes with us, and He wants us to draw near to Him.
“Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord” (Lamentations 2:19a).
Maybe you feel weighed down by not doing enough for the Lord in your ministry context. Find comfort in remembering that nothing we can do can earn more of His love, and in the same way, nothing we do can make Him love us any less. Serving our God who loves us like this should move us to be fully devoted to further His kingdom. Through the highs and lows of ministry, He is worthy of every drop of sweat, every tear, all of the time, energy and effort we can bring. As we stand parched by the brokenness of the world, reflecting on the humanity of Christ is like drinking from a fountain of hope that never ceases to satisfy. The life-giving nature of ministry is always rooted in our union with Christ.
In the book, A Call to Christian Formation, the hope of the Incarnation is articulated as the following,
Jesus “entered the deepest ground of our being and engaged our situation east of Eden even unto death, that he might heal us at the root of our corruption and alienation by mediating the life of God to us in and as man…The grand reality that God the Son is the Son of Man does not undermine his deity or his humanity…rather deity and humanity are inextricably united and wholly preserved in the person of Jesus the God-man, who concurrently does divine things humanly and human things divinely, exuding the re-creative freedom of God’s almighty love in human acts of limitless significance and consequence.3”
Reflect on His Past Faithfulness
When I doubt the importance of our work outside Planned Parenthood, I remember a text I got from a woman that read, “hey I met you outside Planned Parenthood and decided to keep my baby.”
When I don’t feel the passion of ministry, I remember that day when we were able to connect a woman we met outside Planned Parenthood with a local church.
When I wonder if we are making a difference, I remember that 3 days a week this school year, the Lord used our group of Moody students to reach people going in and out of Planned Parenthood with the gospel, with resources, and the truth about abortion and life.
When I get overwhelmed trying to reflect on “how much” fruit has come from this ministry, I remember that even on days when we have no conversations, we glorify the Lord when we stand there because He is glorified when we are a voice for the voiceless.
There are days when I’ve left Planned Parenthood with a feeling of intense joy and crazy passion that I can’t even put into words. There are other days where I’ve left completely broken in tears over some of the hardest conversations we’ve had outside the clinic. And there are days when I have left and felt absolutely nothing. Ministry is no more or less valid or fruitful based on how we feel. Labor, when done for the glory of the Lord and approached as worship is fruitful and not in vain.
Whether you are in a season of heightened passion in your ministry context or if this is a time of faithfulness through apathy and discouragement, let the need for your ministry govern your response. I pray that today you rest in knowing that your labor for the Lord is so important, even if you don’t always feel it. Your Labor for the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).
As we serve Him in a broken, broken, broken world, we can rest in remembering that Christ’s invitation for you to come to Him, weary and heavy laden, is an invitation from One who knows exactly what it means to be weary, and He sympathizes with you.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29).
