Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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Celebrate LIFE with thriVe

guest speaker Diane Vaughan

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Luke 15 and Zacchaeus: Seeking the Lost

Good morning, how are you? Doing well? Good. We have a wonderful guest speaker today, whom I know personally. But before I introduce her, I wanted to share a few moments from the Scripture. In Luke 15, you all have a Bible? You can go to Luke 15. If you don’t have a Bible, we will give you one, or we encourage you to get one. Bibles are under the seats. Let me hear those pages. There we go. Love that sound. Luke 15 verse 1. “Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him”—Him being Jesus, of course—“and the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, ‘This Man receives sinners and eats with them.’ So He spoke this parable to them, saying: ‘What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!” I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance. Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I lost!” Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’”

You know, it’s interesting when you read the Gospels, it’s a little Bible study hint, you ready? Sometimes Jesus gives a teaching, and then His subsequent actions illustrate what He taught. You know what I’m saying? And then sometimes Jesus does something, a miracle maybe, and then He follows up the act by a series of teaching. In other words, His acts aren’t random. His acts and His teaching actually illustrate one another. The obvious example is when Jesus fed the multitudes, and then we, in John, right after, or shortly after He fed the multitudes, there’s this long discourse about Him being the bread of life because He had illustrated giving bread to the multitudes and then He gives a discourse. So He illustrates by His life His very teaching. Jesus, it’s very interesting to read Luke 15 through 19 and see how Jesus repeatedly brings up this theme of seeking, seeking, seeking, seeking. And then when you get to chapter 19, we get this very odd story. In Luke 19 we have the story of Zacchaeus. I always thought this was just a weird story, you know what I mean? This little short guy climbs up into a tree and there’s a kids’ song about that, right? So, have you ever come up and sing it for us? No, okay, I didn’t think so. But there’s a lot of Scriptures, you know, like, you’re like, this is kind of odd, but then as you realize the context and what’s going on in the broader book, or you know a section of a book, you realize, oh this is an illustration of something Jesus said. So Jesus talks in Luke 15 about seeking, right? Seeking the sheep, seeking the coin, then we get to this passage in Luke, and I won’t read the whole thing, but it’s this little short guy, climbs up in a tree to see Jesus and then Jesus points him out and Jesus says I’ll come to your home and dine with you. Well he was a tax collector and in those days a tax collector was a bad person. Okay, the Jewish people by and large considered a tax collector a traitor to the Jewish people because he worked for the Romans whom they despised because the Romans were oppressing them at the time. So often in Scripture you see this phrase, tax collector and sinner in the Gospels, tax collectors and sinners. The tax collectors were just a special class along with prostitutes, that the Jewish people, and especially I should say the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees, looked down on. So when Jesus says, I’ll come to your home, I’ll dine with you, I’ll fellowship with you, He was illustrating what He had [audio unclear] Verse 7 of 19, “But when they saw it, they all complained,” these are the religious leaders saying, “He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.” Here’s this, here’s this Pharisaical attitude again of judging others and condescending toward others. And Jesus said in verse 9, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham.” Verse 10, “for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost,” and this word could mean that which was destroyed or that which was ruined. And you think of how Scripture talks about the fall of mankind, how we were created in God’s image, in purity, in innocence, and we truly did reflect God in our original humanity. But then because of the fall, we were marred, or should we say, we were ruined. Our image was ruined. So Jesus comes to restore that divine image by seeking and saving those who were ruined, which is really all of us, right? And so I remind you of Jesus seeking and saving the ruined, the ruined, because that’s exactly what Thrive ministry does. They seek the least of these in that they seek to save the unborn, but they also seek to save the woman and even often the men who are involved in [audio unclear] the heart of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus, Jesus is still seeking today, men and women, and children, Jesus still today, through His church, is seeking the lost, amen? So I’d like to welcome Diane Vaughan, she has a long title. I just say she’s really important. Give her a warm welcome. Good morning.

Welcome and Thrive Staff

I need to get organized here. Sounds good. Don’t go far. I need Kathy Gruender, Lydia Vaughan, Austin McCartney. He’s not here today. Please join me for one moment, please. I have water. Thank you. Okay. So just on behalf of Thrive, I am actually not the medical director. I am—come up, come up, come up—I’m the regional manager. So I have about a staff of 20 medical folks in the patient services department. [audio unclear] He uses foolish things. So, but on behalf of Thrive, we would like to thank the pastors of this church, Mike, for allowing us to have a service to tell you about just what’s going on with Thrive and to give you an update. Most of you I know, some of you I don’t, but [audio unclear] Kathy is the administrative assistant for our St. Charles Medical Center, and we’re so grateful to have her. She does an amazing job at the center. She also not only manages the office, but she also does what we call patient advocacy. So she, when women come to see us, they meet with a non-medical person. We call them the patient advocate, and that’s what Kathy does, then they meet with a nurse, then they meet with a sonographer. Oh, speaking of sonographers, we have one right here. Susie Snyder is a registered diagnostic medical sonographer. Susie has been volunteering for Thrive for many years. We appreciate all of our volunteers and grateful for her. She has probably one of the most important positions in really introducing to that mother her baby for the first time during the ultrasound procedure. So I’m sure Susie has a lot of stories. And if you ever, you know, want to hear more about them, ask her. But anyways, thank you all for coming up here. And, before you go, because—okay, you can put that first slide up.

Okay, so I love this quote. Okay, who’s heard of Jim Elliot? Raise your hand. Okay, so the quote says, “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.” Well, Jim Elliot, he was a missionary to the Auca Indians in Ecuador in ’56. Hang on, babe. Hang on. And he lived to the hilt to what God had called him to, so much so that he was martyred by the very people he went to serve. So I know somebody else who is living to the hilt, and God’s calling on his life. That would be my husband. By the way, to say commercial, David was the first person that [audio unclear] a queen of tears and it says that it’s good to be the queen. I will try not to be a blubberer. But, so David, so some of you know he’s authored some books, right? But he’s also been acknowledged in some books. So George Grant, a pretty renowned author, he wrote two very, very important books. One was Grand Illusions, which exposed what Planned Parenthood was doing. The other one is called Killer Angel, and that exposed the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger. Well, in the acknowledgments, and that book, Killer Angel, probably came out in ’85? Earlier? Later. Ninety-two. Yeah, I think ’92. Okay. So, but in that book, Killer Angel, David was acknowledged. And it’s just interesting that back then, who would have ever thought, fast forward to now, that we’d be doing what we’re doing, I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s just so interesting how God orchestrates the events in our life, and you young people, God could be doing something in your life right now. You have no idea how He’s training and preparing you for 15 years ahead in the future.

A Pioneer Award

So anyways, David, he was given an award by Thrive this year and it is an award for being a pioneer in the pro-life movement. And when Thrive started in 1983, obviously there were very few people involved. Well, the founder, Mary Nelson, was impacted by a documentary called Whatever Happened to the Human Race by Francis Schaeffer. Through that, God called her to start a pregnancy center in St. Louis and to help with the crisis of abortion in our community. And so she tried to get pastors involved. So David was invited to go to her house. And then he became really one of the first speakers to go to youth groups and churches to speak on pro-life issues and on the topic of abortion. I was a young mom, I had Hannah as an infant in my arms, I’d be standing in the back of the room and he’d be addressing hundreds of youth on the topic of abortion. And so he’s been a pioneer. He has preached from the pulpit year after year. He has preached the whole counsel of God so he doesn’t pick and choose. He preaches on the hard things. Abortion. Homosexuality. All of these hard issues that we all need to know where we stand. Through Scripture he has given many people a lens in which to look at these topics, which is through God’s Word. So he’s definitely been a pioneer in the pro-life movement. And he was awarded the Vicki Cosney Award for pioneering and innovative service in the affirmation of life. So this goes to you, babe. We’re grateful. I’ll give you a hug. Just really grateful. Done. And keep going. And by the way, you’re like part of the big reason I’m here today. I’m doing what I’m doing. And there it is. So you guys can go back. Thank you. I’ll hug Lydia later. Okay. So, Vicki Cosney, who was she? She was one of Thrive’s, and of course back then it wasn’t called Thrive. It was called Crisis Pregnancy Center, and she was one of the organization’s first volunteers. She was a very faithful volunteer and volunteered well over 20 years. And so every year, Thrive awards somebody the Vicki Cosney Award and this year David got it and rightfully so.

The March for Life

Okay. So, this is an interesting picture here. I think I have notes somewhere. Okay. This is the front cover of Life magazine. It came out in April of 1965. That was eight years before the infamous Roe v. Wade. [audio unclear] And I think this was shown publicly in a magazine. [audio unclear] before the legalization of abortion. You could go to the next one, Mike. Okay, so eight years later, January 22nd, 1973, was when the Supreme Court passed this law legalizing abortion in our nation. That year, a group of people said, this is absolutely wrong, and we will march every year on Washington, D.C., to let them know that human life is deserving of dignity and value and worth and sanctity. And so they started marching in that year, every year. And on the bottom there, you can see that was a cover of the New York Times. And underneath where it says Lyndon Johnson, it says high court rules abortion legal, that’s a picture of the Supreme Court. So shame on the Supreme Court, shame on them, because they knew that what was going to be aborted was not products of conception. Eight years earlier, it was flat in their face. This is a human being. And obviously scientifically, it is proven that life begins at conception. There is no doubt about that, so shame on the Supreme Court. Since then it’s been 45 years. 45 years people have marched on the streets of Washington, D.C., to say this is wrong and human life should be valued and not discarded. So, since then, there’s been about approximately 60 million, some say a little over 60 million, abortions that have occurred in the United States. If you filled up the 18 states there with the population that they have, that would be equal to the number of abortions that have occurred in the past 45 years. So, it kind of puts it in perspective and it’s very shocking. But I feel like we need to be shocked. The church needs to be shocked. This is happening every day, every day. How many more states are going to get filled up? So Thrive, praise God, is—and praise God for Mary Nelson. I am very much [audio unclear] visionary, extraordinary visionary leader, who is also very inspiring to me. I email her and I just say, hey Bridget, I’m just getting this sense that I think Thrive needs to go to the March for Life this year, what do you think? And she’s like, you know, I’m having that same sense. And I said, you know, I’m not a crowd person. I’m a homebody, I kind of like being at home, I don’t really like to go places, but for some reason, I’m feeling like I need to go. And she’s like, okay, she’s like, well, why don’t you think of some, and this is my boss, think of some objectives, clear objectives, and then some set outcomes for why we should go, I’ll talk to the board. So, I do that, and we get a total green light. So off to Washington we went. And I drove one of our mobile units there, 15-hour drive, it was quite the journey. We made it and God just confirmed in so many ways it was really, really good. But here, I’m sorry, can you back up real quick. So here, the four of us. Carolyn is on the left of me and then Bridget Van Means is on the right and then Michaela. Carolyn, she is the director of our St. Charles Center and then Michaela, she’s our helpline specialist. So, people want to call and be a fake patient and see how good she does on the phone. She’s awesome. If you’re abortion-minded, if you’re thinking about abortion, she will reel you in. She, and it’s, she’s right where she’s supposed to be. So anyways, the four of us, it was, it was very, just such a blessing and I can’t even put it into words to be with them to march in what they think might have been the biggest March for Life. There were hundreds of thousands of people there. I’m not a crowd person and God gave me a lot of grace. There were a couple times where I was feeling like, kind of anxious, and then I’d go, okay you guys, we need to kind of go to the side of the crowd so I could like have a way of escape or something. But it was good, God got me through it and it was good. And my family knows, my husband knows, I didn’t even like to go into places like Costco or those big superstores, I don’t know. Anyways, but God gave me grace. And there we are standing in front of the Supreme Court. And then we were at the conference, that picture below. And we were able to network and actually promote Thrive Nation. So Thrive has actually busted out of Missouri. And I have a slide in a few minutes, and I’ll tell you a little bit about that. But I want to tell you something that happened at the Supreme Court. I have seen things that not everybody gets to see. And one particular instance was when we finally made it up Constitution Avenue to the Supreme Court, we prayed and kind of standing right next to me was this gentleman. And all of a sudden I heard him just start yelling out, and groaning and it was inexpressible words. And then he started kind of swaying and then he started leaning like toward me and I’m like, and then I kind of helped lower him to the ground and there’s police everywhere up there and all of a sudden a bunch of them come down and I’m, you know, the nurse in me kicks in and I’m like, sir, sir, are you okay? Do you have a medical condition? Can you hear me? What is your name? I’m taking his pulse and he’s like just, it almost was like he might have been seizing. And then all of a sudden he gets up and I’m with these police officers. He gets up and we’re like, no, sir, you have to stay on the ground. Well, we found a chair, we got a chair. We sat him down. All of a sudden he pops back up and I kind of stepped out of the way and I’m glad I did. But all of a sudden he is right at the fence, and so the steps are right there of the Supreme Court, and all of a sudden, he starts urinating on the steps of the Supreme Court. And you saw all the police officers, no, no, no, no, no, don’t do that. Too late. How many people get to see that? And I hope not that many, okay? But you have to understand that the imagery that went through my mind is that could it be that this is what God thinks of that law that passed? And shouldn’t it be what the church thinks of that law that was passed? I will never forget this image. And the fact that we were there for the very purpose of sanctity of human life. Protesting that they passed a law that you could kill innocent life in the womb at any time up through the nine months. Crazy. You can go to the next slide.

Joni Eareckson Tada and the Sanctity of Life

Now this is really cool and God is so good to His children because He gives us treats. He gives us special, special gifts. And the more you walk with the Lord, I hope, I hope you’re the recipient. Because He loves us, and He knows the desires of our heart. So back when I was in nursing school, who knows Joni Eareckson Tada? OK, I’m familiar with her story. She was 17 years old. She had a diving accident, became a quadriplegic. She’s one of my heroes. And back in nursing school, I was introduced to her story. And it impacted me. I was a young baby believer. I was going through nursing school. I headed up an organization called Christian Nurses. And you know what? You’ve got to love baby believers, because they think they can do anything, right? So I don’t really know what I was doing, but I’m like, I’m heading up this little ministry here, and I’m going to see what happens at this school. So we always tried to do these outreach events to the students there, so I thought, okay, I’m going to show Joni, the film that shows and talks about what happened to her and how God used it in her life. And because it had a lot of medical stuff in it, and Joni actually plays the part in that movie, she plays herself. If you’ve never seen the movie, I’m sure you can find it, watch it, astounding. And so we decided we were going to show this. We had an auditorium full of nursing students. And back then, David, who obviously is now my husband, but wasn’t back then, we weren’t even dating, I had asked him to come and share the gospel after the movie was done. And it was on one of those big reels, you know, so young people were probably like, oh, what is she talking about? But I loved the way it sounded when it was done. Anyways, so that was really, really cool. The thing about Joni that really impacted me and inspired me was that, and now she’s been in that chair, wheelchair for 50, over 50 years, over 50 years bound in a wheelchair. She has to have everything done for her. And the thing that really struck me back then, and this is when I was at kind of like at a crossroads with my Christian faith, was I going to go all in with Jesus or was I not? And Joni and her story was like, she surrendered her life to God completely and utterly and was totally decided to be sold out for Christ. And so I wanted to follow her example. So yeah, little did I know she was going to be one of the speakers at this conference. Little did I know, I’d get a picture with her, and I got to share my story with her. Most of you know, my mom was in a coma for about three years before she died, and so right out of nursing school, I did work on a rehab floor. I worked with quads and paraplegics and stroke patients and head injury patients. But it was a sweet, very surprising and unexpected blessing from God to meet one of my heroes of the faith. So I do want to play this little clip of Joni during her talk. I videotaped this. It’s probably one of the most important things she said. She’s written a lot of books and she’s written several devotional books and I have given them out as gifts before. They just reprinted this and updated this edition of When Is It Right to Die? When we talk about the sanctity of human life, we’re really not talking anymore just about the pre-born. We’re talking about the disabled. We’re talking about the elderly. We’re talking about, you know, the Down’s children. All of these fall into that category that are very, very vulnerable to being snuffed out of life. In her book, When Is It Right to Die?, I wanted to read just a quote by, this was written, it’s kind of towards the end of the book, and it’s written by C. Everett Koop, who was the United States Surgeon General in the ’80s. And he said this, 30 years ago and earlier, the debate about euthanasia centered around pain that could not be relieved. Today, when it is possible, in almost every case, to relieve pain and suffering, the debate has shifted to ending the lives of those despairing of their situation who don’t want to die of their diagnosis, who know they are incurable or who have lost self-command, dignity, or quality of life. So we have moved away from euthanizing people who may be in real physical pain to euthanizing them because now they’re discouraged and despairing of their life. And if you’re in that situation could it be that you’re really not in your right mind to think clearly about your life? Because we are not our own. We belong to God and you don’t know this person though they despair of life. God could be using and doing so many things in the people’s lives around them that they’re connected to. We have a lot to be concerned about. We have a lot to pray about because this issue of life definitely goes beyond the pre-born. And so I love Joni’s ministry and you know she is now just speaking so much more, she’s speaking up much more about issues that occur regarding the right to die and what we hear, that verbiage that we hear nowadays. And she should speak up because her quality of life is such that someone could deem it, well, what are you contributing to society?

Jake at the Capitol

Okay, next slide. All right, okay, so I got to tell you this story about Jake. You can see Jake, I wish I had a laser pointer, but Jake is up there, that’s our mobile center, we name all our units, okay. It’s just easier and it stands for something, but Jake, yes, thank you, is right there. Okay, so now back behind the trees you can see the Capitol. You see the Capitol, can you kind of outline the Capitol with that laser pointer? Where’d that go? Yeah, so you see it, the Capitol back there? Okay, so as you can imagine, with hundreds of thousands of people and security everywhere, one of our big prayer requests was, how are we going to get Jake visible during the march? How are we going to get him visible? And we prayed, God give us a parking space, God give us a parking space. We asked that God would make our path a highway, and He did, we asked for good weather, and He did. We asked for a good parking space, and He came through. Because we had parked Jake, we found this one spot, we parked there, and then we decided to walk closer to the Capitol on the ending of the march to see if we could find something closer. So we walk and all of a sudden we see this amazing spot. And nobody’s there. And so we’re like, okay, Michaela, stand there in that spot at that meter, we’ll go get Jake, come back, and you can save our spot. And so we run back to go get Jake. We drive to this parking space. And as we’re driving up, we see two big cones in the spot. And Michaela’s kind of standing up on the grass. And we’re thinking, oh my goodness, what are those cones? What’s going on? So we pulled up. I rolled down the window, and I’m like, Michaela, did someone else claim the spot? She’s like, no. I just looked behind me, and there were two cones. So I just decided to put them there to save the spot. So we parked Jake there, you can see the Capitol. It was like, it was perfect. You could see Jake at the tail end of the march. So God is good, so awesome. Those are just some pictures of just the mass of people. One was at the rally, that was at the march itself. You can go on. And this was historic because this was the first time we had a president address the marchers. So this is the 45th march, he is the 45th president, and he addressed the marchers, him by satellite, so he was on a big screen. Him, the vice president and the Speaker of the House all shared briefly, and what they shared was very, very good. And I appreciated it very, very much. But what was really neat about when our president spoke, all of a sudden, up above this mass of people, you saw these two bald eagles flying. I’ve never seen a bald eagle in my life. So that’s a picture of the eagle. If you want to know some symbolism about the eagle, look it up. It’s pretty cool. Pretty cool. So, all right. You can go to the next slide. These are just some of the pictures or the posters that I kind of took some pictures of. Dr. Seuss made it. A person is a person no matter how small. We have Scripture. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, Proverbs 31:8, we are the pro-life generation. You young people, there are way more of you who are pro-life than who are for abortion. So way to go, way to be pro-life, the pro-life generation. And then of course we have signs that said defund Planned Parenthood. They are the largest abortion provider in the United States. There’s probably about 650 clinics throughout the states as opposed to almost approximately 2,000 pregnancy medical centers in the United States. And we hope that slowly those Planned Parenthood clinics will continue to diminish. So we can pray for that.

Thrive Nation and Informed Consent

So Thrive Nation, we have gotten national. We have some Thrives in Texas, in Orlando, Florida, in Savannah, Georgia, and we have some pending, and you probably can’t see, but in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, in Indiana, in Illinois. So it’s pretty exciting. And now my job is getting bigger. So I will take whatever prayer you want to send my way. But okay, that’s exciting. Also, we’re in Uganda. And when we were at the conference, this gentleman from, where was he from? I don’t remember, but it was a country in Africa and he wants us to bring Thrive there. And even though we’re going abroad, we’re going, you know, I mean national, our main mission remains to this community, to St. Louis. So six days a week, you will see one of our mobile units parked across the street from Planned Parenthood on Forest Park Parkway. That’s the only one in the state of Missouri that does surgical abortions. Up in the state of Missouri, the law is up to 21 weeks, six days. And then usually they’ll go over to Illinois, Granite City. There’s another clinic, abortion clinic there. And they can get an abortion up to 24, almost 24 weeks. But we provide our unit there, and we provide medical staff, so we can be an alternative. Some women, that’s all they think is their option. They don’t feel like they have any other option. And there’s so many ways that Thrive can help them. So, you know, once they come to us, it’s very non-judgmental, it’s very non-manipulative, and we believe that a woman has a right to be fully informed about her decision. One of the things that we implemented this past year, which was really, really cool, was we found out that the state of Missouri, we have some great pro-life legislators, praise God. And so they have, through laws, they came up with what’s called consent, informed consent. And so they developed a book, it’s put out by the Missouri Health Department. And if you go to an abortion provider in the state of Missouri, they have to give you this book. It’s called Missouri’s Informed Consent Booklet. And one of the, on the first page, it’ll say that a woman has the right to know that from the moment of conception, the DNA reveals a totally unique, separate human being from the mother. Abortion providers have to give this information to women. Now, how thoroughly they go over it, I don’t know. But then it also lays out just a beautiful page after page of fetal development. And then they’re also supposed to let that woman know where they can go for an alternative. So sometimes we’ll get actually people coming to Thrive, we’re like, how’d you hear about us? Oh, Planned Parenthood referred me, and by law they have to, okay, so praise God for that, praise God for that good law. Now some informed consent laws across the states now are being challenged, so you can keep that in your prayers. But we do everything in here, you know, pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, so six days a week. Okay, next slide. This is one of the moms that came over from, she walked out of Planned Parenthood and she came onto the mobile unit and she, this is her quote, “Through Thrive, I learned that I didn’t make a mistake giving a chance of life to another, even when circumstances suggested abortion was the only way.” That’s her and her baby. So cute. OK. And there’s our little fleet. So the two smaller units, those go on college campuses. We’re getting more colleges being a little bit more open to us. We did receive some opposition this past year, and I’ll tell you a little bit about that in a second. But we got kicked off of one campus, which was unfortunate. But, okay, so some of our services that we offer, they’re all free, they’re all [audio unclear] new curriculum for churches and church youth groups and it’s really exciting and I wish he was here to say a little bit about it, but he’s not. He’s actually speaking in another church. So this is kind of some of our stats. I’m just going to, our last fiscal year, there was about 1,850 children that were rescued from abortion. And then we had about 37 women accept Christ. We, in our program, the Best Choice Program, where we go into schools, public schools and private schools, and go over a risk avoidance program on sexual health education. We had about 18,730 students hear the Best Choice. A lot of volunteer hours and I did want to also mention that we gave away 1,250 Bibles and 2,391 gospel, the gospel presentations were given. So, you know, if you feel like you have the gift of evangelism, it’s not every day in everyday life that you can actually share the gospel with someone, unless you’re really intentional. At Thrive every day, you can have the opportunity to lead a woman to Christ. And we don’t do that. We don’t beat anybody’s head over the Bible, beat their head with the Bible, or push Jesus down their throat. If they don’t want to hear or have a spiritual conversation, that’s fine. That’s fine, we are addressing them holistically. So we want to address their physical needs, mental and emotional needs, even spiritual needs.

Opposition and Brave Hearts

Okay, all right, so we’ve gotten a lot of opposition. I have a video clip that’s really fun and cool. About some of it, you’re going to see images, it goes pretty fast, but you’re going to see images of one particular woman who is very instrumental in leading the efforts, a misinformation campaign was weaponized against Thrive, that labeled Thrive as a fake clinic, that we don’t use any medical people. They basically said that the Best Choice program was to promote Christianity. Obviously when they’re in the public schools, they can’t bring up the gospel or references to God, and they don’t. So you’ll see images of her, some pictures of her, and then we had protests in front of our Thrive Clinic down in the city on Lindell. You’ll see pictures of that. So go ahead. Thrive lives, yes. So this past year, I got to see my boss need a bodyguard. We had a lot of school board meetings. We had some aggressive people. And you saw some slides that talked about the Satanic Temple. Well, we actually had them come after us. And then you saw a slide where that chapter totally defunct and went away, which, praise God. I mean, lots of prayer went into that. But the head of that, Lady Gehenna, she actually had some made physical threats to Bridget. So, but yeah, we made it on local news. And so for some of us at Thrive, it was tough. It was hard because it made you have to take a position now because social media is pretty powerful. And people start, the more you hear about something, you can actually start to believe it if you don’t know your facts, if you don’t do your homework and you don’t do your research and you don’t look into the inquiries. And so we actually lost some staff members because they had either family members or friends that started to put pressure on them and they couldn’t stand. And so it was tough and it was a defining moment for a lot of us. And I came across this quote, great quote, I’m going to read it. It says, if you have no, oh, “You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you’ve done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from a perjured lip. You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight.” People who work for Thrive, people who volunteer for Thrive, people who pray for Thrive, people who give to Thrive have to be brave hearts. They just have to be brave hearts now. So I love that God allowed me to find that quote because sometimes you can be shaken and you can be like, gosh, we’re getting all this negative feedback and criticism. Maybe we, are we on the right side? And then you see this. And then you remember Jesus Christ, who was crucified. And we march on. This is a cool image. This just happened recently. We had a gal who was abortion-minded. She was having twins. And you can see, the twins did a little fist bump. Can you see that? All right? So that was so, so cool. There’s a laser if you want to show. Oh, okay. Ooh. All right, let’s see. Woo! So there’s an arm, there’s an arm, and they’re doing a little fist bump. And this mom, I literally said, what am I going to do with two? I guess I’m just going to have to love them both. So that was very, very exciting. They were 23 weeks old and mom chose to keep them.

Thanks, and Closing Prayer

So lastly, thank you for letting me go on and carry on. I’m very thankful to be in a church body that is supportive of what I do. The past couple of years, obviously, I have not been around as much as I would have been as a pastor’s wife when I directed the women’s ministry. But God has raised other people up, and I’m clearly where I’m supposed to be. And I thank you just for your support, and I thank you for your prayers. You guys have given a lot of ways. Prayer, you’ve donated items. We’ve had diaper drives, and you’ve bought clothes. You’ve filled baby bottles. You volunteered time. You’ve physically come to some of our events, which means so much to us. And some of you spoke up at school board meetings, which meant a lot too. So thank you. Thank you very much for that. I just want to encourage you to keep on. I do have a table back there if you’re interested in any of that information and I would love to do a baby-bottle campaign so if each family could take a baby bottle, fill it up with your coins, your extra change that you leave laying around, you would be astounded how much money that brings in to Thrive. So I’m hoping that we can have the bottles back by the end of February. So thank you again and appreciate your continued prayers. Oh, baby, but all right. All right. Why don’t we close with some prayer, why don’t we have the volunteers come up that were up here or staff. Kathy, Lydia, Susie, is anybody else volunteering currently? Come to the front while we have the others come out and pray with them.

Lord, we thank You for the efforts of these ladies here. Thank You for Diane for giving many of us an update on the work that You’re doing through Thrive and through the pro-life organizations, God, and that there is hope, Lord, that with You in the picture, God, there is always hope. We thank You for the stand of Thrive in the midst of unpopularity, in the midst of all, Lord, and I thank You for many, many, many people in this room who have stood with them in prayer and encouragement and emails, Lord. And that You have continued to shine in the darkness. I pray for these ladies specifically that Your hand of protection would be upon them, that Your hand of blessing would be upon them, God, that they would continue to persevere, to know that Your ways and Your ends are much greater than the world’s and it will always be worth it to stand on Your side, God. So be with them, Lord, be with us, God, continue to have this church be solid on this issue, Lord, to stand for life, to fight for life, to believe, Lord, in life from the very early stages, Lord, to the last breath, God.

Yes, God, we do thank You for these women and for those who serve at Thrive. We just ask that You would send Your Holy Spirit to encourage them, God, encourage them when they feel weak and beaten down, help them not to grow weary in doing good, Lord, and working to save life. God, there will be a harvest. Thank You just for all the lives that have been saved through their work and through Thrive this year and in the previous years, God, thank You for working through Your people and moving on hearts. And God, thank You for the women who received Christ this last year. Lord, fill these four with the Holy Spirit, help them to continue to go forward and to be bold in witness and in faith and to just continue what they’re doing, in Jesus’ name.

Lord Jesus, we thank You that You’ve called and commissioned and equipped these women here as well as many other staff and volunteers at Thrive to live out what it means to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus. Lord, as we reminded ourselves today, You came to seek and to save that which was lost, and so they are seeking through their ministry the lost, those that are morally confused and lost, those that are spiritually confused and lost. We thank You for the many lives, literally lives, that have been saved. We thank You for the men and women that have come to a saving knowledge of You, Jesus, through this ministry, the souls that have been saved. Just thank You for all the good work that You are doing in them and through them. I ask, dear Lord, that You would give them spiritual wisdom and discernment. They’d be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves. Remind them regularly, Lord, that they are on the front line of a spiritual battle, not just a moral battle or a cultural battle, a spiritual battle. They will be attacked. Their marriages will be attacked. Their children will be attacked. They will feel the reality of spiritual warfare. I pray, God, that You’d make them strong and strong in prayer, give them sound minds and strong minds. Dear Lord Jesus, fully equip them to stand against evil and against the evil one. We pray this for them and for all the staff and volunteers at Thrive, and pray, God, that You might move upon others here today to give, to pray, and to volunteer for life, and we ask all these things in Jesus’ name, and God’s people said amen.