Saturday I stood in front of a clinic in center city for 4 hours with Bound4Life Philly. During that morning some ~30 people walked past us to get into the clinic. Our group was there to pray for everyone who showed up, not to condemn them – we don’t bring signs and pictures, nor do we try to prevent anyone to go in. There’s no need to interfere with things or get arrested. Instead we pray for God to turn the hearts of everyone involved in the situation and to end abortion in America.
We also do not believe God’s sovereignty precludes us from contending for the heart of our city. We do our part as God does his part.
Ironically while I was standing there, I was getting some unexpected impressions about it. Whenever you show up at a clinic, the clinic sends escort people to make sure that people don’t restrict the access. I realized a couple things -
- The clinic escorts were there for the same reason we were – to try to help women
- Our group, as well as the escorts are sincere – but both cannot be correct.
- We need to pray for a higher level of truth/revelation for the escorts and clinic staff.
- Since the clinic is located in center city, I would have expected a lot of overt spiritual resistance or persecution.
- However, the worst things I heard were from religious people like me – a couple people drove by shouting epithets – “hey isn’t this where they kill the babies?”
- true statement
- completely counterproductive to why we were there - This is an example of what I would label a “religious spirit”. When truth is used to accuse and condemn instead of to redeem, it can be counterproductive.
- Other than a curious guy in a wheelchair shooting pictures of us, no one did anything to taunt or harass us at all. That made the driveby comments in #5 even more damning from the “religious” guy.
I was impressed with the leadership of this group. Coming into center city just to stand on a sidewalk is not a wise use of time to our way of thinking. However it will change things if we persevere. I’m looking forward to more.
2 responses so far ↓
Timmy V. // August 11, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Good to hear it went well, Nathan. I’ve never been so impressed with a Pro-Life group as I am with Bound4Life. It’s so clear that the call of God is on this issue today. I so need more of a heart for this.
retroman // August 12, 2008 at 2:39 am
I think your heart is just fine. This sort of thing is better if you just show up emotionally neutral, and be a vessel for intercession. I’ll keep the readership posted.