We Asked and God Answered...

Recently, a family brought their teenage daughter to take a tour. She had just found out a few days earlier that she was pregnant, and it was obvious emotions were running quite high. As we often do, we gave this family a tour of the home and told them as much about the program that we possibly could, and answered all their questions. A family member of this young woman, shared up front that he wanted his daughter to get an abortion, but a family friend insisted that they come and take a look at the Mercy program first. She also accompanied them on this visit.

Due to confidentiality, I won’t go into any more detail than this. Suffice it to say, this young girl seemed quite interested in Mercy, but a family member insisted that they had an abortion appointment, and he intended to keep that appointment. Since this young girl was a minor, we knew this was an issue that had to be resolved between her and her family. However, we did explain to this family, should they change their minds, that our program is available to their daughter free of charge. That was last Friday, and we knew we had to pray. We believe that every life is precious, regardless of how it is conceived, and we have seen time and time again how God has worked so beautifully in such situations in the past. That is why we provide Mercy Ministries, because we believe every girl should have a practical way that she can choose life. We knew we had to place it in God’s hands and that our role was to pray, so we shared this with a number of our internal staff who made this a matter of their prayer focus over the weekend.

The day came and went and we had still not heard anything from this family, but we continued to pray. Just this morning, this distraught dad was driving his young daughter to the abortion clinic to ensure that they take care of this “problem” but somehow they never made it all the way to the abortion clinic. They showed up at Mercy and the family member explained that something came over him and he just could not make his daughter do it. He is a Christian man, and he said that the Holy Spirit convicted him that it was just wrong, and at that moment, as they were headed toward the clinic, he totally turned the car around and came straight to Mercy instead. Our counselors dropped what they were doing and made themselves available. After spending approximately two hours with this young girl, once again explaining the program in great detail, this girl hugged our staff member and whispered, “I will come.”

I share this story for several reasons. First, I think it is very important that we understand the power of prayer. Second, I think it is very important that when we’ve done all that we can do in the way of offering options, that we do not try to force our will on anyone, but rather leave it with God and pray. And finally, I have to admit that we had to pray extra hard for this one because we knew the young girl was being forced against her will, and we were very concerned about the impact that this would have on her life in the future. Nevertheless, we also understood very clearly that this was a family matter between this girl and her parents because she is a minor. So, what else do you do? We don’t believe in blocking abortion clinic doors, and we don’t believe in taking a person’s choice away from them, but we do believe in providing a true choice. That’s exactly what happened on Friday afternoon, and we knew we had done everything we could do. Anything outside of prayer would have been an interference with the personal choices that this family had to make for themselves. I am so thankful today that I can report to you that God intervened, and this young girl has made the choice for life. Now she will pray about whether to be a single mom or to place her child for adoption.

This story is just one example of the many things that happen on any given day at Mercy Ministries. Your daily prayers on our behalf are so important as we seek to be a good steward of what God has entrusted to us. I hope this story encourages you to believe in the power of prayer!