A Word about Humility, Unity and Holiness

It’s the Conference Season in the pregnancy center world.  It starts with your banquets when you share the experiences and successes of the past year and your hopes for the future.  Then, there are the national conferences such as Heartbeat International and Care Net, as well as many others. 

I learn a lot at these national conferences.  Not only do I get to know things about you, God uses this time to heal places in me as we pray together. He also provides opportunities to network with other ministries and to hear your wonderful stories of sharing the gospel. One of the best things is how God provides the encouragement to keep going and growing.

Tammy Moyer and I were handling the SMSC booth at the Heartbeat Conference and couldn’t get to many sessions, so I purchased several CDs that I am currently working my way through.  Every one of them is great!  The conference theme of, Better Together, is true and it was so wonderful to see how Heartbeat incorporated the spirit of the theme throughout the Conference. 

There are Heartbeat affiliated centers enrolled in the Save the Mother, Save her Child program; as well as Care Net centers, NAMB centers, and unaffiliated centers.  The leaders of these great organizations are very dear to us.  They inspire me personally. 

Therefore, I hope you will hear this message, which comes from my heart, even though I have not been in your fight as long as many of you:

I completely agree with Care Net’s theme for their upcoming conference, “Now Is The Time;” which I feel perfectly follows the theme of the Heartbeat conference, “Better Together!” Now IS the time for us to pray, plan, and act together quickly, because local centers and the pro-life movement are facing a tipping point.  We have great threats, but we also have great opportunity. 

We will win the battle for life only if we work together.  The Lord has told us to do it and, of course, He knows best.  Just as Jesus declared “I and my Father are one,” we should still consider unity as being the way to cripple the onslaught of the abortion movement—working as one.

There are four great attributes of Christian behavior that make it possible for us all to work together. 

Humility—I am humbled by my brothers and sisters in this movement.  People who have the gift of mercy, administration, exhortation, preaching or teaching all do their part.  I am humbled by your service and your love for the lost ones.  Are you humbled by your sisters and brothers, too?

Unity— Maybe we will never agree on all the points of doctrine, on policy or on strategy.  I grew up in a big family that almost never agreed 100% on anything—but we were solid as a rock when someone or something threatened our family.  We need to be like that as we work.  We love Jesus and believe He is our Savior.  We pray together.  We believe we are on the same side—the Body of Christ on earth.  It grieves us to see life lose and death win.  It is enough to know each other in this way.  We can trust that if we let God undergird our relationships we can work together for the cause of life; and if we do not, it is our sin that prevents it and gives ground to the enemy.  We must not let that happen. 

Christian Love—I remember something my Catholic grandmother drilled me on (right out of the Baltimore Catechism) when I was a little girl: “Why did God make you?” she would ask.  And I would say what she taught me, “God made me to know Him.  To love Him.  To serve Him.  And live forever with Him in heaven.”  Because of the substitutionary death of Christ and His resurrection, we have a promise that will never end.  We are free to trust Him, know Him, love Him, serve Him, and live forever with Him in heaven. 

It is enough.  We recognize the great bond of Christ in the Body of Christ and stand and fight together.  It is the glue—this love for Him—that can give us unity if we will let it.
 
Holiness—Finally, and most difficult, we want to live every day nourished and sustained by Christ, putting our trust in His grace to help us to be more and more willing to be conformed by the Holy Spirit to the image of the Son of God.  I am 65 now, and a saved woman, but still being hammered into shape, pruned, and pressed, into someone more like who He imagined before time began.  And so are you, I imagine. 

We long to be more like Him, the One who made and makes everything, the One who was sent, the One who will come again.  Let’s pray more for each other.  Let’s pray every day that we will all work ourselves out of a job!  That one day soon God will give us the victory over those who destroy and abuse and hate the helpless infant for whom the Wonderful, Mighty God, Prince of Peace died and rose again.

God bless all of you,
Mary Margaret Gibson
Ministry Director
EvanTell