Faith-Full Expectation

0:00 Do you know that duds like excited right? He seems like he's always an expectation bouncing. We have pouncing around now. I know like we don't want to fake it and put it on, but we have to remind ourselves that we serve a faithful God. I Am Yours, I am yours, I am yours, and me Lord, I am yours, I am yours. I'm welcome to the Gospel centered pro life podcast, a podcast design to equip, encourage and challenge you in pro life ministry, and always with a focus on the Gospel. Stay tuned. I felt show passish, touch your heart.

0:44 Use Me. Welcome back to the Gospel centered pro life podcast. Appreciate you guys joining us and we would appreciate that you guys share this podcast with other folks. Shoot it out and, I don't know, an email or put it on your social media or something, or you can get folks to listen to this podcast. We think that this episode is going to be a real encouragement. Do you guys? It's been an encouragement to us just what we're going to be talking about and a challenge for you guys, for two thousand and twenty two, to really be in faith full expectation. We're going to talk about that a little bit more as we go through this podcast.

1:26 But yeah, we want to be an encouragement to you guys and we want to just challenge you guys to step out in faith, to believe God, to do miraculous things, to do the impossible. Listen this ministry. For us to see baby saved at an abortion clinic from MOMS who are walking in about to kill her child and to see them to a hundred eighty under, a hundred eighty degree, turn and choose life is a miraculous thing. This ministry is a miraculous ministry and as believers in Jesus, we serve a miraculous God and we should be an expectation that God's going to do miraculous stuff. A man, Amen. That was beautifully said. I Love I love this topic. I love it. So the way it came up was that we have encouraged our national missionaries, Yep, to be faith full, with a full, yeah, full of faith expectation. Right, faithful expectation. And as I was pondering that, it occurred to me that I get asked all the time, how can you be out there with so many babies dying, how can you be out there for nine years now? And this is why, this is why I expect God to do miracles. Yeah, like you said, not just a baby being saved, even that they stop for us at all, take information from total strangers. Yeah, in that moment of crisis, is a miracle. It's pretty much a miraculous thing that we get

2:57 to be a part of. It really is. It really is an and so I think it helps anyone contemplating being out, well, really in all of life, but especially in a difficult ministry, as you're approaching being out on a cold sidewalk where you're going to be taunted, ridiculed, probably threatened for three hours. Yeah, Fo half people yelling at you. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of agreement at yes, they're driving by, there's going to be you know, you are going to face intense adversity for you to have in your heart. But God is faithful. Yeah, and I expect him to show up and you're going to look for him. You look for him, I think, in a different way. You look for him in everything, in what others might describe as the mundane things that happen.

3:50 Yeah, yeah, or a pastor. This is a couple of weeks ago or so. I can't remember exactly who said this, but they were. They were talking about not having an e or spirit. You know what they or you know? I sure do. Oh, yeah, one of my favorite one meader donkey, right on the food. Oh, it's just going to be another bad day, right, it's the worst day because I'm in this day and always has a rain cloud over his head and all this stuff is like every day is the worst day. And this pastor was talking about not talking about not having an ear spirit, rejecting the EOR spirit right, of always is bad and the worst day ever. But really have a I mean he didn't say this, but I'm thinking like a tigger spirit.

4:33 That let's cheesy on that. You know that dudes like excited, right. He seems like he's always an expectation bouncing. We have pouncing around now, I know, like we don't want to fake it and put it on, but we have to remind ourselves that we serve a faithful God and so kind of backtrack just a little bit. This faithful expectation. Where did that come from? So, as Love Life Staff, we were seeking the Lord at the end of the last year, just trying to get a theme for this year, something that can encourage us, something that can help help focus our vision on what God has for us. Like we know what the vision of Love Life Is. Unite, mobilize the church to create a culture of love and life. That resulted into abortion in the orphan crisis. That's like.

5:15 That's like the mission that God has given us, the vision uniting, the mobilizing the church. But for this year in particular, like what in the scope of that, what are some things that we can really laser focus and help us really laser focus in on what God has given us as far as a mission, and it is faithful expectation, to be faithful in what God has called us to you know the word faithful, that's one word right. We's broken it up into kind of a hyphenated word, faith full expectation, for good reason, because we want to be faithful doing what God's called us to do day in and day out, the mundane stuff. Being faithful in that really that's that's where faithfulness is really proven. Is the Monday nine every day, doing the stuff that you know you ought to do, whether you feel like it or not, doing that stuff. So you want to be faithful in that stuff, showing up to the sidewalk. If we are a volunteer or if we're a missionary and our job is to be out there on the sidewalk, we've committed to certain days. We need to be faithful, whether we feel like it or not, be faithful, right, but also be full of faith. So when we are faith when we show up out there, let's be full of faith and expectation, expecting God to do some miraculous stuff. Right. We we can show up in this area of ministry a lot of times to the sidewalk and expect the devil to do some stuff, and reality is like, the devil's doing some stuff, whether we expect it or not. Right, devil is going to be doing sprice out yeah, but that shouldn't be our focus. That should not be our focus, right, because you can, you can focus on what the devil is doing

6:46 and really get sidetracked, really get derailed, really get disillusioned and just being anger and being that ere spirit. Right, because the devil's always trying to destroy lives. He's doing that in mass inside of these abortion clinics, destroying the lives of babies and women and men and all of that. So he's doing what he's going to do. But let's let's shift our focus off what the devil's doing and focus on what God is doing it and be an expectation what God is going to do. Yeah, let's be an expectation and we pray some bold prayers. Like God, I pray that women would run out of that abortion clinic. And does that always happen? It doesn't always happen, but it has happened. I mean have literally seen it with my own eyes. A young lady. We were up in southern California. We're praying that. I had a group of pastors out praying and just prayed an expectation.

7:32 It really felt like, you know, this powerful time of prayer after that time of prayer, and we were praying. God, I pray that women run out of that place. Thirty minutes later, this young lady comes literally running out of the place right she saw her baby on the ultrasound, got a glimpse of her her baby, ten week baby's foot on the ultrasound. And what we found out was actually the abortionist told her you don't want to do this, you probably should. You probably should should not be here. It really this is abortions. So that's pretty amazed. That's a bad alone. Is a miracle of yeah, yeah, we've heard other miraculous stuff like that. I mean you think these people, they get paid to murder children day after, day after day, these abortionists, he's abortion workers, the ultrasound text and all that stuff, like day after day they're responsible for, you know, across the nation, literally thousands of babies dying. And yet for some reason, from time to time we'll hear stories of abortionist convincing women not to have the abortion. We've heard it here at Latrobe, the ultrasound tech saying hey, you don't want to do this, go and talk to these people out there. This is the same person that like cusses us going into the door when they go into their job. You know, they're cussing us out one minute, next minute they're telling somebody to come out and talk to us. Like, how does that happen except for God doing miraculous things? Right, right, right, yeah, yeah, and so that's kind of the theme, being expectation. God has done some stuff in the past that's miraculous. God's going to keep doing stuff like cheer some some other cool storage. One story, okay, and then you want to talk about I'm just I'm an expectation, exacting all Daniel. In another story from Southern

9:07 California, there was a guy who works a security team. So they don't really have a lot of proboard people out there, but they do have some pretty nasty security guards. So they plant parent who hires these security firms to do security for them. Yeah, and this one security guard ultimately, and I don't know how this all happened, but ultimately he quit with that security firm or got fired or something, ended up being with the same security firm that does security for the Church of the majority of the people that go out to that abortion centers. So now he's doing security for that church. Here in the Gospel Week in and week out, he sees the people that he used to oppose and of course he knows that they're people that love Jesus and he gets to see their interactions with each other in church and just these are genuine people and so I'm trusting and believing that guy is going to come to the Lord if he hasn't already. So stuff like that. A guy works at the abortion clinic next week because he got fired or whatever. He's working out the church from the people who go out to the abortion clinic to minister there. That's that's that's amazing, that's miraculous, right. God so often works that way. Yeah, well, when when you you had talked with our missionary group about fearful expectation and that was safe thing, faithful, I'm sorry, not's Weirdiful, faithful expect dictation and and I think it was the very next day that I was really, of course, focused on that theme and it was really a miraculous day. But it wasn't really I mean from

10:39 any any other human perspective, looking at the day, it might have been a disappointing day. Yeah, there was one baby saved, but it wasn't a confirmed save. But anyway, as I was as I was thinking about that day, that day and and faithful expectation, I started to list the things that made that day for me a day of rejoicing and seeing God everywhere I looked and and kind of tried to think about how to categorize what happened during that day. So one of the first things that I thought of is that if you can rejoice in the positives, no matter how small. Yeah, rejoice in the positives. That starts to shift you from an Eoor to a tigger right away, right. Ye, you joy seeing, rejoice in the small things. The first thing is covid is rampant in our nation, but in our ranks we've had, we've seen a lot of COVID. Yeah, I mean all over the really. I know of so many people who have covid right now and it has really devastated our volunteer pool. Yeah, because I they're faithful and careful not to come and in fact, others when they're when they have covid. So we just have had really small teams, two or three tops. Yeah, four weeks now, and that is usually not enough. Few did. There's not enough people for you to leave to go to the bathroom if you need to go the bathroom. There's not enough people to go on the RV if some mom wants to look at her baby.

12:11 So, but instead of looking at a gosh, there's only two people here. Today, we said, praise God, there's two people, yeah, here to day. It changed everything. You change everything to think of this is good to people who showed up. There are two people willing to stee more gather in my name. There I am in the midstactly, exactly, you know, don't despise the day of small things. Yeah, is is kind of that that I remember a time that out here at Latrobe, there was not even two people that could be out there on it. Well, this was a Thursday, I believe the right yeah, it Thursday or Friday. Yeah. Yeah, so I remember back in the day I first started, it was only Saturdays that we had people out there and we'd prayed for people to be out there every day of the week and just never happened until yeah, God made it happen right, right, and so just rejoicing that there's anybody out there. Yeah, yeah, can add it from a positive perspective. Yeah, fateful expectation. Yeah, perspective. Sometimes I think we can put our eyes so firmly on our goal, on the mission, that we lose the side of God's schools. Yeah, and God's mission out there. And that was the second thing that I thought of is expect the unexpected. In a way, look for the unexpected opportunities as you're out there.

13:37 You know, our mission on the sidewalk is we are we want babies to be saved. Yeah, we want to glorify God, but we want to be able to promote life and mostly and seeing baby saved, because they're the ones whose lives are on the line. But in, in, in this little thing that happened in Uber driver stopped and she didn't know it was an abortion center. She took our information, she was horrified that it was an abortion center and she said, I'm going to take take this information, I'm going to give it. Yes, someone who maybe is thinking about an abortion. Yeah, a little thing, yeah, not a big thing, but praise God it is. That maybe God's mission for us being at that moment, right then, was exactly where that Uber I mean, we did podcast months ago about an uber driver that got a piece of literature who ended up resulting in it was two moms that chose life. Yep, and one of those moms are both of those moms that I remember them, gave their lives to Jesus. It's like wow, so we got to think in the terms of sewing seed and watering seat, and that's what you did. You sowed seed and, Gosh, I'm an expectation that we're going to hear back from that Uber driver or maybe when we stand before the Lord, we're going to find out this was a baby that was saved because that Uber driver took that piece of liturgy you gave them, handed them to a handed it to a young lady. Yeah, possibly got a not a call, but got a ding on their phone to go and pick somebody up, to take them to thirty two, twenty lit robe drive and right, you wouldn't pick that person up? Instead, share the Gospel with him? Who knows? You know, you planted to see. They didn't know it was an abortion clinic.

15:11 Now they know. So now they can run with that and they've got some information. Yeah, and be able to help plant seeds as well. And they're just an uber driver. Yeah, are quotes, just auber driver, but I told that story to that Uber driver and I said that Uber driver, the last one that I gave Litt I don't know if it was the last one, but that I gave literature to, had the result was two babies being saved and two lives being committed to the Lord. Yeah, that could be what happens with you and and that Uber driver kind of like set up tall and I think it changed his perspective on I I could save a life today, and it was like now his mission had to had become part of God's mission out. Yeah, so the next thing you have here, which I think is we talked about expectation, is expect the vine encounters.

16:02 Yeah, and believe that all encounters are divine, I guess, and they are right are. And so you share in this article a little story about somebody who came out to the abortion center. They were there at the pond looking for ducks. SHERE's an abortion clinic, there's a pond not far from that abortion clinic and for whatever reason she decided to go to that pond at that time while you were there. So share a little bit of that story. Well. So, so I approach every car if they pull over, because I can't tell immediately if their mom and she was an older woman. I knew as soon as I approach. I said, Oh, you're not here for an abortion and she said, Oh, no, no, I although. She said, but I am pro choice. Okay, said, but I'm here to look for ducks and I had just noticed on that pond just a couple days ago that there was a hooded merganser. Now, for you people that don't know, ducks this is exciting. Hooded mergansers are not common, I don't think, in our area and you don't usually see them on a little pond, but it was clearly a hooded merganser. I went home and looked it up after I saw it. So I told this lady, you would not believe what I saw. What lives on this pond is a hooded Bergancer. Well, she knew what they were because she's a duck watcher. So she's all excited. So we are bonding over ducks and we're talking about the ducks, but I was not going to let that comment about being pro choice go on challenge. Yeah, so from ducks we talked about I talked about how I knew because my daughter was an artist and we

17:33 used to paint. Hoo Did merganser said, oh, for the for the Federal Duck Stamp Contest, one of the odds. I said yes. She said, well, I used to too. I used to faint ducks for this duck contest. She did your daughter ever win? and Said No, she got first place in her age category, but she never once and was placed on a stamp. And Anyway, so we're we're sharing. And then I was able to shift the conversation to a discussion of God and the Gospel. And she comes from Catholic roots and she was she had been turned off to God because what she saw as the hypocrisy in the Catholic Church and and was concerned about the works versus faith issue. Yeah, and so I was able to talk with her and share the truth of the Gospel, gave her a Gospel tract, which she was very willing to take because we had now shared this common interest about ducks, and she thanked me as I had to leave then and get back to my work, but she thanked me and and she said that she recognized this as a divine encounter. Yeah, well, which was really I mean again, what were the chances? And where will that encounter lead? I don't know. She's got a gospel tract. It might have been a soul that now comes to the Lord, all because of ducks. Yeah, yeah, and my only question about the duck that you're talking about is, does it taste good? That is exactly what the RV

19:07 driver said, who happens to be hunter, and I told him pretty sure, told them you shot that right. Oh, I forgot. The best part of the store wree okay, as we're finishing up, and she said she felt that, oh wait, that's why she felt it was a divine encounter. As we're finishing up and I'm starting to move away, guess what I saw swimming across the pond. The Blah Blah Blah Blah, did look answer and I said I stopped her in the middle of a God discussion and said Look, look, look, it's the hooded merganser. And she was in thhralled. Any duck watcher would be. Okay, and and that at that point she said, not only have you raised some questions I'm really going to think about, but I got to see the hooded MERC answer. This was and if I hadn't talked with you about God, I would have missed the hooded mercancer. Yeah, so expect the unexpected and every every encounter is divine. Don't be discouraged. Don't let the opposition discourage you. Yeah, and that is an easy thing to do because, especially here in Charlotte, if you guys have watched any of our videos or any of our stuff, you've heard us even talk about on the podcast, we have some pretty pretty venomous probortion. Opposition out here. Yeah, but even, you know, cross the nation were places where they don't have like a consistent pro abortion opposition.

20:36 There can still be people that come from Tom to Tom. I know I was up in Washington state with our team there a couple of months ago and they don't have really any pro bows, poor probortion opposition. They have people that come by and flip them off and yell him, yell at him and stuff like that. But this day this young lady came and she decided to get her piece of poster board and make up a sign. I forget what it said on it, something about us being bigots or something like that, and held the sign about there. That happens from time to time. You're going to have opposition, you're going to have people decide they're going to voice their opinion against you or whatever, and it can be discouraging because at the end of the day, all of you guys are listening, you're just people that love people and love Jesus. You love Jesus and because of that he loves people. You love people and people come and they cuts you out and they have all these misconceptions about who you are. We're, in reality, like none of that stuff's true about you, right. You're not a bigot, you're not hateful, you're not condemning these women or whatever. You're not trying to control their bodies or anything like that. You're just a person that loves Jesus, that loves people, and so those false accusations can really be heavy and they can really weigh heavy on your mind and in your heart.

21:51 It can take your eyes off of and they can discourage expectation and discourage you. And one of those it went on this particular day. One of them was terrible, one of the proportion people blowing his horn into our face and screaming at us and it very angry and confrontational and I just ignored him, as I always tried to do, not not get distracted. But later in the day, I don't know, I felt the Holy Spirit kind of tug at me. And he's married to someone I really like. She's also out there, but I really do like her. I pray for her. Yeah, and and I told him just it popped out of my mouth, you know, your wife is so sweet. I really like her, and he said she really is. That's what attracted her to me. And he started this very civil discussion about his wife, how they met. She was the first person, he said, who recognized his or the only person that recognized his potential, which gave me the opportunity to launch into a god discussion when I said she is great, but she's not the only one that recognizes your potential. The God who created you seize your potential and created you for great things. And he had said his wife had saved him, and I said, and your wife can't save you, sweet as she is, it's God who saves. He ended up listening to me without a word for about

23:23 a half an hour. I shared the Gospel. So what began as very discouraging opposition became one of the highlights of the day. I had the opportunity to share the gospel with someone who had not listened to it before, at least certainly not not from me. Yeah, that's good. So, yeah, yeah, and viewing that now, we do talk about prioritizing who we talked to. We always discourage, don't get distracted with pro abortion people, but they are still people, yeah, that God would save if they would turn to him. God has a love toward them and, when given opportunity, as long as it's not going to distract us from while we're there.

24:03 We should minister to them, share the Gospel with them. I think it's in we should be intentional. It's important for us to be intentional about sharing what the Bible says, not to get some lengthy conversation about things that don't matter, but really get into the Gospel and get into a Gospel conversation. God Open that door for you. Be Praying for God to open those doors. Maybe there's security guard that gives you some problems when you're out there on the sidewalk and you know you you don't want to get distracted with them and get in some kind of heated argument. Just stay away from getting into heated arguments back and forth with pro abortion people's security guards or anybody at the abortion he just don't do that. It's not helpful. But be praying for God to open up doors for you to be able to have a civil, oneonone conversation where you can plainly lay out the Gospel, plainly lay out your convictions as a believer in Jesus. God can open those doors. YEA, and be an expectation that he's going to do it and he's going to use that conversation to draw them to himself. Yeah, and what you said about prayer, I don't think I actually put any that here in this article that I wrote, but pray for those opportunities to arisees. Is Part of being faithfully expectant. Yeah, you've prayed for it. Now wait and watch and and see how he's going to answer it. It might not be exactly as you prayed, but he will answer it in one way or another. Yeah, but you know, like you said, our goal is our mission, our reason we're out there is to hopefully save the lives of these babies. We

25:34 don't of course God does, but where the instrument he uses? And one of the things that I thought that gives faithful expectation is having an optimistic outlook on events. And what I meant by that was there are oftentimes, and everyone in ministry knows that, there are people. Some sidewalk teams will call them turnaways. Yeah, others will call them saves. There are mom who left, who didn't abort. Yeah, and there are some people who are very, I guess, sticklers about if they don't have a confirmed save, the MOM has said I chose life, then they don't think of it as a save to baby. Yeah, I'm a little bit more lenient. Okay, and the reason, I think, does have to do with faithful expectation.

26:23 Yeah, I know God send us there to do that. I know that's our mission and if I see a lot of indications that this mom probably chose life, there are lots of clues. Yeah, we've gone into that in other podcast. I won't go into them now, but if there's enough of those, I'm going to tell my team. I think that was a safe and I'm going to, I guess, count it as a save because it is such an encouragement, yeah, to us who have been weathering some pretty rough hours in most cases out there. Yeah, so I don't think. I don't think we should be grudging with the opportunity to be optimistic.

27:07 Yeah, without I'm not saying lie, I'm not saying fudge facts, but I am saying have an optimistic outlook. If God has sent you there to do that mission, he's going to make that mission happen. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean I think we could, and we probably do a whole podcast about this. As far as numbers and how account that we didn't report. Did do one. Yeah, yeah, but you know, we have a kind of unique scenario here at La Trobe abortion clinic in that it is just an abortion clinic. Right. They're not doing other things. They're not doing plant parent whood does do other things besides abortion, hormone therapy and things like that, right. We've already talked about that some on other podcast as well. At the La Trobe abortion center, we know because we've talked to many abortion workers that have worked inside of that place for years and of course, just by their own admission, they're an abortion clinic. That's all they do. And we've also over the years been able to kind of put pieces together. Right, yeah, we can tell if this is happening.

28:07 We know when the abortionist gets there. So white possibly they leave before the abortion it's gets there. They didn't have an abortion, and so if there's other indicators and other clues, we kind of put those together. I'm confident to say it was a baby saved, and the reason why is because we've had so many that have come back over the years that have told us just drove back to the troube abortion center just to find us. This has happened several times where they tell us I was here and I chose life. So we can be confident. God's doing stuff behind the scenes and at the end of the day, we're not trying to put a notch on our belt, but we do want to be optimistic, we do want to be an expectation. God's doing something. Babies are being saved and what we're doing we're doing in faith. But God graciously lets us see the fruit. Now the vast majority of the babies are saved, or, you know, mom stops and tells us she chose life, or they go on the mobile unit. We're able to minister more in depth to it. But we need to be an expectation. Yeah, and and don't be afraid through that expectation. If you have some solid indicators of that mom chose life, then don't be afraid to say it. I'm confident that young lady chose life. Right, right.

29:15 It's a good mentality to have a thing it is and the results are often not immediate. We are planting seeds sometime in on that same day, and this was the final point on that wonderful day where I was trying to pin down what made me faithfully expectant. The I got a text from my mom that I had counseled five years ago and she was text five years ago. She had been, I matter, when she came to a board. Yeah, and the text today said that she the text on that day, and you're talking about in this that is right on that day, because all these things happened on the same day that I just talked about. But on that day she texted and and told me she was pregnant again and she wanted to come to our ministry get the help that she knew she could get from us and come and see your baby on the mobile ultrasound unit. And that to me was just such an encouragement that instead, that's the whole mission of of love life, is that instead of running to the abortion center, the women will run to the church. And that's what she did. Yeah, so praise God and and it reminded me that the more that we look for God and expect his miracles, the more we will see them, because they are always there. Yeah, he is always working. Yeah, yeah, expectation is a posture of our heart, and expectation, in light of who God

30:47 is, is a posture of our heart toward God, knowing what he has promised. Right. And so how are we going to be in faithful expectation before the Lord will? First of all, we need to see who this God is that we serve and we need to have our eyes constantly focused on him. And so for this year I would encourage you, guys, and I think probably everybody that's listening. This is already a regular part of your life, rigor regular rhythm to your life. But if it's not, it needs to be where. You need to be in the word of God. You need to see, because the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. You need to have the word of God in your heart, have it in your mind, have it on your tongue so that you're proclaiming the truth of God's word, because God's Word is in contrast a lot of the fear and, especially in this day and age right the fear mongering that's out there, faithlessness, doubt, dread, all of that stuff that has permeated the atmosphere of our nation. All of that stuff is contradicted by the word of God. We can have faith in this God, we can be an expectation. I know there's a heaviness, there's like a political heaviness. People are under it thinking that because a Democrats are in power, all of this and all of that. But let's just forget that garbage and let's be an expectation, because we know who our God is. What does it say in Daniel, in the the Prophet Daniel? At the end it says those that know their God will do great exploits. Know God, and if you know God, if you know the god of the Bible, the God who made the heavens in the earth, the God who raised Jesus

32:19 Christ from the dead and whose spirit lives and you, if you know him, you have every reason to be full of faith and an expectation of what he's going to do, even at these places of darkness and these places of death. And so be encouraged by this. Spread this spread this. Listen, faith can be like a good disease. He's right, maybe definitely contagious. Be Contagious. Optimism is contagious and in the conversely, so is pessimism. So you be optimistic, faithfully expectant and you will just you'll see it blossom around you. Absolutely yeah, and you have every reason to be in faithful expectation because you serve a faithful God. Amen. Yeah, so hope this was an encouragement to you guys. Again, we hope that you'll share this. If you want to reach out to me. Maybe you have some questions, ofthing to add, maybe something, a story to tell that encourage you along these lines. Reach out to me, Daniel Love Life Dot Org.

33:15 You reach out to Vicki, Vicky at Love Life Dot Org. We'd love to hear from you, guys, but until next time, God, bless God, bless you all our love for love. Give me our love for gratitude. I know it will cost me my love. Nothing's too precious in some you