For the Little Ones
Today is the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. The court’s decision was handed down on January 22, 1973. Since that time, there have been approximately 61,628,584 abortions that have destroyed the lives of unborn children. (2020 statistics.)
There are more than 3,300 abortions daily and 137 abortions per hour every hour in the United States. Or to state it differently, an abortion is done about every 30 seconds in the United States. (2013 statistics)*
On this grim, grievous day, may we fast and pray for the end of abortion in America and around the world.
For the Little Ones
The book of Ezra tells the story of Jews returning back to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon. For Ezra and those returning with him, the long journey ahead was plagued by gangs and thieves. Ezra and the Jews had their wives and children with them. The Jews were the perfect target for the thieves and thugs. They were loaded … and defenseless. They desperately needed protection for the long journey. Ezra took the right step and declared a corporate fast:
“Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from Him the right way for us and our little ones and all our possessions. For I was ashamed to request of the king an escort of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy on the road, because we had spoken to the king, saying, ‘The hand of our God is upon all those for good who seek Him, but His power and His wrath are against all those who forsake Him.’ So we fasted and entreated our God for this, and He answered our prayer” (Ezra 8:21-23, NKJV).
War Against the Preborn
Our little ones are in danger too — in danger of death from the thief who has come to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). If Ezra called for corporate fasting and prayer for the safety and well-being of the Jews’ little ones, how much more we need to engage in corporate fasting and prayer for the safety of our little ones amid the slaughter perpetrated against them.
The number of abortion deaths each year rival the number of American casualties in all our wars combined.
American Casualties of War Statistics:
A few of the major wars:
- Revolutionary: War: 25,324
- Civil War: estimates as high as 625,000
- WWI: 116,516
- WWII: 405,399
- Vietnam: 58,209
- War on Terror: 6,639
- ALL WARS/CONFLICTS: 1,326,733**
- War on the unborn: 61,628,584
In February 1995, before the President of the United States at the National Prayer Breakfast, Mother Teresa spoke about the effect of abortion:
I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child — a direct killing of the innocent child — murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?…
By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.[i]
Genocide On Our Watch
How does the number of abortion deaths compare to the holocaust?
- Six million Jews died tragically, mercilessly in the Holocaust.***
- Over 60 million babies have died in the American Holocaust.
Jews didn’t choose the ovens. African Americans didn’t’ choose racist lynchings. Native Americans didn’t choose to be exterminated by the US Army. And Babies don’t choose abortion.
Nazis decided Jews’ lives weren’t meaningful. Whites decided blacks were less human. And big people have decided little people have fewer rights.
Would you define the occurrence of over 60 million abortions as genocide?
Genocide is: “The deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, racial, religious, political, cultural, ethnic, or other group defined by the exterminators as undesirable.”
This Webster’s definition readily applies to abortion. The “national group” is American “unwanted” unborn children and they are now being destroyed at the rate of nearly 1 out of every 3 conceived. They are being terminated in an elaborate network of killing centers. [ii]
The Shedding of Innocent Blood
God values humanity so much that He protects it with His judgment. A day of judgment is set if man does not obey Him.
“And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man” (Gen. 9:5-6, NIV).
The shedding of innocent blood pollutes the land.
“Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it” (Num. 35:33, NIV)
Nothing can wash away our sin and defilement of the land except the blood of Jesus. We need to repent and cry out for mercy.
“So he said he would destroy them — had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them” (Psalm 106:23, NIV).
It seems that as believers we are not sufficiently grieved over this heinous sin—the sacrificing of babies to demons.
“They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood….Therefore the wrath of the LORD was kindled against His people, so that He abhorred His own inheritance” (Psalm 106:37-38, 40, NKJV)
The sacrificing of babies to demons—it happens around us every day, every 30 seconds … yet we go about our way as if nothing is happening. We read in the Bible about babies being sacrificed and we think, “How brutal. How primitive. How evil. We would never let anything like that happen in our day. We’re more sophisticated and enlightened than that.” Yet it is happening all around us … in staggering numbers … and even worse, we seem undisturbed and unmoved by it.
When the blood is shed by a national law, then there is national guilt on us all.
“If a man is found slain, lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, your elders and judges shall go out and measure the distance from the body to the neighboring towns. Then the elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer that has never been worked and has never worn a yoke and lead her down to a valley that has not been plowed or planted and where there is a flowing stream. There in the valley they are to break the heifer’s neck. The priests, the sons of Levi, shall step forward, for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister and to pronounce blessings in the name of the Lord and to decide all cases of dispute and assault” (Deuteronomy 21:1-5, NIV).
We are repeating Manasseh’s sin:
“Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides his sin by which he made Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Kings 21:16, ESV).
“For he [Manasseh] had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the LORD would not pardon”(2 Kings 24:4, NKJV).
Only the blood of Jesus can wash away our sin and cleanse our land.
Praying Also for a Change in the ACA Law
2 Kings 21:16 in The Message says:
“The final word on Manasseh was that he was an indiscriminate murderer. He drenched Jerusalem with the innocent blood of his victims.
Indiscriminate murderer. We are all accountable for this heinous sin which has drenched our nation with the blood of innocent victims. But now—we are about to be forced to do something that is, to me, the equivalent of being forced to take the knife and slay children ourselves.
For those joining us from other nations, I’ll summarize our national nightmare: Our government is forcing Christian businesses and institutions to sin against God (and violate their religious, moral, and ethical values) and be complicit in abortion (i.e. to commit murder). The Affordable Care Act, the new healthcare law, requires employee health care plans to provide and pay for coverage of abortion-inducing drugs such as ella (the “week after” pill) and Plan B (the “morning after” pill).
Christians who believe abortion is murder and murder is sin against God will now be forced to supply the means for this murder. It is not just vague entities who are forced against their will to do this — it is the men and women who own and oversee these businesses and institutions.
Our nation recently experienced the tragic murder of 20 children at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. It was horrific, unjust murder of 20 innocent lives. The nation mourned. Our President mourned. And rightfully so. Something would be morally amiss if we didn’t feel horror, sadness, and outrage over the murders. The loss is incomprehensible.
This tragedy sparked a massive debate about guns and efforts to prevent the murder of children outside the womb. But what about children inside the womb?
To Christians, who believe that God-created life begins at conception, forcing us to take part and provide the means for abortion is like handing us a gun and ordering us to walk into an elementary school and shoot innocent children. It’s evil. Wicked. Unconscionable.
A government abhorring the murder of 20 children, yet somehow applauding and encouraging the murder of over 3000 preborn children a day…and mandating that its citizens participate in this murder — it’s twisted. Evil. Demonic.
As we pray for the end of abortion in America and around the world, may we also pray for the end of the ACA abortion mandate, which went into effect this year.
Why Make This Part of Our Fast?
Look again at how God answered Ezra and the Jews’ fast:
“So we fasted and entreated our God for this, and He answered our prayer” (8:23).
Fasting and prayer includes intercession. I pray daily over the prayer requests and causes for fasting that are submitted when fasters join Pursuit 21. There are too many to pray over each one every day—but I pray over 15-20 a day individually, mentioning every name and need before the Lord, and lay hands on the rest and pray generally for them all. The next day I take the next 15-20 names…
In addition to personal needs, almost every request and list of causes for fasting includes a loved one—a need for salvation, a desperate need to be set free from drugs, for healing, for financial provision, etc. Many of you are already interceding for others as a part of your fast. It’s Biblical for us to turn to God in prayer and fasting for the miracle our loved ones need.
Intercession involves a life and death exchange. The intercessor says, “God kill me before You kill them.” The intercessor says, “I will stay up all night praying and have my rest put to death; I’ll forsake my own pleasures and have my comfort put to death; I’ll put the needs of others above my own and put my self-interest to death … that God might intervene and set another person free.”
God raises up intercessors who stand before Him to seek His mercy and stop His judgment.
In A Hunger for God, John Piper puts fasting into the context of praying for the end of abortion:
“Fasting, for Ezra, was not only an expression of humility and desperation; it was an expression of desiring God with life-and-death seriousness. ‘So we fasted and sought our God.’ Fasting comes in alongside prayer with all its hunger for God and says, ‘We are not able in ourselves to win this battle. We are not able to change hearts or minds. We are not able to change worldviews and transform culture and save [1.2] children. We are not able to reform the judiciary or embolden the legislature or mobilize the slumbering population. We are not able to heal the endless wounds of godless ideologies and their bloody deeds. But,O God, you are able! And we turn from reliance on ourselves to you. And we cry out to you and plead that for the sake of your name, and for the sake of your glory, and for the advancement of your saving purpose in the world, and for the demonstration of your wisdom and your power and your authority over all things, and for the sway of your Truth and the relief of the poor and the helpless, act, O God. This much we hunger for the revelation of your power. With all our thinking and all our writing and all our doing, we pray and we fast. Come. Manifest your glory.” [iii]
Open Your Mouth
“Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy” (Prov. 31:8-9).
The speechless are those who cannot speak for themselves. We are to open our mouth and plead their cause. The Bible instructs us to get involved, rather than passively concluding, “This is someone else’s problem. It’s not my war.”
In the original language the word for “open” means: “let loose, be thrown open.” The word for “mouth” simply means an opening. “Cause” means “judgment, sentence.” The root word from which it is derived means “litigation, defend, content with, strife.” There is a court case going on in the life of a preborn child every 30 seconds. A judgment will be made and a sentence of life or death will be rendered.
Today, I’d like us to open our hearts and our concerns to the lives of the unborn. Let’s throw open our prayer time and causes for fasting, opening our mouths wide in prayer, pleading the cause of these poor, defenseless little ones who cannot speak for themselves. Let’s pray for the 1.2 who face murder this year. Pray for the end of abortion in America and around the world — and pray for healing for those who have been scarred by the guilt of having had an abortion.****
Prayer:
Lord, forgive us for the sin of abortion that we as a nation have committed for so many years. We acknowledge our sin of the shedding of innocent blood.
We pray for hurting mothers and fathers who have aborted children. May they experience complete healing and forgiveness in You. Embrace them tenderly with Your love and grace.
Please forgive us for the innocent blood we have on our hands, and grant us a path toward protecting the life You have created within the womb. We have forsaken Your beautiful, unmatched righteousness and Your good path for the ugliness that comes from choosing our own foolish paths. Forgive us for not following Your Word. Forgive us for not valuing human life. Forgive us for glorifying sin in our entertainment, movies, and television. Help us turn back to the Bible and to Your holy, righteous standard.
Father, we have blamed the taking of innocent life on convenience or science, but Your Word calls it murder. Israel did not escape Your judgment for killing innocent children and neither will we. For You are the same yesterday, today and forever. We ask Your forgiveness for killing the lives of untold millions. May we turn from our wicked ways and become a people who hide Your Word in our hearts, that we might not sin against You.
We are not able in ourselves to win this battle. We are not able to change hearts or minds. We are not able to change worldviews and transform culture and save millions of children. But You are able! You are able to reform the judiciary and embolden the legislature and mobilize the slumbering population. You area able to heal the endless wounds of godless ideologies and their bloody deeds.
O God, You are able! We turn from reliance on ourselves to You. We cry out to You and plead that for the sake of Your name, and for the sake of Your glory, and for the advancement of Your saving purpose in the world, and for the demonstration of Your wisdom and Your power and Your authority over all things, and for the sway of Your Truth and the relief of the poor and the helpless, act, O God. We hunger for the revelation of Your power. Come. Manifest Your glory.
May Your will be done on earth as it is done in heaven in the government and judiciary of this nation. Come and save us at this desperate hour. As we humble ourselves and return to You with repentance and fasting, visit our land with the power of Your Spirit once again. May our land be cleansed and evil strongholds demolished. Lord we cry for mercy. Send revival! Pour out Your Spirit on all people.
Forgive us for the idolatry that paved the way to this slaughter. Forgive us for our lukewarm passion and commitment to You—for our self-worship, idolatry, and complacency. For our love of self that so vastly outweighs our love of You. Show us mercy, Lord. Mercy in giving us godly sorrow and repentance. Mercy in stopping the slaughter. Mercy in rekindling our love for You. Mercy in the courts for those seeking to obey You above men. Mercy in sending revival to our land. In Jesus Name.
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More Tweetables
- “The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child. If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another.”— Mother Teresa #prolife
- Jews didn’t choose the ovens. African Americans didn’t choose racist lynchings… Nazis decided Jews’ lives weren’t meaningful. Whites decided blacks were less human. And big people have decided little people have fewer rights.
- The occurrence of over 60 million abortions is genocide. Genocide is the deliberate & systematic destruction of a national group defined by the exterminators as undesirable. Our national group is American unwanted unborn children.
- Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want.
- God values humanity so much that He protects it with His judgment. #abortion #prolife
- “Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.” — Numbers 35:33 #abortion #prolife
- When the blood is shed by a national law, then there is national guilt on us all. #abortion
- Only Jesus’ blood can wash away our sin and defilement of the land. We need to repent and cry out for mercy. #abortion #prolife
- “Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.” — Proverbs 31:8-9 #abortion #prolife
- Lord, forgive us for the sin of abortion that we as a nation have committed for so many years. Forgive us for the idolatry that paved the way to this slaughter.
- Show us mercy, God. Give us godly sorrow and repentance for the sin of #abortion. Mercy in stopping the slaughter.
- We pray for hurting mothers and fathers who have aborted children. May they experience complete healing and forgiveness in You. Embrace them tenderly with Your love and grace.
- Ezra led the Jews to fast for the safety and protection of their little ones — and God answered! Let’s fast and pray for the safety of our little ones. #abortion
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Song: Just Another Birthday
Just Another Birthday by Casting Crowns
From the Album Come To The Well
A Moment of Worship: We Cry Out
We Cry Out led by Kim Walker and Jesus Culture
From the Album We Cry Out
Bible Reading: Ezra 8:21-23, Genesis 9:5-6; Numbers 35:33; Psalm 106:23, 37-40; Deuteronomy 21:1-5; 2 Kings 21:16, 24:4; Proverbs 31:8-9
Focus Questions:
- Have you thought of abortion as a war with casualties or as genocide before?
- How does it affect you to see the numbers of those killed in wars and in the holocaust compared to those killed by abortion?
- What are you praying today as you open your mouth in intercessory prayer for the 926,200 babies appointed to die by abortion in America this year — and for those appointed to die by abortion worldwide?
- If you do not live in the United States, is abortion polluting your land?
RELATED POSTS
- This Kind Does Not Go Out by the Courts or Political System
- Matt Chandler: The Sanctity of Human Life
- Praying for Government Leaders (Part 1): A Prayer for the President
- Praying for Government Leaders (Part 2): A Prayer Guide
- Praying for Government Leaders (3): A Guide to Praying for Your Country
- President Lincoln’s Proclamations for Fasting and Prayer
FROM THE FASTING ARCHIVES
- Don’t Judge the Results Based on What You Feel (Part 3)
- Fasting Day 14: Fasting Is Saying, “Give Me Jesus” (Fasting Is, Part 1)
- Fasting Day 14: Fasting Affects a Nation
- Fasting Day 14: Praying for Our Government
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[i] http://www.priestsforlife.org/brochures/mtspeech.html
[ii] Center for Bioethical Reform: Why Abortion is Genocide by Gregg Cunningham
[iii] John Piper, A Hunger for God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997), 171
* Current (2013) Abortion Statistics: For concise reasons for this estimate see LifeNews. For more extensive statistics, see the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. For up to date statistics, see LiveAction. The total number of abortions cited in the first paragraph was updated January 17, 2020 to reflect the National Right to Life Committee’s statistics published in January 2020. These statistics were based upon the Guttmacher Institute’s statistics from 1973-2017, which showed that there have been 61,628,584 abortions since Roe v. Wade.
** War statistic sources: American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics; http://www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf. Casualties of the war on terror: 2013 statistic.
***Holocaust Statistics: United States Holocaust Memorial
**** In 2014, an estimated 926,200 abortions were performed in the United States, 12% fewer than in 2011. For the first time in four decades the number of abortions dropped below 1 million, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.
Other Resources:
- Abortion Photos (Warning: Graphic) Source: The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform
- Abortion Videos (Warning: These videos are extremely graphic because abortion is an act of violence which kills a baby. Parental discretion advised.) Source: The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform
- Abortion Instruments (Warning: This video is extremely graphic because abortion is an act of violence which kills a baby. Parental discretion advised.) Source: Abortioninstruments.com | The Grantham Collection
- This is a Dilation and Extraction Abortion
- What So-Called Pro-Choicers Cannot Watch From Start To Finish
- The Silent Scream (Full Length) – Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s classic video that shocked the world. He explains the procedure of a suction abortion, followed by an actual first trimester abortion as seen through ultrasound. The viewer can see the child’s pathetic attempts to escape the suction curette as her heart rate doubles, and a “silent scream” as her body is torn apart. Demonstrates why abortion is murder.
- Prenatal Photos. Source: The Case for Life
- Inside Pregnancy: Weeks 1-9 | BabyCenter Video
- Inside Pregnancy: Weeks 10 – 14 | BabyCenter Video
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