Little Heartbeats

“But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” -2 Thessalonians 2: 13-14

When my daughter was 8 weeks old, I watched as her tiny heart beat on the screen of that ultrasound machine for the first time.  The first sign of life.  A heartbeat.  As I watched, I realized that this new life was not something I owned, it was not something that my wife owned; it was life that God owned.  It was a gift from Him to us.  He saw her before she was formed, he has chosen her to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth; just like he has chosen you. 

In the 1983 Templeton Address Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave the profound speech “Men Have Forgotten God.”  In this he said: “The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West’s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.”  His words were true then, as much as they were prophetic.  The American culture we know is reflective of the selfsame Roman culture that Paul wrote too.  A people that worship and served the creature more than the creator.  The “pursuit of happiness” has been perverted into a pursuit of indulgence; a campaign of humanism that fights for the loudest megaphone, so we can exalt ourselves and forget God.  It has taken us off the narrow way, and into the dark and depraved of path of idolatry.  Now, generations of Americans are being told that we are the lords of our lives, and those whose lives are under are care.  Even the innocent child and unborn baby are offered up as sacrifices to our idolatry.  The desire to maintain this power, this lordship, has led us to depths of sinfulness that would horrify those who have gone before us.  We have forgotten that God is “above all, through all, and in you all.”  That he is Almighty.  He is in control and he reigns and rules over all the universe; how much more mortal man.  We do not possess our lives, nor the lives of those in our care; it is a gift.  We do not play God, we do not get to decide who lives or dies.  My little girls’ heartbeat was not mine to take, nor my wife’s; it was given by God, it is God’s.  A God who is merciful, loving, a God who made her, saw her in her mother’s womb, and gave His Son to die for her sins so that she could be saved and brought into full fellowship with Him.  This is every man’s blood bought destiny should they choose it.  The Hebrew writer ask’s “how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”  A salvation that is built on yielding, on sacrifice, on surrender.  If we destroy the innocent to advance our own agenda, what chance do those who live on have?  What are we saying to our children when the lives of those who would soon to be children are aborted for our own gain?  Are the fires of Molech once again kindled in the abortion clinics?  The altars of Baal built on the laws of our very own country?  Who are we to be so careless with a life that is not ours?  These are but aftershock to the earthquake of sinful carnality that registers in the human heart.  Therefore, now more than ever the time has come for the Christian to weep.  To fast.  To pray.  Not only for the loss of the unborn, but for those that remain.  For those who are lost, broken, hurt, and led to believe that there is no God; or that they are God.

God in heaven desires a relationship with you.  Jesus Christ desires a relationship with you.  He wants to give you life, and life eternal.  He wants to bring you out of sin and into sanctification.  The fire of Molech only takes, the fire of God gives.  God can change the heart, save the heart, and the little heartbeats.