Thursday, April 17, 2008

Hope !

Today is one of my favorite days of the week! I get to go to my volunteer job at our local crisis pregnancy center called Sav-A-Life. Each day I work there is a blessing.......a challenge......a heartache......a surprise.....in other words, I never know what a day at Sav-A-Life will bring! I love my work because through it I am able to give young girls and women the gospel. It's part of my job! It's awesome to have a job that includes sharing Jesus with my clients!

A few months ago we had a Sav-A-Life Training session and my director asked me to speak for just a few minutes before the main speaker. My topic was to be, "Why I Serve as a Volunteer at Sav-A-Life?" For almost a week after she asked me to speak I asked myself over and over…Why DO I serve?

And then one night a single little four letter word came to me as the answer. That word is HOPE. In the Sav-A-Life center we see girls who sometimes seem to have no hope. A young teenager comes in….hoping against hope that she is not pregnant because she doesn’t want a baby. A mother comes in thinking abortion is her only choice because she doesn’t want the stress of having another baby. Young teenage girls who have been to our clinic multiple times feel their life is hopeless. Some of these clients look at their life and believe that there is no hope for anything except heartache and the defeated lifestyle they live everyday. But I love to be able to take them in the counseling room and say to them…I can’t fix what is wrong with you…I may not even know the answer to your problems, but I know the One who does and His name is Jesus.

Some of these young ladies are already Christians and just need to be pointed back to their “first love”. Some of them have never met Jesus as their Saviour and for them this verse in Ephesians 2: 12 fits their situation: That at that time ye were without Christ, ……having no hope, and without God in the world: For those ladies, I explain the Gospel from the Scriptures and tell them how the Lord wants to come into their life and meet each need that they have.
What a privilege to be able to talk to the young women in each of the situations I described earlier and tell them….there IS HOPE! I can share with them the facts about the love of God and how Jesus died for them and paid for their sins. I can tell them that they can be justified by HIS grace and be made heir according to the HOPE of eternal life as it says in the Scriptures.
If it were not for the hope we have in Jesus Christ we would have no hope! So, for me….that’s why I serve as a volunteer counselor at Sav-A-Life…..to be able to give HOPE to the hopeless through the hope of Christ living in them

I am thankful that Sav-A-Life gives me this opportunity to share the hope of the Gospel with the clients who come into our office ....and it’s because of our mission statement …..which I love: “The mission of Sav-A-Life is to see the Word of God birthed into the hearts of men and women and to make abortion unnecessary and undesirable in our region.”

HOPE….it’s such a short little word…..but it means SO much to so many people! Jeremiah 17: 7 says…”Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose HOPE the LORD is.”

May God bless you each one today......

Marilyn



3 comments:

elaine @ peace for the journey said...

Marilyn:
Does your facility come equipped with an ultrasound machine? I know that Focus on the Family has a ministry to provide machines and technicians for crisis pregnancy centers. Just wondering.

Thank you so much for your ministry to pregnant mothers...young and old. You're offering them the greatest HOPE they will ever know, amidst a time of great uncertainty and confusion.

Thank you for being there for them, and from the depths of my heart...thank you for saving the lives of children. One day you will see their faces (if not here then in heaven)and they will thank you in person.

peace~elaine

Alene said...

Lovely post! Thanks for sharing and giving of your time to these precious girls. Thank you also for stopping by and praying for our little Will. Hope - what a refreshing word. Thanks for the reminder! Our hope is in HIM. Blessings.

Joyful said...

Marilyn, I'm sure God uses you to share His hope with many. Thank you for being a channel of His love to these families. It's because of caring people like yourself that a young family at our church just adopted a baby that the mother had initially intended to abort, but someone shared Christ's love with her, and she realized that her life was not hopeless and in turn gave hope to a childless couple.

Keep serving Him,
with love,
Joy