1, 2, 3.

Welcome to the Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast community.

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For eternity dot org.

Well, welcome to another edition of the RAP Report.

I'm your host, Andrew Rapaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member.

We are here to give you biblical interpretation and applications for the Christian life.

And a major part of Christian life is, well, one would be evangelism.

That's something that all of us should be doing.

But a more specific type of evangelism is reaching out to women who are considering the horror of abortion and trying to help them see that the child in their womb is a child.

And it's also a valued life that we hope would come to receive Christ along with the mother.

And so what we're going to talk about as a ministry known as Love Life with a friend of mine who we go way back.

We'll talk about that at the beginning before we get into the ministry.

But, Brian, welcome to the RAP Report.

It's awesome to be here, brother.

Good to see you.

So for folks who don't know you, first introduce yourself and then.

Then we can reminisce for a bit.

Yeah.

So my name is Brian Ottinger and 47 years old, born again at 32.

And about a year or two after I was born again, got involved in some evangelism efforts.

I know you told me to hold off on that, but that's how we.

That's how our lives intersected.

And through this, the Sports Fan Outreach International.

And yeah, just early on got discipled by guys who had a high emphasis on evangelism.

They told me that's just what Christians do.

And so I just read the Bible and agreed with them and started evangelizing.

And eventually, by God's grace, the Lord led me to start a church.

Was a pastor of a church for 10 years here in Charlotte, North Carolina, of course, married to my wife, Carolina.

We have five sons.

Three oldest are serving in the Navy.

So we appreciate your prayers for them and for us especially as the holidays are approaching.

We always miss them.

And after about 10 years of pastoring, end up getting involved with this ministry in Charlotte called Love Life.

And I'm sure we'll talk more about that, but I've been with Love Life for about six years now.

I serve as the director of expansion and also oversee the northeast region.

So Chicago, New York City, central Pennsylvania and Detroit and soon to be DC Help provide like pastoral and just oversight to those areas to help them activate churches to save babies lives and to help disciple moms and dads into the kingdom of God.

Yeah, and you're right, we, we met.

Let's not talk about how long ago that was because then we really feel old because I'm about 10 years older than you, so.

But, but yet.

No, we, we met really doing outreach, doing evangelism.

And then I, I remember when you, you planted the church and, and just busyness of life.

You know, we just kind of.

You got busy with the church and then with this ministry and it's.

We kind of didn't talk for, for just several years.

Not because anything happened, but it was great to just, just be able to reconnect.

We.

Before we started recording, just reminiscing of different, different days.

Like.

Oh yeah, I remember.

So it's, it's something.

Good old days.

Yeah, well, and we think of them as good old days, but we always forget.

I mean, this is one thing, when people look back, they often forget the bad times.

Like it was interesting many years ago, I was talking to friends that they would talk about the, the.

Our first church that we all had come from and then we had all gone into different churches and we talked.

You know, they were all talking about the good old days.

Right.

And I went, do you remember like this.

That went on and that went like.

They're like, I don't remember that.

Like all the bad stuff they forgot about.

Yeah.

And I'm like.

And they were, a couple of them were struggling to find a church.

I'm like, you know, maybe, just maybe the reason you're struggling to find a church to be a member of is you're comparing it to a church that never actually existed.

You remember the good old days and you forgot all the bad times.

And now you want some church that matches what never actually existed.

Yeah.

And one of the persons was like, you know, I think you're right.

I think the church I'm going to now is actually pretty good.

But I kept comparing it and it wasn't what I, what I thought was good.

Yeah, you're right.

I forgot about all those things.

And so.

Good word, man.

Yeah, it's something we always have to keep in mind.

So, so what got you into the ministry at Love Life?

How did you first hear about it?

Yeah, thanks for the question.

And just to back up a little bit, I did see you at G3 a couple years ago.

Yeah.

And, you know, so there was that little, that was that touch point.

It's more than a couple.

Right.

Because that was.

That it would have had to been pre.

Covered, I think.

I don't know.

I went to a couple of them, man.

But anyways, nonetheless, yeah.

So.

Love life.

So I was pastoring here in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I had done some abortion center ministry, primarily, like preaching at abortion centers.

I had some friends bring me out to do that.

And when I first heard about Love Life, I was pretty skeptical, to be honest with you, because I heard they were doing prayer walks at the abortion center.

And I wasn't really familiar with even the concept of prayer walks.

I thought it was a little bit fluky, to be honest with you, is like, what good does it do to walk and pray?

And, you know, can't people go do something more than that?

And.

But these guys in my church, they, they kept coming to these prayer walks in Charlotte and they, they kept telling me, pastor, we think you'd really love this.

I mean, it's, it's gospel centered.

It's right up your alley.

It's, you know, it's prophetic and that it engages the culture.

I think you'd really, you'd really enjoy it.

So finally I took them up on the offer to come to this prayer walk.

And the way Love Life works is churches will adopt a week.

And so what the pastor will do is he'll preach a message on life on Sunday, then the church will fast and pray collectively together on Wednesday.

And then Saturday, the entire church will come to the abortion center for a peaceful time of prayer and worship.

And then from that, people can get engaged beyond the prayer walk through, you know, sidewalk outreach, foster care, and adoption, becoming a mentor to the moms and dad who choose life.

Or they can get plugged into what we call Restored Life.

It's a ministry for those who have abortion.

They're past to receive healing.

And so that, that's called an adoption week.

And so that happens for 40 weeks out of the year.

Andrew.

But the last week, it's called Celebrate Life.

All the churches come back together for this, this massive pray.

And so the guys in my church invited me to this massive prayer walk, and my skeptical radar was already pretty high.

And so I show up to the abortion center that I've been at to several times.

And usually when you go to the abortion center, man, you'll, you'll.

First off, no one wants to go there.

It's a dark place.

It's it's nasty, man.

Children are dying, people are hard hearted.

It's just not a fun place to be.

And there's usually very little Christians out there.

I mean, most abortion centers, there's none, or maybe one or two.

And so I show up to this celebrate life prayer walk back in 2006, 16 and brother, there was literally thousands of Christians standing outside.

And so I went from being a guy who was super skeptical to a guy who was super, super skeptical.

Because usually for me, I don't know about you, but if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

And so the fact that there was thousands of Christians at the abortion center for me was like this, this is, there's got to be something ecumenical about this.

They maybe they water down the gospel.

There's no gospel at all.

And I get to this prayer walk and from the stage I'm hearing them proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I'm hearing them say that this, this scourge of abortion is only going to end when the church says so, that this has to be led through the local church and pastors and it must be a gospel witness.

And I'm like sitting here thinking like, wow, this, this is really checking all the boxes.

But there's one particular part of the prayer walk where someone got on stage and this woman said, hey, if you're here today and you have abortion in your personal past, we want to let you know that abortion is not the unforgivable sin.

God promises to heal any of those that will forsake their sin and turn to him.

And this was again back in 2016.

So my 22 year old son, who was about 12 at the time, he looks at me in this moment and he says, hey dad, do you have abortion in your past?

And brother, I just broke down and I began weeping.

And the reality was, prior to becoming a Christian, I have at least one abortion, if not several.

I led a pretty promiscuous lifestyle.

And so abortion was something that for me was a fix to a problem, you know, prior to Christ.

And so when he asked me this question, I began, began weeping.

And he grabs me and he starts weeping with me.

Now I had already just graduated seminary.

I understood, you know, justification by faith.

I understood.

I was declared righteous.

God remembers my sin as far as the east is from the west, like, but yet I could not understand, like, what the heck is happening.

I'm broken inside.

And the reality was, up until that point, I don't recall ever hearing a pastor or anyone offer forgiveness for Abortion, obviously I heard that was preached against, it was wrong, it was murder, it was a sin.

But I don't remember.

Now somebody may have to their credit, but I just don't remember ever hearing that there was forgiveness for abortion.

And so God used that moment to send me on a path where I got plugged into Love Life's ministry called Restored Life.

And I actually went through a Bible based study for men that have abortion in their past.

And I just want to pause there for all the listeners.

You know, a lot of times we think about the issue of abortion, the issue of life, and rightfully so.

We highlight the women, right, because they're the one carrying the child.

But we forget that it takes two to tango, right?

It takes two to make a baby.

And so for every woman involved in abortion, there's also a man.

And so for every man that's on the in the valley of decision considering choosing life, there's also a man who's on the tail end of a mom who may have chosen abortion and he's now post abortive himself.

So I got involved with that.

Our church got involved.

People in our church started coming out doing sidewalk ministry, people volunteering at the prayer walks.

We ended up discipling a mom who chose life in our church.

And it became really kind of all encompassing as a church that, that sought to live on mission.

Love Life really provided a vehicle that my entire church could get involved.

And eventually in 2020, love life started in 2016.

In 2018, love life expanded into Raleigh and Greensboro, and then in 2019, New York City, whenever, you know, they had that quote unquote Reproductive Health act where they allowed abortion up to birth.

You remember Chuck Schumer and, and Pelosi and all these people lit the Empire State building pink and they all celebrated that babies could be aborted up to, to death.

What we expanded.

Love Life expanded in New York City in that year.

And then in 2020, there was this thing that happened in America called Covid and it was this really weird phenomenon where.

Yeah, what is that?

Covet.

Yeah, I'll tell you about it.

It's a strange thing where people wore these, these ineffective cloths on their face and they were mandated to stay indoors.

And the pastors in our city said, listen, the churches were closed, but abortion.

Clinics were open because.

Oh yeah, 100.

So the pastors in our city said, listen, if abortion is considered essential health care, then the church is going to be the essential solution, offering the hope of the gospel to these moms and these dads and so we had pastors in our city that continue to do the ministry of Love Life and they end up getting arrested.

And someone was recording that video and actually it was a senator in Texas retweeted that video and it had a couple hundred thousand views in like 24 hours or whatever.

And what happened was people in the church were saying, listen, if people can throw bricks through windows of banks and libraries in our city declaring the, you know, injustice that was done through Black lives matter and etc.

Etc.

Then we the church should be able to stand peacefully offering the hope of the gospel and help a church to moms and dads and needs, calling them to save their babies.

And so what that viral moment created was an opportunity, honestly me, for employment.

People all across the nation reached out to us and here in Charlotte and said we want to do love life in our city.

And then because of my relationship with the guys at Love Life, they reached out to me and said, hey, would you consider becoming our director of expansion?

And that was back in 2020.

And we've now grown from then in four cities to launching our 27th city with our three newest cities is Seattle, Washington, San Diego, California and soon to be launching Washington D.C. yeah, I mean.

You guys love life.

By the way, folks, it's lovelife.org if you want to check them out.

They have, they have reached out to over a quarter of a million Christians to mobilize to address the evil of abortion.

They have over 1500 partnering churches, over 7000 babies that, whose lives were probably saved because of the work that they're doing.

And the one I like the most is that they, they, they at least claim over a thousand professions of faith.

Right.

We don't know someone's heart.

But sure.

The fact is, is that, you know how many churches are, are really being active in evangelism and here.

And this is why I've always been part of a crisis pregnancy center or abortion ministry is the idea of taking something that the world praises as good, that we know according to the Bible is evil.

But taking someone who is at a time where they are considering murder as a solution to a problem and justifying it, that's the person.

Take someone in that state and share the gospel with them.

Yeah, that's where you have lives changed.

You know, I, I remember when I was going on the board of directors of Crisis Pregnancy center and they ask, you know, how many babies lives have you saved?

I have no idea because I've shared the gospel with so many.

I have no idea who might have gotten Saved and didn't have sex outside of marriage or kept a baby because they heard the gospel.

But, but something you said, and this is the thing that I think is.

So it's hard for many is to realize that the solution to abortion, yes, it's, it's a legal thing.

Yes.

The politicians are the ones that would, would outlaw it.

It should outlaw it.

It should never have been made legal.

Right, but, and I mean, technically it never was legal.

It was something that just nine men in robes decided, you know, misabuse the privacy laws of the 14th Amendment.

But the, the thing is that the real solution to this horror is the gospel.

That's right.

Because the more people that hear the gospel, the more they're going to know what they're doing is wrong.

The more people that get saved, they're not going to be having sex outside of marriage.

They're not going to be looking at abortion as a, as a solution to what they think is a problem.

And, and this is why I think so many of us need to be not.

And I'm not one of these people that says everyone needs to do this.

Right.

Because that's, that's.

As a pastor, Brian, I'm sure you understand this, but as a pastor, it's like, that's always a frustrating thing is when people get into a ministry, it's like everyone in the church should be doing this.

You know, I had, I had a guy that was like, everyone in the church should be doing prison ministry.

And another person that thought everyone in the church should be, you know, getting involved in, in creation evangelism, and we're the master evangelism.

And, you know.

Yeah.

And it's like everyone's not going to do all of it, but some of us will do some of it.

And as long as we're all doing something in the, in the confines of the church, not don't go outside the church.

But, and, and that's, that's a thing that I think a lot of people think, well, I can't do this.

What would I be able to do?

Love life has some opportunities for people where if they do want to reach out, they, they, they can serve, they can help.

What, what are some things, what's like the mission of love life?

How can people get involved?

What is it you guys do there, man?

Well, I love, I love the way you're talking, brother.

And it's so wise and it's so balanced and, and, and one thing that we do, and it's sort of a trick question, but I'll I'll ask every listener who's listening here is raise your hand if you can't pray.

Right?

If you can't pray.

If you can't.

Okay.

If you cannot pray.

So if you're a Christian, like, like prayer is part of what we do.

God commands us to pray.

So, so it's a trick question, meaning we can all pray, right?

Yeah.

Maybe not everyone's called to be on the sidewalks.

Maybe not everyone's called to mentor that, that mom and dad.

Maybe everyone's not called to give financially, but every single person can pray.

And so I would say that's, that is not just a Christian platitude.

Like, oh, man, you know, missionaries kind of, you know, they're gonna ask you for giving, and they always kind of put their head down low like, we're asking for your prayer.

And then, and then we want you to give.

Like, we want people to give pray, and we want people to serve.

But listen, we really believe in the power of God through prayer.

We, we, like, we actually do.

And, brother, I'm going to confess to you and to all our listeners right now that when I first heard about this ministry, I did not fully believe in the power of prayer.

I didn't.

When I first heard that Love Life was outside the abortion centers getting people to pray, my response was, that's it.

And someone asked me the question, they said, well, don't you believe in the power of God through prayer?

And I, I, I, I meditated and I contemplated on that question.

I say, you know what?

I don't.

Because for me, it's like, what am I doing?

I got to go out proclaim this.

I got to go share this or do that.

And I'm telling you, Love Life has really helped disciple me, and not only the power of prayer, but also fasting.

You know, I come from the, the Baptist world.

We're good at feasting, brother, but we're not good at fasting.

So, so, so everyone can pray.

Everyone can fast.

And actually, if anyone's listening to this and would like to get on a weekly prayer call at every noon, every.

Excuse me, every Wednesday at noon, we have a zoom call, brother.

Happy to have you come on as well.

And we really pray the same points every week.

We pray for moms and dads, we pray for babies.

We pray for all those involved in abortion.

We pray for government leaders, church unity, and really the end to abortion.

And, and we just believe, you know, specific prayers get specific results.

And so everyone can pray.

Everyone can pray.

So, so, yeah, reach out to me, Brian lovelife.org love to get you plugged into our prayer call.

I actually have a prayer newsletter for my expansion efforts.

I would love people to pray for me specifically.

But yeah, if, if you're near one of our 27 cities, there are many ways you can get serve.

You can help at the prayer, walk with setup and tear down.

You can become a sidewalk counselor.

We'll train you how to share the truth in love to help save babies.

You can become a mentor to help disciple a mom or dad.

And if, if you're in a city where love life doesn't exist or if you're in a city where love life exists, we want your church to become a house of refuge church.

A house of refuge church is just really a church saying, hey, instead of running to the abortion center, you can come here like, we're going to help you.

It doesn't mean that person will be saved.

It doesn't mean that person's going to totally understand how to walk with Jesus.

But everybody in the church is going to do their best to help them from, keep them, to keep them from having the abortion.

They're going to throw them a baby shower.

They're going to love that person.

They're going to show them the tangible love of Christ.

They're going to teach them the word of God, and they're going to call them to repentance by proclaiming the gospel.

And so those are some ways there's other, obviously you can give too.

You know, I know you do commercials on your podcast.

I mean, here's a little commercial you can give to my expansion team.

Like, we need help, you know, getting love Life going across the nation.

It costs money to do ministry.

We always say, God doesn't need your money, but we do.

So, yeah, if you, if you want to give to a worthy cause, man, please.

I mean, 7,000 babies saved in the past 10 years.

We always say, we always say that we know of.

These are moms that have given us thumbs up.

They've told us, hey, we're we, we've chosen life.

But we find out many years after the fact, moms will come up to us with a baby in the back seat and say, hey, I want to thank you guys.

I came here three years ago and because you guys were standing here with a sign, I took it as a sign that I wasn't supposed to kill my child.

And here's little so and so in the back seat.

And there's many times we, we heard a story the other day.

It was like a Baby that got saved 10 years ago that we never knew about.

I mean, this is amazing stuff.

Yeah, but, but, but many of these children we do know about, right?

I've got to hold these children.

We've got to talk with them.

One child that got saved from abortion was, was dancing on stage as we were doing a prayer walk, leading worship.

Little baby Nazzy.

It was amazing.

So, yeah, they can, you can give, you can pray, you can serve.

We want to equip you right.

We want to help pastors be equipped.

We want to help pastors speak prophetically, biblically, redemptively, compassionately, intentionally about the issue of life.

And if you notice, Andrew, the way I talk about abortion, it's, it's sort of like we kind of highlight life more than death.

You know, of course abortion's a sin.

It's murder.

It's, it's, it's, it's horrific.

But like, our focus as a ministry primarily is on life.

Yeah, because abortion is a, it's a horrible motivator.

It's a horrible sustainer also as well.

Like, if abortion is your primary motivation for being involved in abortion ministry, man, you're, you're gonna kind of fade away quick or you're going to be angry.

But if Jesus and his life and his love is your primary motivator, man, that'll keep you.

Because this is the ministry of rejection, brother.

We go out there, we may see a hundred moms come to the abortion center and maybe one chooses life.

That's pretty bad ratio.

That's worse than baseball.

You know, baseball, if you hit, if you hit 260, you're a good batter.

In modern day baseball, like we're batting like 10 or 1, you know, I mean, we're batting pretty bad.

But our focus isn't on necessarily the results.

Our focus is primarily on the faithfulness unto our God, who is great.

You know, you, you brought up a point that I hadn't really thought of till you said it so much.

But there is an element where, when, when people go out and they focus on the abortion, they focus on the death, the anger that comes out of that because of the fact that you're seeing people do this horrible thing.

If, if you're not focused on, on God and on life, it ends up being, well, you know, what am I doing?

Like, I got to do more, right?

Or you get angry at what, the actions they're taking.

So I, I, it's a really good point because the motivation, the, the what, why we're doing what we're Doing has a big difference on how we do it and the outcome of it.

And so because there, there's a lot of people who, I've seen who, who are out doing, whether it be abortion ministry or other things, and they start to turn angry.

And I hadn't really thought about that till you said it.

And I was like, you know, I, I do know those types.

And, and when I'd see them, it's, you're right, their focus was on, I'm telling you something and you should change based on what I'm saying, you know, and.

Well, yeah, I'll just share this.

I mean, that was me, you know, like, like.

And let me just be 100 real.

We should be angry about abortion.

Yes.

Like, like we, the Bible says hate.

What's evil, like, is evil.

It's the shedding of innocent blood.

Innocent human beings are being ripped apart limb from limb.

Like there, there's not a lot of things that are worse that I can think of that's going on in 2025, 2026.

We should be angry about it.

But, but the issue is if, if, if the anger is our primary motivation.

Like, dude, I'm not going to want to keep going out there because I don't want to be angry all the time.

Yes, but when Jesus is so, so that what one of the statements we say is that we are not primarily motivated by the sin of abortion.

Abortion, but we are motivated by the love of Christ.

We are not primarily motivated by the sin of abortion, but motivated by the love of Christ.

You know, people might think, you know, just trying to think for people who haven't done abortion ministry, they haven't been out at a, what I refer to as a murder mill.

Right.

I, I don't like to refer to it as abortion because it's, that actually softens it.

It's murder.

But a lot of people have a negative view of it.

They, they see the people who, they either see the Roman Catholics who are doing nothing but playing, praying a rosary, talking to anybody, or they're seeing people who are just yelling and screaming at their, their, you know, death squirts as, as someone heard someone call them that.

You know, they, because of what they've done, if you haven't been out there, a lot of times they will get volunteers that volunteer their time to escort ladies across the people that are doing evangelism or trying to get them to think about what they're doing, give them information.

And so they get people to, you know, I've been at somewhere where these death Courts are, you know, they'll have, like, a big umbrella to, to hide the.

The person as they're walking them in.

They're playing music they're doing.

So.

So you.

So the women can't hear.

And you sit there and you think about that.

And, and sometimes you get people that you see the videos of people are being contentious and yelling at each other.

And so a lot of people, Brian, may think, well, that's.

That's not something I want to do.

I want to be involved in that.

How.

How would this be different than either of those two scenarios?

The.

The Roman Catholics who are doing nothing but playing a rope, praying a rosary, and those that are just yelling and screaming to.

To, you know, calling people names.

Yeah.

I mean, so it's a great question.

And I'm.

I'm telling you, like, I've been doing this for six years, and it took me a couple years of being at Love Life before the.

The light bulb finally went off of what I just shared with you that were primarily motivated by the love of Christ, not primarily by the hatred of abortion.

And it's such a game changer.

And so it looks different, it feels different.

Right.

When you go to an abortion center and, and.

And you're a Christian and you experience people who are angry.

Like, you feel the anger, you know, and like, in general, like, I don't want to keep coming back to that.

Like, that's just.

It's just not the kind of place I want to be.

But when you go to a place and you feel the love of God, like his words being proclaimed, people are praying, people are worshiping.

It's like, man, there's something about that that, like, it kind of changes the atmosphere.

Like, it just feels.

It just feels different.

And one story we had here in Charlotte, we had, there was a prayer walk going on where there was a few hundred people.

When people go to Love Life, they wear these blue prayer walk T shirts, and it's kind of this coral blue, and on front of it says, we love life.

And the abortion center manager in Charlotte, her name was Kawana, and she ended up quitting.

She ended up leaving the industry.

Let me, Let me back up a little bit before I get to why she left, but basically, her.

Her niece came to the abortion center for an abortion, and one of our sidewalk counselors intercepted Kawana's niece and they took her to the mobile ultrasound unit.

She chose life.

She ends up professing faith in Christ.

She gets a baby shower thrown for her in the church.

This church throws her.

This Massive baby shower, brother.

I'm talking about, like.

Like an obscene amount of gifts.

It was like, I mean, they rolled out the red carpet gifts, gifts from wall to wall.

And guess who shows up at the baby shower?

Her aunt Kawana, who is the abortion center manager.

And she goes to this church and she sees her niece being showered with love.

And she's like, who are these people?

Who are these people throw in the shower?

And her niece tells her, these are the people that stand outside your abortion center.

Oh, these are the people that are.

That you're.

That you're flipping off every day kind of thing.

And so what does Kawana do?

When Kawana goes back to work, girls would come into the.

The waiting room, and some girls are on the fence, you know, like, crying.

And Kawana would start pointing the girls out to us saying, hey, you need to go talk to those people.

They'll help you.

And so eventually, after a couple months of doing that, during one of our prayer walks, she walks out and leaves and quits her job at.

During the prayer walk.

And she said, one of the reasons why.

She said, I looked out the window and I saw what looked like.

It looked like heaven.

She said, it looked like heaven invaded the sidewalk.

Okay, Right.

These blue shirts, these people out there singing, you know, good Christian hymns and Christian songs and anyways, that it just looks different.

Right?

And that.

I'm just telling you, that's not my strategy, Andrew.

Like, I'm not that guy.

Like, I'm the guy out there who was probably the guy you described earlier.

A little angry, you know, sometimes getting in the flesh a little bit because, you know, I hate abortion.

And so we just try to create an environment where people can come to.

And then from there, we.

We do want to raise up people to stand out there and proclaim truth.

And we do want people to preach the gospel.

We do want people to offer resources to moms and dads.

And so we offer that training.

But.

But that's not all we do.

Right?

And so what happens is a lot of.

A lot of the church will misrepresent our sidewalk counselors.

Like, oh, those people, just a bunch of angry guys out there yelling, you know, and then when they get out there, they see, like, hey, someone needs to be out there heralding the message.

Like, it's good for there to be a herald, but.

But the herald needs to be doing it in love.

Yeah.

So I don't.

Answered your question.

That was a long answer.

No, but it's good because there is.

There is the reality that a Lot of people have to realize that there's other ways of doing this.

I mean, you mentioned even just people that go and pray.

When I used to do open air, I. I had people.

My bride would be one that didn't like talking to people, didn't like handing out tracks, was nervous with it, and they would just come, maybe hold a video camera so that if anyone accused me of saying something, we had video evidence.

Right.

The camera would be on me.

So we don't have, you know, we're not trying to do it for YouTube clicks or anything.

And I. I just remember is once it was just my bride and I, we're out on the boardwalk and she's just.

She's just holding the camera.

She's got a bunch of tracks in her hand, in case anyone asks.

And as I'm just standing up there doing open air, she has no intention of talking to anybody, but I'm watching.

Over the course of the night, she had like a dozen or so people that just kept walking up to her.

What are you guys doing out here?

And, you know, she just like, we're sharing the gospel.

Here, take one of these.

And then, you know, and sometimes she'd get into a conversation, but no intention of doing it, but it.

It made it easier for her because she wasn't there to.

She wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna have to go out there and get all nervous about sharing it.

You know, sometimes you just go out, pray, be there to help set up and just that they see, oh, there's a number of people here who are caring for me as these women come in.

It.

It just.

It helps with simple things like that.

So I'm saying that to say, I think you'd agree with me, Brian.

Everyone doesn't have to be this bold person who's gonna stand out there and, you know, fight for trying to, you know, to show how, you know, they're right and others are wrong and.

And things like that.

Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you this.

One of the beautiful things on that note is when you.

When you lower the bar, right?

So if someone says, hey, just come to this prayer walk.

What are we going to do there?

We're going to peacefully pray and worship.

We're not even going to protest people.

You're not even allowed to, like, say anything if you come right now.

Some guys are like, I want to say something, right?

That was me.

But it's like, no, okay, I'm going to be a part.

I'm going to submit myself to this thing.

And I go to this thing and it's this, this thing where anyone can come to.

And then from that, we tell people at the prayer walk after they've experienced standing outside of the abortion center, experiencing, watching men and women walk into the abortion center, pregnant, come out without their child.

What happens is the heart of God gets transferred to them.

It's like basically taking them to a local mission, a mission field.

You know, like, I never went to Haiti, but I had a friend, Andrew, who went to Haiti.

He watched kids roll up mud pies and sprinkle like protein on top and eat the mud.

And he'll tell you that story with tears in his eyes, right?

I can't.

I don't know that story.

I've never been there.

But when we bring people from the ethereal, people say, well, we know abortion's wrong and we, we vote every four years for the most pro life person, whatever.

When we take them out of that mindset to the actual place where it happens, all of a sudden their heart gets activated.

And so then all of a sudden you have these people who never thought they could be bold.

You never told them, hey, we're going to ask you to come out here and hold a sign or we're going to ask you to come out here and preach.

We're just asking you to show up and pray.

We're just asking you to show up in worship.

And then after that, we say, we don't want the prayer walk to be the end of your journey, but the beginning.

How is God calling you?

Get involved, dude.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, which, by the way, has the largest abortion center, I believe, in the United states, they do 80, somewhere from 80 to 100 abortions six days a week.

But we have teams out there in the morning and afternoon all six days.

These are homeschool moms.

These are people who retired.

These are real estate agents.

And like the primary, like, all them came through a prayer walk.

Like, these are people who would have never been involved in sidewalk ministry, but they came to a place, they felt it, they experienced it, and then God called him into the battle.

Yeah, I mean, there's.

Look, there's a lot of different ways you can argue against abortion.

Right.

But one of the ways that has helped me over the years and, and you know, Ray Comfort, you know who he is.

So when he, when he did the film 180 and I would go out, I used to use a similar argument that he made before that.

But once, once he started making that argument, made that film, everyone said, oh, Ray Comfort.

So I didn't want to, I didn't want people just writing me off right away just because Ray did that.

Right.

And so I, I was reading a book on John Brown.

If you know anything about who John Brown is, John Brown is, is an abolitionist and wanted to end slavery.

I don't approve of his methods.

I mean, he kidnapped.

Was it.

George Washington's great, great grandson did a lot of violent things in the name of Christ to, you know, so his, his, his end goals were, were good.

Ending slavery.

The way he went about it, maybe not.

I remember reading it and I started to the realization hit me that what is the argument for slavery?

Because if you think about slavery, slavery is not always bad.

I mean, if you ever read the book 12 Years a Slave, a guy who is a free man from New York, but he went down playing music in D.C. got kidnapped and sold as a slave.

And even though he was technically a free man, they renamed him and just beat him until he learned not to say anything and didn't trust anybody.

And it was many years.

For 12 years, he, he, you know, he was a slave.

And he even says in his book, if his first master, who seems to have been a Christian man, he said if, if that's all he knew is slavery, he wouldn't have thought it so bad because he, he lived well, he was taken care of.

And so.

But what is the argument ultimately about slavery?

Well, it's wrong to say you own another human being.

Right.

That's the core argument against slavery.

And so many people are very much against slavery.

However, if we think about abortion, what is the abortion argument?

The abortion argument is an ownership issue.

It's the issue of saying I own another human being.

There's no difference between this is my property and this is my body.

The difference ultimately is that successful slaver slavery is years of, of producing labor, where successful abortion is the death of the person you claim is not human.

Just like slavery, they, they, they dehumanize the, the individual and then they're not human and then claim ownership.

This is what abortion is.

It is, it is the claim of an, of ownership.

In fact, let me, I got a clip.

Let me see if I can find this quickly.

But, you know, I was at debate.

David Smalley was debating Matt Slick.

They were.

The whole issue of the debate was the issue of morality.

And David Smalley's whole argument was that the Bible is wrong because it talks about slavery.

The slavery that's in the Bible is not the African slave trade.

Yeah, I don't hear anybody complain about The Muslim slave trade which still exists today.

Yeah, Muslims have, is a, has been a much larger slave trade than any other, you know, that we have.

And by the way, the African slave trade was Africans who were kid doing the kidnapping.

But yeah, I say this to say when David Smalley, because we talked to him ahead of time.

I had met, we had met all of us and we talked and he knew my argument.

So I asked him this question and, and just listened to his response because he didn't want to answer.

Mr. Smalley, do you believe that abortion is moral?

Oh, boy.

I'm glad I'm debating him instead of you.

The reason he said that is.

And there's a whole table of atheists that were like, oh.

Because the reason he said that is he knew that he had just been saying that the issue of slavery is a moral issue and it's wrong.

Even though Matt's like, but where do you get without God?

How do you say it's wrong?

Where's your standard?

Yeah, but see, now he realized because we had talked ahead of time, he knew exactly where I was going to go with this.

If slavery is moral and wrong, if he says abortion is moral, now all of a sudden he just denied what he, he would have to now say that he's against abortion if he's going to be consistent.

Yeah, right.

And, and this is the thing.

Maybe some folks could see this is an issue.

It, it, what was it that ended slavery?

Well, it really was the Christian message both in England and in America.

Some people don't even know that, you know, when the, when the founding of our country.

I don't know, Brian, if you even know this, but do you know that, you know, men like Thomas Jefferson wanted to free their slaves?

They were against slavery.

Many of our founding fathers were against slavery.

When this country was first founded, and there were states like Virginia that actually outlawed people from freeing their slaves.

They couldn't free them wholesale because people started doing that and they just freed their slaves and started having them, you know, paying them to work for them.

And some of the southern states actually outlawed that.

Right.

Well, we have a similar thing.

We need to present the gospel to this problem.

I, I, I consider abortion a horror.

Yeah, you're, you're taking.

Tens of thousands of women and telling them that a child is a problem, that it needs a fix or a solution, and that that solution is to kill their child.

I mean, it's, it's something where we think about what that put, the trauma that puts a mother through.

Oh, yeah.

And here love Life.

And again, you can go to lovelife.org to get involved with it, but here you guys are providing a way.

You take a person who's gone through that, as you said, with your testimony, right.

Who's gone through something like this, and you're providing resources for them.

So it's not.

You know, I'm pointing this out because a lot of people think abortion ministry is just about saving a baby.

Is that.

Is that the call at Love Life?

Are you just about the baby or are you caring for the mother as well and the father?

Well, we are taking it a step further.

We.

We care more about the Great Commission and the Great Commandment than we do on any humanitarian issue.

Right?

So there.

Just so you know, you.

You may be unaware of this, you may not.

You may know, some of your listeners might not.

There's groups out there that are atheistics, Atheistic, you know, vegan communists for life.

Like, they're consistent in their veganism, right?

They don't want to kill innocent animals.

So they say, well, we need to protect babies.

So they're humanitarian.

But we're Great Commission focused.

We're about making disciples.

So for us, and I've actually seen this play out before, there was a mom in Charlotte, North Carolina, like, so.

So every time a mom chooses life and we have the opportunity to talk to her, Andrew, we.

We offer her the option to have a mentor, someone who's in the church, who's been trained, who's standing by to walk with her and him, hopefully, right.

The father as well.

Someone who's standing by to walk with them.

Now it's up to them whether they take that or not.

We can't force people into a relationship.

Right?

But I saw in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a mom, it was pretty dramatic where she chose life only to come back a year later with the baby in her back seat, pregnant and ready to kill the child in her womb because her heart didn't change, right?

So unless we.

Unless our ministry is founded on the gospel, what is it founded on?

We're not in this to say babies.

By God's grace, brother, like you shared earlier, there's 7,000 babies that we know that were saved.

That's amazing.

I mean, you think about 7,000 people, 7,000 innocent human beings who were scheduled to die, literally, literally, that were intercepted at the abortion center.

This is phenomenal work.

But our goal isn't just to save babies.

We're trying to help fulfill the Great Commission to make disciples.

The only way you can make disciples is by proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, teaching them to obey all that Jesus has commanded.

So yes, to answer your question, we are into discipling the moms, dads and the babies.

Yeah.

And in the church.

Also in the church.

So just to make a distinction for any listeners, we are an evangelical ministry.

We, we, we are broad in that we will partner with Baptists and Presbyterians, non denomination Pentecostals.

They must affirm the, you know, the things like the Nicene Creed.

They must affirm the, the, the, the standard, you know, orthodoxy.

Right.

That Jesus Christ is the only way, the Bible is inerrant, that you know, God the Father, Son and Spirit, the Trinity.

Right.

The virgin birth, like all the, all the normal things which you know, it's funny, as long as I've been doing this ministry I found there's a lot of churches that actually don't believe that.

So we don't partner with churches outside of orthodox Christianity and we don't partner with Catholic churches.

We don't partner with Mormons.

We don't partner with any churches outside of those.

Not because, you know, we don't love those people.

We love all those people.

But because we're focused on the Great Commission.

If, if moms and dads are going to choose life and get plugged into churches, we want to make sure they're churches that proclaim the word of God faithfully.

Amen.

So let folks know, Brian.

They want to maybe start a chapter.

They want to get involved.

How can folks get involved with love life?

Yeah, definitely.

Like Andrew said.

Check out the website Love Life L O V E L I F E dot O R G. You got to be careful sometimes when you're googling love life.

Just a little word of warning to your, your viewers and listeners out there.

So make sure you go to lovelife.org a lot of information on that page where our locations are different ways you can connect.

Please feel free to reach out to me, it's Brian B R I a n@lovelife.org I'd be happy to give you sort of any information that can help you get onboarded.

It's a lot of work to start a chapter primarily if you, if you want to start a chapter, it's about as much work as it is to plant a church.

So it's, and it's similar kind of work actually as well.

But yeah, we're a ministry that exists to the church, for the church.

We're not a ministry that exists outside of the church.

You know, we're not a parachurch ministry where we're kind of like we need the church to give us money so we can go do the thing that we're supposed to do.

It's actually the opposite.

We're a ministry that exists for the church.

Like, we want to see pastors excel.

We want to see churches get activated.

We want to see people get healing.

You know, one of the statistics that's crazy is that one in three people, women and men in the local church, have an experience in their past with abortion.

So if that's you, I want to encourage you.

Reach out to me.

Go to lovelife.org Restored Life.

It's an anonymous way that you can get plugged in and start to receive healing for your past abortion.

And yeah, if you want to learn about sidewalks, you want to become a donor, any of that stuff, man, reach out to me.

I would love to onboard you and get you plugged in.

So go check out lovelife.org see what's going on.

See how you might be able to help.

At least check it out.

Even if you're like, hey, that's not for me.

Check it out like Brian did here.

Maybe, just maybe, Lord will do something on your heart.

Just a thought.

And with that, folks, that's a wrap.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry.

For more content or to request a.

Speaker or seminar to your church, go to striving for eternity dot org.