The Spirit of Abortion
by Doug Perry
I've been praying for a single coherent nugget to explain the problem and God showed it to me a few days ago.
It is the VERY ESSENCE and CORE of what God did for us! He sent Jesus to shepherd us and be an example and then God ADOPTED us as joint heirs with Jesus. It is the supreme and ULTIMATE example and pure essence of love to take someone that you KNOW has problems and special needs and sinfulness, that you KNOW will require effort and cost - even the awful sacrifice of your own blood Son - and then elevate this stranger to the status equal to the Son of your womb. Equal to the Morning Star in inheritance and love. Ok, yeah, we all know that, but do you REALLY GET IT?!
One of the things that many of us have been praying for is that a Spirit of Adoption would sweep over the church and the world. God finally just put all the pieces together in my head. This is why we're adopting a kid from China, this is why God had me build a company that brings in people and THEN asks them what they'd like to do here and loves them and refuses to lay them off. That's why I'm mad at the Church Growth Movement and mega churches that don't seem to care.
Do you get it? A Christian company that lays off people that are supposed to be part of the family is ABORTING them! They're expensive or inconvenient or not playing along with our plan. Do you really think Jesus is going to be proud of a Christian business that is INDISTINGUISHABLE from a secular one? If not THIS to differentiate us - then what?
Churches that urge you out because they don't like dealing with you are ABORTING YOU! For all our talk about being against abortion, that's just physical. Those babies are NOT in spiritual, eternal danger. But when we "urge" someone out of our churches, we're potentially aborting their souls! Do you honestly think Jesus is going to say, "Well, you aborted this person out of your church and they grew to hate religion and never prayed to me again, but I understand, it's OK. You know, they WERE kind of weird and smelly and didn't really fit with the rest of us up here." Maybe they asked hard questions, maybe they didn't tithe like we thought they should, maybe they never even got in the door because we made it clear we were better than them. How can you call it anything BUT the Spirit of Abortion?
I think businesses that do family-friendly programs just to improve retention or improve profitability aren't Families anymore, they're ORPHANAGES. They're just warehousing people and trying to keep them efficient and not revolt!
Churches that warehouse as many people as possible to get the subsidy per person that comes, are ORPHANAGES! Of course, they still SAY they're a family and love everyone, but people can sense that at a certain point it changed and now it's really about numbers. Somewhere off in a remote corner they have a Dying Room where they just let the troubled ones anguish and wither. A church that feeds the children pablum to keep them under-nourished and not growing is suppressing them because toddlers are much easier to warehouse than rebellious teenagers! How much love does that show? How much Spirit of Adoption is that?
It's like Xin Guang, the little girl with special needs that we are going to pick up in China (God willing) around Easter (go figure) and for whom God has told us we're to be her "Forever Family." It's like if we just decided she was so cute at three years old that we'd like to keep her like that, so we reduce her meal portions and then get her hooked on coffee and cigarettes to stunt her growth so she'll stay just that size forever. Because we hear teenage girls are too much trouble. What kind of love would that show?! And what of our bio-daughter and the lessons she learns from that? Don't you think Health and Human Services would come and snatch them BOTH away and throw us in jail?! Well, that's what's about to happen to the churches acting that way! And Christian businesses are not going to be exempt either.
That's why house churches work - if they can keep their focus. They're small enough and intimate enough to maintain that Spirit. That's why MILLIONS of us have left the church entirely, because we sense that that Spirit of Adoption is GONE and we don't know where to find it except in communion with God directly! By it's nature it's TREMENDOUSLY difficult for a large autocratic organism to maintain a personal intimate Spirit of Adoption. This sweet, wonderful Spirit of Unconditional Love is the ultimate enemy of Satan, because he was offered it by God and rejected it and hates anyone who accepts it or encourages it or models it! Get it? That's IT! That's the core of it all!
Thanks be for the Word of the Lord and for His willingness to come show us what true LOVE means!! Thanks be to God for being the Spirit of Adoption without which we would be lost forever!! Praise God!! Thanks be to God for giving us a chance to be living examples of His love for us.
Test your hearts. Test your family. Test your church. Test your business. Is the Spirit of Adoption foremost? It is UNDENIABLY the ROOT of LOVE and your best chance to manifestly express through your lives that you ARE Christian and you DO understand your responsibilities as Adopted Children of God. The ultimate sign to Satan that you are DANGEROUS to his cause is the evidence in your life of this Spirit of Adoption and a willingness to sacrifice ANYTHING for those entrusted to your family. I want to be at the very top of Satan's hit list. Praise God! What about you?
Hold on tight, folks. When people really GET this, it's all going to start moving FAST! A New Song is coming!
Copyright Doug Perry 2004. Use freely - but without charge and without changes. Link to: www.fellowshipofthemartyrs.com