In Not Of: Abortion

This message opens LifeFamily’s In Not Of series from the Book of Daniel. The congregation chose the hard subjects: sexuality, identity, politics, and abortion. Randy is clear about the lens. This is not a political sermon. It is a biblical one. You do not have to believe to belong. Disagreement is allowed. Attendance is still welcome.

Daniel was 17 when Babylon tore him from home, renamed him, and tried to remake him. The goal of that three-year training was not information. It was indoctrination—to turn people of God into people who live like Babylonians. Randy names three kinds of people in the story: people of Babylon, people of God living in Babylon, and people of God who live like Babylonians. The spirit of Babylon still works the same way: separate you from the family of faith, steep you in another set of values, then attack healthy sexuality and the lives of the smallest among us.

From there he turns to the gift of life. Every person conceived bears the Imago Dei—the stamp of God. Not at birth. At conception. The body catches up to a soul already given, already known, already appointed. That is why Randy says the unborn child is not a clump of tissue and not an extension of the mother. Science and faith are not enemies. Science tells you what happened. Faith tells you why. Ultrasound has made the miracle visible. Genetics shows a complete human being with 46 chromosomes, a destiny, and a soul.

He meets common objections without sneering. “My body, my choice” names the mother’s autonomy; it does not erase the child’s. The baby has no vote. He speaks with sorrow about rape, incest, and medical emergency, and he refuses to wave those stories away as a statistic. An ectopic pregnancy that cannot sustain life is not the heart of God, and no one should carry shame for that. He thanks mothers. He calls men to grow up and stand beside the life they help bring into the world. And he looks at the women in the room who have had an abortion—statistically about one in three—and says: you are safe here. You are loved here. Church has not always been a safe place to tell that story. LifeFamily intends to be.

The church’s posture, he says, is not baby over mother or mother over baby. We are pro-souls. LifeFamily offers to walk with women through unplanned pregnancy, connect them with placement agencies, and—if finances are the reason someone is considering ending a pregnancy—underwrite the medical expenses so that child gets a chance.

There is a place beyond Babylon, Randy says, with no shame, no fear, and no condemnation. Through miscarriage or abortion, you will see those children again. Until then, the call of Daniel still stands: keep your distinctiveness in a culture that wants to rename you, and let the people of God influence Babylon rather than the other way around.

Key Scriptures: Daniel 1; Genesis 1:27; Psalm 139:13–16; Jeremiah 1:5; Ephesians 2:10; Romans 2:15; 1 Timothy 4:1–2.