#450 (2/23) "Are Your Church's Youth, Are YOU Ready to "Stand for Life"

 CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR PASTOR SAEED'S RELEASE, - News as of 2/22 from the American Center for Law and Justice on American Pastor Saeed (who just started an 8 year sentence for helping the underground churches in Iran) - "As Iran continues to abuse imprisoned American Pastor Saeed Abedini, its goal is now clear -- force Pastor Saeed to deny Christ.We've obtained a new letter from Pastor Saeed detailing his continued mistreatment in the deadly Evin Prison, including Iran's efforts to force him to convert from Christianity back to Islam. Pastor Saeed writes: "[A]fter all of these pressures, after all of the nails they have pressed against my hands and 'feet, they are only waiting for one thing…for me to deny Christ.' Yet he is standing strong, declaring '"they will never get this from me.' Now is the time to redouble our efforts to save this courageous pastor, this U.S. citizen, from the darkness of an Iranian prison.Help us get to 300,000 signatures before our attorneys meet with U.N. Human Rights officials on March 5. Help us deliver a loud and clear message to the U.N.".(Read of the letter he has written from prison at http://aclj.org/iran/pastor-saeed-writes-psychological-warfare-physical-violence-death-threats-iranian-prison)  Sign the petition and read these new updates on the work of the ACLJ. They need 90,000 more signatures in less than 20 days to present this petition to the U.N. Sign and share it with your friends today. If you have not already, please join over 270,000 (was recently130,000) who have SIGNed THE PETITION for Pastor Saeed's release and tell your friends about it.  http://aclj.org/iran/save-american-pastor-from-iranian-prison-sentence 

The stars come out for Pastor Saeed - by Gina Dalfonzo, February 18, 2013; http://aclj.org/Tags/%23SaveSaeed 

PLEASE PRAY: "Libya Arrests Suspected Christian Missionaries ," February 16, 2013; "Four foreigners were arrested in Libya on suspicion of distributing books about Christianity and proselytizing, a Libyan police spokesman said on Saturday. Spreading Christianity is a crime in the predominantly Muslim North African county. The four were arrested in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday and are under investigation for printing and distributing books that proselytize Christianity. Police said they found 45,000 books in their possession and that another 25,000 have already been distributed. The suspects are from South Africa, Egypt, South Korea, and one holds both Swedish and U.S. Nationality. The U.S. Embassy in Libya has declined comment. "(Sources: CBS News, USA Today, Associated Press) [So much for the so-called "Arab Spring." - Stan]

  As the Lord leads, PLEASE PRAY:  ·   For the timely release of the arrested missionaries. ·   For all who share God’s loving salvation in Muslim countries.  

DECLARE YOUR SUPPORT FOR TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE. Please SIGN THE PETITION BELOW to declare your support for the traditional definition of marriage and in support of an amicus brief to go to the Supreme Court as it considers the redefinition of marriage on March 26th. Their decision on whether to uphold the Definition of Marriage Act passed by Congress in 1996 could be as piviotal to marriage in America as Roe v. Wade was to the definition of the sancity of human life in America. MOST IMPORTANTLY, please keep the upcoming Supreme Court review of this case and their final decision in your PRAYERS.

https://www.truthinaction.org/index.php/the-affirmation-of-marriage/?utm_source=Truth+In+Action+News+List&utm_campaign=9d8fb2dcc6-DOMA+%231+AB+TEST+Length&utm_medium=email

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Standing for Life - Is Your Student Ready? by: John Stonestreet|Breakpoint.org,  February 22, 2013   http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/breakpoint-commentaries-archive/entry/13/21554

You’re chatting with a group of friends or coworkers around the water cooler, over lunch, or in line to pick up the kids from school. The conversation meanders through politics and social issues, when suddenly the topic of abortion comes up. It only takes a moment for everyone to realize that you’re a pro-lifer. Your friends begin peppering you with questions and objections, some of which you’ve heard before, some of which you haven’t:

“How can you equate an embryo to a baby, if it has no higher brain function?” “What about pregnancies resulting from rape or incest?” “I’m personally against abortion, but I wouldn’t tell others what to do.” “Shouldn’t it be a choice between a woman and her doctor?” “Who are you to impose your morality on everyone else?” What would you say to answer these questions and show your friends why abortion is wrong, in less than five minutes?

Now wait—before you answer, let’s make things more interesting: imagine that instead of you facing these questions, it’s your college-age son or daughter, and imagine that instead of a group of friends, they’re staring down a pro-abortion professor in front of a classroom of their peers. Would they be up to the challenge? Believe it or not, it isn’t as daunting as it sounds. There’s a powerful and practical new resource designed to prepare college-bound students for this moment, and others like it.

Renowned pro-life apologists and authors John Ensor and Scott Klusendorf have teamed up to write what I think could be the coup de grâce for abortion among millennials. It’s called “Stand for Life: A Student’s Guide for Making the Case and Saving Lives,” and it’s packed with tools to cut through the relativist and utilitarian mythology that prop up the pro-abortion argument. It’s full of simple, powerful and usable answers to some of the toughest questions friends or professors will throw at your son or daughter.

For example, how do you answer someone who argues that fetuses in the first trimester clearly aren’t human yet, and are therefore okay to abort? Simple! You start with the only four features which make any fetus different than you or me: size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency. As Ensor and Klusendorf show, none of these differences are morally relevant to the question of a fetus’ humanity.

Okay, what if someone tells you that abortion is a personal choice, and that women have a right not to have other people’s morality imposed on their private decisions? Well, you “trot out the toddler” as the book says. No one would ever make the same argument in favor of killing toddlers. By showing the inconsistency, you can demonstrate that while personal choice is important, no one has the right to choose to take innocent human life.

And that, according to Ensor and Klusendorf, is how pro-lifers can win not just debates, but minds—by focusing with laser beam intensity on the only question that really matters: What is the unborn? Science, of course, overwhelmingly answers this question for us. The unborn child is a human being.

This handbook is not only designed to convince students to believe in the dignity of unborn life, but also how to persuade others, with grace and winsomeness. And if you tune in to BreakPoint this Week this weekend, you can hear Scott and John flesh out these arguments even more.

Students are one of the most at-risk groups for abortion. Knowing how to make the case on campus could make the difference between life and death for a child you’ll never meet. Come to BreakPoint.org, click on this commentary to get your copy of “Stand for Life” and to listen to my interview with the authors on BreakPoint this Week. Read the book, pass it to a student, and pray this generation will be the last to know legalized abortion in America. [enphasis mine]