A message of redemption, restoration, and hope. A call to live in the abundant grace the cross provides, and out of that abundance, to be a instrument who helps set others free. 

<p>A message of redemption, restoration, and hope. A call to live in the abundant grace the cross provides, and out of that abundance, to be a instrument who helps set others free. </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

Antionette Duck

Dianne Wagner

A Redemption Story

The picture you see up there is actually the Vintage Life magazine that Antoinette's mother saw in the waiting room.

If you'll remember, she went and asked them if they would help her with an abortion and she they said no we won't help you with an abortion but please come back and their willingness to help Antoinette's mother made all the difference in that young lady's life and she has been a blessing to me.

His work is still making an impact today and it's actually caused the advocates of abortion to worry.

In 1989, the Conference of the National Abortion Rights League, a gentleman by the name of Harrison Hickman had this to say.

Probably nothing has been as damaging to our cause as the advances in technology, which have allowed pictures of the developing fetus.

Because now people talk about that fetus in much different terms than they did 15 years ago.

They talk about it as a human being, which is not something I have an easy answer to cure.

So before I start tonight and finish my story, I want to share with you some of these remarkable pictures of human being development in the womb.

As we know, conception occurs when the sperm and egg are combined.

The nucleus of each is pressed closely together and the wall between them breaks down.

And when this wall breaks down, the 23 chromosomes from the mother and the 23 chromosomes from the father combine.

And this creates the very first cell of a new human being.

Zygote, a Greek word meaning yoked or joined together.

Well of course I couldn't help but think of the text.

That would certainly apply here, what therefore God has joined together let no man separate.

The Greek word for joined together is also defined as yoked together.

Now this zygote contains 46 unique chromosomes with an entire new genetic blueprint, A new individual.

We may not know it yet, but it's been determined.

Blue eyes, brown eyes, red hair, black hair.

And God knows this person just as well as he knows you and me.

Now once that joining together occurs, there's an explosion of activity that begins.

Chromosomes contain tightly packed, tightly coiled molecules called DNA.

208, 000 nucleotides, the building blocks of this DNA, are being produced every second.

The DNA contains all the instructions needed, nothing added for this single cell embryo to develop into an adult human being.

We can't even wrap our minds around that.

I want to share with you some other pictures.

As Antoinette told you earlier, I've collected some pretty awesome pictures and Bible text to go with them.

As you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

For you formed me in my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works, My soul knows it very well.

Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you people from afar.

From the body of my mother, he named me by name.

Did not he who made me in the womb make them?

Did not the same 1 form us both within our mothers?

He who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace.

You clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews.

You have granted me life and steadfast love and your care has preserved my spirit.

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells within you?

Thus saith the Lord, who made you, who formed you from the womb, and will help you.

But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.

Thus saith the Lord, your Redeemer who formed you from the womb, I am the Lord who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward.

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Well, I want you to know tonight that the Lord, he is God, and that I am his.

I've experienced the Lord's redemptive grace and power in my life, and I know what God means now when He tells us that he can make all things, that which we are victim to, or that which we suffer because of our own foolish decisions.

He can make it all work together for good.

But it took me a long time to experience this.

And I don't want anyone else waiting that long.

He showed me His redemptive love and power, and then He gave me a message.

Now I've come to the conclusion from my own personal experience that The real problem why more people have not experienced the glory of God's redemptive grace is simply a weak personal experience.

Now we can answer questions about God until we're blue in the face.

But until we understand and experience and learn how to apply the Lord's love for us personally, we're really missing out on who God is.

The very God who created us, had that plan of salvation in place long before we needed it, sees those secret sins we try to hide or excuse, watched as his son's beard was being plucked out, his face spit at, his body stripped naked, that same God loves you and me.

That same God has the power to heal and restore the broken post-abortive woman and man.

A woman who has taken the most innocent of the life of the most innocent of us all, her own baby.

But until she experiences this great love for herself, it will only be an answer in a workbook, not a life-changing, heartbreaking, personal, miraculous moment of realizing, once and for all, that it was for her sin that Jesus hung on that cross.

Now I don't think it's humanly possible to grasp this kind of love.

It's foreign to us, but when we spend time with him and we cover his acts of love throughout the Bible and we get to know a little bit more about him and who he is, our hearts will start to break with gratitude.

And like Mary, we're going to fall at his feet and we will want to wash them with our tears of gratitude.

Now remember, it's your own personal relationship with Jesus that you are pursuing.

Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.

Therefore, with a loving kindness have I drawn thee.

As you study, you'll realize that it's actually you being pursued, and it's going to melt your heart.

I will return her vineyards to her and transform her valley of trouble into a gateway of hope.

She will give herself to me there as she did long ago when she was young, when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt.

I gave my heart to Jesus when I was 15 years old, and I wanted nothing more than to live for him.

Now I'd already been baptized, but this is the day that I hold significant.

And I realize now that Jesus was jealous for me.

I belonged to him and he wanted me to allow him to provide for all my needs.

Throughout my life he never left me, never forsook me.

He was always completely committed to me.

And though I sought wisdom from the world to take care of my problems and then suffered the alienation that comes from sin.

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A Redemption Story

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