State-by-State Abortion Battle, Fire Destroys Church Sanctuary & Making Big Decisions

 According to Americans United for Life, there are currently 25 states with an abortion ban of some sort.

– Prohibition from conception: Alabama; Arizona; Arkansas; Idaho; Indiana; Kentucky; Louisiana; Mississippi; Missouri; North Dakota; Oklahoma; South Dakota; Tennessee; Texas; Utah; West Virginia; Wisconsin; Wyoming.

– Court orders have blocked enforcement at least temporarily for the bans in Arizona, Indiana, Utah and Wyoming.

– Prohibition when a heartbeat can be detected: Florida; Georgia; Iowa; Ohio; South Carolina.

– Prohibition at 12 weeks’ gestation: Nebraska; North Carolina.

All these laws permit exceptions to their bans to protect the life of the mother, and several include various other exceptions, according to SBA Pro-life America.
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The sanctuary of Camp Creek Baptist Church in Taylors, South Carolina is gone — now only a charred shell. A lightning bolt likely ignited the blaze that gutted the building on Sunday, July 2.

But “the church is the people,” interim pastor Joe Hayes Jr. maintains, and the spirit of Camp Creek’s members remains undaunted. They will continue to worship on the northern Greenville County site where the congregation has met since 1885.

“It’s totally devastating,” Hayes told The Courier. “But as sad as it is, I’m telling the people that God’s not through with the church, and we’re going to pull together and get through this.”

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In a piece on Baptist Press, Matt Espenshade offers four tip to help make decisions. He’s a pastor and former FBI agent. He writes;

What you worship – Everyone worships something. So, the most important decision one will ever make is whether to worship Jesus – or to worship something(s) lesser. 

Your conviction to what you say you believe – is your conviction deep enough that you’re willing to speak about it

Consistency in your decision-making process –By God’s grace, we grow through consequences and experiences and thus find greater consistency in decision-making.

C.S. Lewis wrote that “good and evil increase at compound interest. That’s why the little decisions we make every day are of infinite importance.” So, this is why consistency in your process matters. Develop good habits like being in God’s word, gathering data, being patient, asking good questions, and seeking wise counsel.

A willingness to critically analyze your decisions – Maybe the best habit I carried with me from the military and the FBI is the practice of the “after-action review.” It is good to be confident in your decisions and defend your process – but we must be humble enough to admit when we are wrong and grow from our mistakes.  Doing so makes us more dependent on God.