I was saved by Jesus, but I still had “strongholds,” one of which was my views towards abortion. Here is how my mind was changed.
In 2008, I was saved and ushered into my Father’s Kingdom by accepting Jesus as my Savior, but I didn’t put him as my Lord quite yet in all areas of my life, one of which was my views towards the “women’s right to choose” (aka. abortion).
In this area, as well as others at the time, there was a very big stronghold.
strong·hold /ˈstrôNGˌhōld/ – noun
1. A place that has been fortified so as to protect it against attack.
Similar: fortress, fort, castle, citadel, garrison, keep, tower, hold, donjon, bunker, fastness
2. A place where a particular cause or belief is strongly defended or upheld.
Similar: bastion, center, refuge
This noun is used by Christians to mean an area of thinking (programming) that was a part of your old life before Christ that still carries over into your new life with Jesus. In this instance, my “pro-choice” stronghold was still manned by my thoughts, ever vigilant in defending their garrison in my way of thinking. This castle was well defended and used attacks such as “it’s a woman’s choice,” “it’s not a baby, it’s a fetus,” and “it’s attached to a woman, it’s part of a woman,” and other arguments.
It wasn’t until I had a discussion with a would-be attacker of my citadel that the walls came tumbling down.
I don’t remember how the conversation began, but the subject of abortion came up, and again, I defended my fortress of thinking.
It wasn’t a pro-life plea that broke through the high and thick wall, but reason, which is an aspect of God.
“A fetus is no more part of a woman gaining nutrients through the umbilical cord than a person in a full-body cast is no more part of a hospital, gaining nutrients through machines.
The walls were broken!
For me, when that happened, I began to see the fetus as a separate entity, and more importantly, I began to see the fetus as a person.
And that’s the foundation – the cornerstone of the abortion stronghold isn’t it? It’s how we see a person, which fuels the whole pro-choice argument. When that wall is broken down and we see a person at the moment of conception, the fight becomes something more, especially when the people that realize that a group of cells is a human being still defend the garrison of abortion.
In my case, I had heard the same bit of “reasoning” for decades, that a fetus wasn’t a person until it reached a certain stage of development, but I didn’t listen to basic biology and threw the science out the window. It’s hard, very hard to break down a wall that had been built up for years, even decades of your life. In the area of abortion, I still believed in pro-choice, even after I was saved because I hadn’t “run my programming” past the Master Programmer – God, through His Word (Bible).
It’s one thing to be “saved” by Jesus, but it’s quite another to make Him Lord over all of my life, and, at that time, I had not.
This is how the change happened, and it was a battle for me. I had to tear down the strongholds that warped and twisted my thinking for years with the Word of God that can cast down all arguments and tear down all strongholds (Hebrews 4:12, 2 Corinthians 10:5).
When you see a fetus as a person, even at conception, it became clear to me that this was a person, a child, and my thinking changed.
