The Hamilton Corner featuring Alex McFarland and Karen N Ellison on Abortion

Darkness is not an affirmative force.

It simply reoccupies the space vacated by the light. This is the Hamilton Corner on American Family Radio. It should be uncomfortable for a believer to live as a hypocrite. Delivery people out of the bondage of mainstream media and the philosophies of this world. God has called you and me to be his ambassadors, even in this dark moment. Let's not miss our moment. And now, the Hamilton Corner. Welcome to this edition of the Hamilton Corner on the American Family Radio Network. My name is Alex McFarland. Very, very honored to be with you this evening, and very humbled and honored to be sitting in for my friend Abe Hamilton, who is doing some work for AFA. He is on the road.

He's actually in India with India Partners. That's a ministry that we do a lot with throughout the year. I welcome you to the program. I feel it's a great honor to be sitting in for Abe tonight. I want to give the number, because later on in the show we'll get to some live calls. There's a lot in the news. Plus, we have a very exciting friend of the ministry, a guest that I want to introduce you to in just a moment.

The number is 888-589-8840. Some of you that recognize my voice, or maybe my name, know me from Exploring the Word, which comes on two hours prior to this show. Exploring the Word is a Bible teaching show that's heard every day on the American Family Radio Network. We just began the book of Genesis today.

On AFR.net, you can hear all of the archive programs of all the shows, from Abe Hamilton, Sandy Rios, Today's Issues, and Exploring the Word. So many great shows, but a couple of things in the news. Of course, everybody's talking about the passing of Kobe Bryant. Very, very tragic. The helicopter accident that took the lives of nine people. Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, and certainly our condolences are with them and everybody touched by that, and that's big in the news. Also, let me just say this. I want to mention somebody that was in the news having passed over the weekend.

Got a very positive write-up in the New York Times, of all things. I know you know this name, folks. Dr. Jack Van Impe. He was a prophecy preacher, and he was on TV.

He was known for his extensive memorization of Scripture. The funny thing, two weeks ago, I sat in for Abe Hamilton. I was working on some show prep and getting some guests together. There was a lot going on in the Middle East, and everybody was asking, Does Iran have nukes?

How many rogue regimes out there in the Middle East, Islamic regimes, actual nations that we interface with, but who's got nuclear capabilities? I thought, you know what? I've interviewed so many people, it's been my privilege to interview everybody you've ever heard of, and a few you haven't. I thought, I'm going to interview Dr. Jack Van Impe, because he's on TV.

He's always about the end of time, Bible prophecy. The funny thing, a man that was really kind of my mentor in theology, a man named Dr. Norm Geisler. Geisler went to be with the Lord last summer, and Geisler was just an amazing apologetics voice. Geisler had gone to college with Jack Van Impe decades ago.

He knew several people who knew him, Dr. Harold Wilmington and different ones at Liberty. So two weeks ago, I email Jack Van Impe Ministries. I go on their website, and I said, Hey, my name is Alex McFarland. I'm on the American Family Radio Network.

I'm a fan. I know who Dr. Van Impe is. I'd like to interview him about Bible prophecy. So I get an email back, and they said, Hey, thanks for your request.

We'll get back to you shortly. And I never heard anything. Well, apparently, Dr. Van Impe took ill, and he went to be with the Lord. And I say that because, you know what? I mean, regardless of where you are on eschatology, premillennial, mid-trib, whatever, you know, from everything I read about him, it was a life well-lived.

He finished well. And 1 John 2.28, folks, 1 John 2.28, 1 John 2 very famously says, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them. And so put away all these things, the world, the flesh, and the devil, and it says, continue in him that when he appears, we may be unashamed before him at his coming. And I was thinking about that verse, 1 John 2.28, to live as a Christian unashamed. Prioritize Jesus, and put the Lord first. And if you've received the gift of salvation, also shoulder the obligation of discipleship. And let's be the Christians that God calls us to be, whether by death or by the rapture. Whenever we see Jesus, we'll meet him confident, unashamed, and as C.S. Lewis said so artfully and beautifully, C.S.

Lewis said, Let us be at our post when the inspection comes. Well, somebody who I believe is doing that, and by the way, I had the privilege of being in the AFA journal, the January issue of the American Family Journal. I wrote an article about morality. Well, another article that's in there is an article by the person that I want you to meet right now. And her name is Karen Ellison, and she's with Deeper Still. And she's coming to us from Knoxville, Tennessee. And she's got an incredible ministry. Karen Ellison is the founder and president of Deeper Still. She was executive director of a pregnancy center in Virginia Beach, a national trainer for Care Net.

And it's a ministry to people that have experienced abortion. And in this month, where we're so much talking about the issue of life and the sanctity of human life, and standing against the holocaust of abortion in our culture, Karen's doing a great work, and I wanted to have her on. So Karen, thanks for holding, and welcome to the AFR Network.

Yeah, thanks so much, Alex. I'm so happy to be here with you today. Well, is Tennessee your home originally? It's not my home originally. I've been here 21 years now, and I love Tennessee. But I did originally grow up in Pennsylvania. But I've lived in Virginia, and I've lived in California.

But we found our home here in Tennessee and love this state. Well, great. And so just by providence, we're both in the same issue of the AFA Journal. And your article there, which I'm sure everybody can find online, what was the gist of the article you wrote for the Journal? Well, I really wanted just to introduce the ministry of Deeper Still and what we do and talk a little bit about my personal abortion story, and then also how, out of my own healing and my own healing journey and all that that entailed, really sought the Lord for what's a deeper way that we can really get to some of those heart issues that people are not going to be able to get to on their own.

They need help and the encouragement to get there. So it really was about a seven-year journey for me of writing this retreat and working with people on it and just trying to see what works to help people go to deeper places of healing. Well, it's a great ministry. And folks, the website, and we're going to get into this, and I'm so honored that Karen would be on the program, GoDeeperStill.org Let me share something, and then I'd like your thoughts on it.

I've, as an evangelist and speaker, been all over the country, 2,000 churches, and Karen, I've done an altar call in hundreds of locations. I wish I could put a number on it, how many people, women and men, have come to the altar weeping in prayer, and they were saved, and they were believers, but they were shouldering a heavy burden of guilt and pain from abortion, and women that were praying for freedom, and then men, too, that maybe decades prior had pressured a woman into having an abortion. In light of that, the people that really do carry behind the smiles, inside they carry a lot of pain, and I've seen this in hundreds of altar calls, what do you have to say about that, especially to the pro-choice people that would say, well, no, there isn't emotional baggage that goes with it, there's no lasting, lingering pain. What do you have to say to that? Yeah, you know, it's kind of easy to throw out a study, you know, they try to throw out a study and make claims that, which they did recently, to make claims that there's really no reason for anyone to regret their abortion, whether that's, I mean, they never talk about men, but they're at least saying for women, but the way they talk about it, they kind of generalize it to the whole population, like, so, if you are out there and you're feeling badly about this, you have regrets, you know, there must be something wrong with you, or you're very much in the minority.

Well, that's just not the truth, and that's just not the case. You know, I've been in the pro-life movement ever since the late 80s, and I have literally talked or ministered to hundreds of women and men, some men in there, too, over the years, and, but let me tell you a few things that are unique, and, like, this study that they just put out there recently does not reflect this. Most of the women that the age category of women and men that are the highest age category that are coming to our retreat are women in their 50s.

And the next age category is 60s, then it goes to 40s, then it goes to 70s, then it goes to 30s. You know, so in that, what that tells me is there's a delayed reaction a lot to your abortion-wounded heart. That's how I like to describe it. It's an abortion-wounded heart, because a lot of times people view abortion as a physical, surgical procedure, or, you know, just kind of passing a blood clot or something like that.

No one talks about how it affects your heart. Abortion is as much not only the taking of a child that was in your womb, but there's a part of your heart that was aborted, and it affects every area of your life. But when you are stuffing that experience down and you're just trying to cope and you're trying to move on in life, you can stuff that thing for years. But it is going to, you know, sooner or later it's going to surface in all kinds of different ways. But interestingly, women in their 50s, I think they're at that place in life where they're being very reflective. They're children, they're kind of empty-nesters at this point. They may be grandparents at this point. And they're really looking back on life and not only like what, you know, if they had to do things differently.

But what are they still carrying? And then I've also noticed the older people get, they start thinking about when they're going to die. And when people start thinking about when they're going to die, they start asking themselves, what do I not want to take to the grave with me? And usually you go to those things that what is that burden on your heart? What's that secret you've never told anybody? It's a skeleton in the family closet.

What is that thing that somehow you know that when you die you don't want to be taking that to the grave with you or you don't want to be meeting your maker with that on your heart and on your conscience? So many of those studies, they, like I believe that one that came out just a couple weeks ago, it really, maybe five years after a woman's had an abortion. Well, in five years, a lot of women and men, you're still in denial and you're still running from your pain and you're still justifying yourself. But you don't even hear your heart.

You don't even hear your own heart. And you know what, I read that study, I remember when it came out, Karen, and I didn't feel like it was representative, at least I as a pastor and an evangelist, I knew it was not representative of people that I've spoken with throughout all 50 states. But the study basically said if you had an abortion and you don't feel any regret, let us hear from you. So it really didn't seem to poll those that legitimately do feel regret and pain. And when you're working hard to try to stuff something or try to justify yourself, if someone asks you a question like that, like, well, how did you feel about it, you're still very much in that place of, well, I feel fine about it. So I'm not even sure why you're asking me this question.

And that can be true of any kind of trauma that you've had, but the thing that is unique about abortion trauma, maybe as opposed to just sexual abuse or other kinds of abuse or trauma, when you're a woman or man who's had an abortion, you're not only were you... and I think everyone has been victimized to some degree or another. Hold that thought, Karen. Forgive me. Hold that thought.

We've got to take a quick break. Folks, you're listening to The Hamilton Corner. Karen Ellison of Go Deeper Steel. We're going to talk about recovering from the pain of an abortion. And so stay tuned. More with Karen Ellison on this edition of The Hamilton Corner on the American Family Radio Network.

Alex McFarland sitting in for Abe. Stay tuned. We're going to talk about this very important subject when we come back after this brief break.

Don't go away. The president defends religious freedom again. I am Matt Staver with Freedom's Call. The Department of HHS is proposing a rule that ensures that religious organizations are treated equally in health care and human service supported programs. The proposed rule would eliminate current regulations enacted by President Obama that discriminate against religious providers of social services. The proposed rule also allows faith-based groups to apply for awards on the same basis as any other organization.

And when HHS selects award recipients, they will not discriminate based on an organization's religious character. President Trump recognizes that Americans of faith play an essential role in providing health care and human services to many vulnerable people and communities. Our founders sacrificed everything so that we have this priceless possession. We must not allow it to be taken away.

Stay informed at Liberty Council's website, LC.org. The loss of a child through an abortion affects the emotional health of families. Feelings of anger, sadness, and regret can be overwhelming.

But there is hope and healing in the aftermath. Call the International Helpline at 866-482-LIVE to talk with someone who has been where you are and healed to help others. Your call is confidential.

866-482-LIVE. And we're on the radio. Brian Fisher here with the Life and Liberty Minute. President Trump is far from perfect, but in one way he can identify with Christ. Both of them subjected to unjust and grossly unfair trials.

Pilot three times announced, I find no guilt in this man. In a similar way, the president is on trial with no evidence that he committed any crime at all. Just as the trial of Jesus was built on manufactured evidence, so the impeachment of the president is based on a twisted and mangled version of his actions. The trial of Mr. Trump is driven by a raw, seething hatred of the president in reaction to his defense of religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and Israel. Jesus said, if they hated me, they will hate you. The president now knows how true that is.

May God cause the truth to come to light, may justice be done, and may this persecution of President Trump draw him closer to God. Catch Brian Fisher on Focal Point weekday afternoons at 1.05 Central on American Family Radio. Shining light into the darkness, this is the Hamilton Corner on American Family Radio. Welcome back to the Hamilton Corner.

Alex McFarland sitting in for Abe Hamilton. We're talking about the issue of life and recovering from the pain of an abortion. Let me just say this before we bring our guests back on.

I'm very honored to have Karen Ellison with us. The Bible says that Jesus Christ loves and forgives. I love Isaiah 1, verse 18. This verse ministered to me when I was a college student. I was going to a Monday night Bible study. I was a church member, but I didn't know the Lord. I had joined the church when I was 13 and was not a believer yet.

I was playing in bands and partying and living the life of an unsafe college student. Isaiah 1.18 said, come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they can be as white as snow.

Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Whoever you are and whatever your past might have involved, know this, that Jesus Christ loves you. There's nothing you've done that causes Him to stop loving you. He does want to come into your life and wash your sins away and not only save your soul, but heal your emotions. Jesus can do that. My guest is helping the world understand that in a great way.

The website is GoDeeperStillKaren Ellison. Welcome back to the program, Karen. I want to thank you for taking some time to be with us. When you read a verse like that, like, your sins may have been like scarlet, but Christ will wash them white as snow, what does a verse like that say to you as a person in ministry helping hurting people?

Mm-hmm. Well, that is an awesome verse. And what a gift. What a gift that our Father God has given us that we can be white as snow, because when you have an abortion-wounded heart, one of the things, if you're being honest with yourself, honest with your own heart, one of the things that you're really aware is that you are carrying blood on your hands. And what is strong enough to take that blood stain off your hands, off your heart, and off your mind, off of how you see yourself.

You know, one of the things I say about... Only the blood of Jesus. One of the things I say about how abortion affected me, I felt like it actually seized my identity. In other words, it became for me not just abortion was something I did, but it became who I am. Like, I couldn't separate myself from this, not just this sin, but this whole kind of... It kind of became like a stamp on me that I am a woman who's had an abortion, and that is part of my identity now. And when it gets to that place woven into your soul in that kind of a way, then you, the enemy, has so much access to your mind and how to accuse you, or how you just kind of walk around expecting judgment.

And so these are all the different ways it gets tangled into all the areas of your life. And really, it's only the blood of Jesus that is able to wash those stains from you. And when you talked earlier about the love of God, you know, I think our retreat that we do is so beautiful on every level.

We're very intentional about how we do everything in our retreat. And I will say that the people that go through our retreat, even though they were touched and healed in all kinds of different ways, the one consistent thing that people say is that they have never felt the love of God like they felt it that weekend. So it's really the love of God that heals us, isn't it? I mean, we do need to receive forgiveness, we need to forgive others and all that. But really, when we encounter the love of God, the love that Jesus Christ and Father God has for us, there's nothing like that.

There's nothing that heals like the love of God. Describe one of your retreats. Where do they take place?

What's the structure of them, and what would people expect to experience one of these? Well, you know, let me say this. On the front end, our deeper still network, we are training other groups of people to do these retreats. So right now, we have about 15 chapters in the United States, and there are different levels of development. So someone can look on our website and find out a city where these... You know, if we have our chapter in that city or that state or that city, that's one way to find out about this. You know, here in our retreats are free of charge.

So we're all a ministry, we're all nonprofits, we raise funds to help offer our services free of charge. Because one of the things I realized early on is that people... There's certain obstacles that will stop people from pursuing their healing. And one obstacle is, if anything costs money to do it, they feel like, even if they have the money, they feel like, I really shouldn't invest it in, you know, in themselves, that somehow that feels selfish. So we thought, well, let's take away that obstacle.

All right? We're going to take away that obstacle. This is free of charge.

You can come. And then the other thing that the Lord spoke to us about was, He said, you know, people, they don't understand that my grace, even though my grace came at a great cost, my grace is free to them. Like, He wants them to know that you can't buy His love, you can't buy healing in that sense. Like, just as grace was free, you know, freely you've given, I mean, it receives and freely you give. And so it was God's idea to make these free of charge, because He doesn't want His people to have any obstacles to say yes to this. But one of the things that we, you know... First of all, in our retreat, the atmosphere is very important.

Like, if you're going to invite someone to your house, you know, or you want them to have a very homey experience. So, you know, God's presence and His peace is so important. So even though people are coming and they're scared to death and they don't know you and they don't know what's about to happen, you know, but when they can walk in the doors and they feel the peace of God, like that's the first thing they feel, and you have just a bunch of people that are accommodating you and showing you hospitality in the most beautiful way, and then we're creating an environment where everyone's on a kind of equal playing field, so to speak. So we have a lot of time of just establishing that this is a safe place, establishing that this is a confidential place, and that we're going to be praying, we have people praying over us all the time, and then we're going to dig into some hard issues. It's kind of like we're making it as safe and as comfortable and as beautiful as it could possibly be for you to face some really tough issues in your life.

Where do these retreats take place? Another question I've got is what about shame? Do people almost feel like the guilt they carry is something they just have to and it's just for having participated in an abortion, that's just part of what the outcome is, and to face it square on and try to get healing and move on, that they feel too much shame to start that process?

Yes. I can tell you that everybody that comes to our retreat, in one form or another, they're still carrying shame. And this is shame now that's almost self-imposed on them, because even if they've received the forgiveness of God, and like most Christians that come to our retreat, they all will say, I know I'm forgiven. So people kind of register with, okay, I know what forgiveness means, I absolutely forgive me, he forgives me. But it's amazing to me how much the way that people practically live that out is they don't necessarily feel that it's really totally true. They kind of feel like God's sickle. Like when they're behaving and they're doing good, then God's forgiveness sticks. If they're stumbling or falling or not doing really well, then they feel like God has withdrawn his forgiveness.

And when you kind of, first of all, those are lies, and when you start kind of offering out that, it's like you open the door to more shame to come upon you. So everyone comes with some level of shame, and I'll give you an example of one of our men participants. His name is Jason, and when he came to our retreat, he wore sunglasses, which is not that unusual when you're driving somewhere and the sun's out and all that. So we didn't think anything about it at first. But after we kind of got him settled in and we started our first group session, we were all together, we're inside, he still had his sunglasses on.

And we're like, well, that's a little unusual, but maybe, you know, we don't say anything to him. And the more the retreat went on, he still had his sunglasses on, until we reached a point in the retreat and in all the spiritual exercises we take them through, where the Lord broke through to some place in his heart where that shame was broken off of him. And it was after that time that he took his sunglasses off.

And I think it was unconscious to begin with. I don't even think he really realized it. But then we said something to him like, you know, we're like, there's Jason's eyes. And we were kind of, you know, just kind of kidding with him a little bit.

And then he just has this big smile, and he goes, I'm not afraid to look in your eyes now. And so that's just one way that shame manifests. And we can be walking in shame and not even know that that's what we're carrying. But God knows that, and he knows how to drill down until that lie is going to be exposed. And then he has this ministry team that's going to minister to that and help you to renounce that and get that off of your life.

For those just tuning in, we're talking with Karen Ellison of Deeper Still. And if you are suffering from the pain of an abortion or you participated in encouraging somebody to have one, I love this slogan on your website, Freeing the Abortion-Wounded Heart. If a church or people in a community wanted to host one of these retreats or maybe somebody listening wants to find one and go to one of the retreats at one of your chapters, what are the steps to doing that? The steps are, go to our website, and on the front page there's a bar, like a menu bar, and one will say, Retreat. Just click on Retreat, and then that will open up the different states and cities.

So we usually have, there's usually like a spring retreat, there's a few summer retreats, and fall retreats. And so you can just, in fact, we have the schedule on there of the different chapters, and then you can just click on the one, and that will put you in touch with that particular chapter. You know, I want to give the number, let me give this number, somebody might have a question for Karen.

The number is 888-589-8840, and if you want to call in with a question, folks, you can do that because the way it works, I don't have in front of me the call screen or software, but the engineer can let me know. So if you've got a call, if you want to ask Karen a question, folks, about the pain of surviving an abortion, and really the freedom that comes through Jesus Christ, 888-589-8840, that's the number. But I'm sorry I interrupted you, Karen, you were going to say what? Yeah, I was going to say, in terms of churches, I mean, I have such a burden for that, I have such a burden not only for churches and pastors and ministry leaders, first of all, to understand the abortion-wounded heart, but also how can they help build a bridge? Like, how can we build a bridge from the pulpit to the abortion-wounded? And I've written about that in the book that I've written as well, and I just have such a burden for, because I think a lot of times pastors don't know how, they don't know exactly what to do. I've had many pastors say that even though they have a lot of conviction about the sanctity of human life, but they feel like if they talk about it or talk about it too strongly from the pulpit, that it's only going to hurt people worse, it's only going to devastate people more.

And so they tend to back off of it because they're not sure what kind of can of worms they're going to open up. And so part of my encouragement is, listen, I guarantee you there are all kinds of people in your congregation who are abortion-wounded, whether that's the woman directly or the man that would father those children or family members or whatever. One of the things we say is, if abortion is not your story, it's the story of someone you love. So we all know people and love people who have abortion wounds. So as a culture, we need to not have this be a taboo subject that no one talks about, or you're afraid if you bring it up, wonder if someone starts crying, what am I going to do then?

And so we talk ourselves out of even talking about the subject and bringing it to the light, because we're not sure what's going to happen. Well, you have to trust the Lord that, first of all, if he's bringing things to the surface, it's because he wants to deal with them. He wants to give people a way of escape. He wants them to know that there's a pathway for their healing. So one of my encouragements for a church is not only do you need to develop a culture of life where you are going to talk about life and the value of life and how we're all created in the image of God, but you're also going to cultivate a culture of healing.

Meaning, is this church, is your atmosphere, your attitude, your actions, is it conducive with healing? Is it a safe place for people to bring their hidden, shameful secrets into the light? And if they do bring them into light, what are you going to do with them? You know, so many people are afraid that if they bring their story to the light, that they're going to be, that no one's going to know what to do with them.

So they're just going to kind of, you know, kind of walk away. Sure. Let me give this number. Folks, the number Toll Free Nationwide, listen to this. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. And you can ask Karen your question, and she's an expert on doing this, and I just want to say thank you for addressing this. You're right, in the hundreds and hundreds of churches that I've been in to speak or, you know, attend, I've never, ever heard this addressed in church, helping people minister. And I'm thinking of a verse here I want to share in a minute, but Karen, let me ask you this. On a Sunday morning in a church of 210 congregants, you know, most churches are anywhere from about 150 to 225 attendees. Average church, a couple of hundred people. How many people out there have been impacted by abortion? Well, you know, Lightway Publishing, they actually did a study, I think it was back in 2015, and, you know, they had some really interesting results that they had found, because they interviewed a lot of churchgoers, a lot of Christians. And, you know, it was really alarming. I don't have the statistics in front of me right now, but it was really alarming what they discovered in that many people who had had abortions were attending church at the time that they had their abortions.

Some of them referred to it as the church did not have enough influence on them to deter them from making that decision. Hold that thought. Karen, forgive me, I've got a break. Can you hang on? We've got calls coming in.

This is the Hamilton Corner with Karen Ellison, recovering from the wounds, the trauma of abortion. Stay tuned. We're going to be back.

Alex McFarland sitting in for Abe. We're back with your calls and more from Karen after this brief break. Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy once said, You can tell if a person needs encouragement.

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I understand they have an opening in the military. Be sure to get my all-new Toddcast podcast. It's a free download at ToddSterns.com. The Hamilton Quarter podcast and one-minute commentaries are available at AFR.net. Back to the Hamilton Quarter on American Family Radio. Karen Ellison is the leader of Deeper Still.

The website is GoDeeperStill.org, freeing the abortion-wounded heart. I want to thank Karen for hanging on because we've kept her longer than we initially said we would, but this is important stuff. We're going to go to Mississippi right now. On what we've got, Karen. Karen, thanks for holding.

Welcome to the Hamilton Corner. Alex McFarland here with our guest, Karen Ellison. And your question for Karen, please. Hi, Karen from Mississippi? You there?

Karen from Mississippi. Can you hear me? Yes, yes.

You're on. Oh, okay. It's not so much of a question as she was talking about, you know, people that have known a loved one or someone they know who has had an abortion. And I'm retired and my mother passed away in 1988. She was in her 70s. And she had an abortion when she was young with her first husband who beat and abused her.

And I just wish there would have been something like this organization then because, you know, it was... I'm not saying that abortion should be legal. I'm totally against abortion. But she had a back-alley abortion. And all I wanted to say was even up to the last few months before she passed away, she was telling me that she still had nightmares of hearing the voice of what she thought was a baby girl crying in the darkness.

Karen, thank you for your call. And I wish I could say that that's the first time I've ever heard a story like that. But I have heard that story multiple times, especially for the women or men that have come to our retreat that are in their 70s.

That was a common story. And, you know, unfortunately during that era, in many ways, the church was really silent. They really were not prepared for the onslaught of the woundedness that abortion was going to bring to our country. And one of the reasons this continues to be a burden is because if you think about, you know, Roe v. Wade in 1973, most of those women and men who had those abortions, they are still living. They're still among us. You know, they may be in their 60s and 70s and 80s, but they are here. And a lot of times they feel like they're too old, there's no help for them out there, and they silently suffer.

But that just does not have to be. You know, and I think as our churches and our pastor leaders, just the invitation would be given. Like, listen, no matter what stage or age or whatever you are in life, if you have this wound, and if you are still tormented by it, we're inviting you to bring it to the light. You know, this is not something you have to go to your grave with.

This is something that God can free you from right now, and it's not too late. And so I guess, again, that's just my rally call for the church to wake up and know the condition of your flock and know that, you know, there are people that still need to hear an encouraging word of forgiveness and healing and being set free. You know, I had a pastor one time who said—this was a local pastor we had here—and he said he was asked to go to a hospital to visit a lady who was dying. And he didn't exactly know what she wanted to talk about, but he went to visit her in this local hospital here in Knoxville. And this woman's condition, I don't know if she had a stroke or what, but she couldn't talk, so she literally could not verbally talk. And when the pastor came, she asked for a piece of paper that she could write something down on, and she simply wrote down, I had an abortion, and showed that to the pastor. And he was so—first of all, he was shocked by it. He was like, you know, here's this woman on her deathbed. He didn't even know she had a church home, but she asked someone to send her a pastor. And she knew she was dying, and before she died, she wanted to bring that to the light. She wanted someone to give her help.

Now isn't that telling? Isn't that just—you know, the needs are out there, and there's people that need to talk about it, or they need someone to probe a little bit into them and say, what is it that's burdening your heart? Sure.

And do you know, the Bible says that we, the church, the Christians, God has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation, helping people get reconciled to God, get reconciled with their past. Hey, Rita from Illinois, I want to bring Rita on. And folks, if you're just tuning in, this is the AFR Network, the Hamilton Corner, Alex McFarland sitting in for Abe, and our very special guest, Karen Ellison.

Her website is Go Deeper Still. Rita from Illinois, are you there? Yes, I am. Thank you for holding, and welcome to the conversation with Karen Ellison. Hi, Karen. First of all, I'm very glad that people like you are out there, and I'm very grateful for AFR for being committed to letting everybody know the reality of abortion, and that it's out here, and it's in the church, and I mean, it's everywhere, and fighting against it.

Well, thank you. Anyway, I have personal experience with having had an abortion. I knew it was wrong, but I did not trust God, too. As I told Alex on the phone, we already had four very young children.

My husband was in schooling, and it wasn't, I didn't think anyway, a way to put that on hold, and be able to, you know, keep paying bills, and finish, and do what he was in school for. But, so we had an abortion, and I told one person at the time, but because his sister, I was supposed to be traveling out to see her where she lived, and so we decided she needed to know, and she since then evidently has told one of his other sisters, but none of my family know, and nobody else knows. I mean, I have got between Christ and myself, I have eventually made peace, and actually we have two more children, but when they say, if somebody says, you know, they aren't suffering from having an abortion, because they just still haven't dealt with it, I mean, they're closing themselves off to the reality of what they did, but I don't really have much to say.

Your comment? Yeah, thank you Rita for sharing that, and I do want to say, I think I heard them say you were from Illinois. I was going to say, we do have a chapter in central Illinois, we have a chapter, and they do marvelous retreats, and I would encourage you, you may get on our website and find them, and I know they would love to have you go through a retreat. You know, one of the reasons why we call our ministry Deeper Still, I always feel like it's an invitation, like the Lord always has, you know, we can encounter him and meet him and receive some level of freedom and healing, you know, on our own or maybe in our church community or something, but the Lord always has an invitation, like he always has a deeper place, and a lot of times when we're still carrying baggage that's unnecessary, it's like, don't feel like you have to stop, because you're already, like a lot of people will say, well I know I'm forgiven, and so, you know, I think I'm good, and I say, well you know what, come to retreat, and just find out what else God could do for you. You know, he wants to take me so far beyond where you even think you need to go, and so, first of all, I would encourage you to do that, but you know, I just think, let me just say this, there is a difference between forgiveness and healing. Forgiveness is always like the first step, you know, because then we're at least washed clean in that sense, but abortion has damaged your heart, and it damages how you mother or how you father, it damages your relationship, it damages your sense of who you are, it affects every area of your life. So even though you might be forgiven in the sense that your debt has been paid, but there can be quite a healing journey until you're absolutely walking in freedom and victory, and living out the destiny that God has for you. So that's why I always want to encourage people, go deeper. You know, the Lord only has more for you, and it's not too late. You know, Karen, I think about this too, I would imagine it impacts the health of marriage.

I mean, a husband-wife relationship, when that baggage, especially, you know, the more it's been suppressed and buried, it's got to be positive for marriages to deal with that. Hey, listen, Time Fleet's, I want to get to Sally, if we can, and folks, again, the website. Karen, give your website, because I want people to know about this.

Yeah, www.govdeeperstill.org. Sally, thanks for holding, I'm so glad we've got time to get your call in, and welcome to the conversation with Karen Ellison. Thank you. I just wanted to thank Karen for what she's doing. I'm 66 years old now, and I had an abortion when I was 19. And then, that was before James Dobson was on radio, and, you know, he got to talking about abortion and all that. And my mom was fixing to remarry. My dad was an alcoholic, so she was looking to be happy, you know, after they divorced. And she kind of put pressure on me. But I don't remember anything about it, because they gave me something to knock me out. And then, you know, I was still out of it when we got back home.

Of course, it was illegal then, and we had to go to Alabama. But for years after that, I just, it's like I blocked it out of my mind, you know. But I knew something was wrong, and inside, I was holding it inside. And I realized that I was angry, and I was hurt, and I was guilty. And I went to counseling, and I got into counseling about it.

And that helped me tremendously, because I also had an abusive father. And anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up, when I went to work, where I worked here for like 30 years, and a girl there happened to be part of Rachel's Vineyard in Brooksville, Mississippi. And she gave me a pamphlet, where she, you know, she kind of put them out where I worked. And I talked to her, and she talked me into going, and it was a wonderful weekend. I mean, it was such a healing weekend. At that time, it was done by the Catholic Church. And, you know, the priest was there, and there was different scenarios for healing and everything. And we had a ceremony at the end, and it helped me so much.

Now, that doesn't mean that it still doesn't bother me, you know, especially now, since everything's going on about abortion, and it's so publicized and everything. But my goal is to get out there and help others. Hey, God bless you. God bless you, Sally.

Hey, I want to try to do this, folks. We've got Lynn from Arkansas holding abortion, and, well, I'm going to let her give it. And quickly, if you would, Lynn, share your thought, and then we're going to give Karen the last minute or so that we have on this show to give a response. But Lynn, welcome.

Thank you. All I wanted to say was I was going to a very small church, and the pastor was giving a sermon and spoke about abortion being a sin, which it is. But he didn't say anything about the Lord will forgive you if you repent. And so I said something to him after, you know, not in front of people or anything like that, but it was uncomfortable because he didn't say anything, you know. And this happened again in another church, and I didn't say anything that time because I didn't feel I said it in a confrontational way. It was just I knew there could be someone in that congregation who had had one, you know.

So that's all I wanted to say. God bless you. Karen, what do you say about the importance of including that message of forgiveness and restoration? You just can't talk about abortion unless you're going to talk about the healing and restoration. It's like any sin. Any sin that a pastor might teach on, you've got to give the redemption story.

You've got to give that God, his heart, you know, as long as we have breath on this earth, God's heart is to restore and to heal and bring people home. And so my, you know, of course, my encouragement to pastors is find out about the abortion. What is the abortion-wounded heart? You need to find out what abortion does to people. The babies are just one victim of abortion.

The mothers and the fathers, they are also victims of the enemy and victims of their own choices even in that. But we want to help our shepherds understand what's in their congregation, what is the need, and how can you address it. How can we build a bridge so that you can create a culture of healing?

And that's what's going to turn the tide on this and bring the people out of the shadows and into the light. Karen, thanks for being on the program. This has been the Hamilton Corner. Alex McFarland, I'll be with you Tuesday and Wednesday as well. Stay tuned. We'll be back with more Hamilton Corner tomorrow.