NRB 2024 - God To The Rescue From Aborotion - Let Them Live

Oh yeah, what a treat we have for you today at the NRB as always. The first day is just like, man, it's like a get ready to drink from a fire hose one after the other after the other. And so I have with me Emily Baring in Burning, and Emily's ministry, you know, I don't know if you've ever looked at this deeply in the scripture, but the idea of testing, like when you're given an opportunity to do something that seems totally impossible, that it couldn't be done without God, when I think about a story like that, I think about yours. And so for our listeners that haven't heard it before, can you kind of share how, let them live, your ministry begins? It's so true about how God, you know, tests us and we're called to be out of our comfort zone and there's nothing more uncomfortable than, you know, the story kind of of how Let Them Live got started. So, you know, my husband encouraged me, he's like, you're super pro-life, why don't you start a non-profit?

And I was like, I have no idea how to do that or what to do. So we did, we started Let Them Live, and we didn't know what we were going to do. We had no idea what our mission was going to be, kind of just wandering around.

We tried some legislative stuff, activism, all of that, and nothing seemed to really fit. But I did know that through prayer, God would reveal to us what we were supposed to really be doing. And I resisted it for a while, and I love this part of the story, because looking back, it's just laughable how funny God is. But I said, all right, God, you know, I'll do this, but there's just two things I don't want to do. I don't want to do pregnancy counseling and direct support to women.

I think I'm going to be horrible at it and I'm going to fail at it, and I don't want to have to fundraise all the time. And I'm like, those are literally the two things that we do. These are my plans, God. Yeah, right, these are my plans.

He had different plans. So a couple months after Nathan and I got married, we didn't have hardly any money. We had been scraping change from our car to get gas and dollar menu Taco Bell, and we had deposited some checks from our wedding. So it felt kind of nice, again, the comfort to have not a negative balance in our bank account. And so we were really feeling comfortable in that.

We had about $1,200 in our bank account. I thought we were set. And one night, late, Nathan was on Facebook in a pro-life group, and there was a woman commenting, hey, my cousin has an abortion scheduled.

Can anyone give me advice? So Nathan reached out to her and asked the most important question, which was why? And that's a question we have to ask. Why are women going into that abortion clinic?

Why are they considering it as an option? And she told him that her cousin was evicted, living in her car, in freezing weather, lost her job. It was just all around a pretty awful situation. And that just didn't sit right with him.

And I'm fast asleep at this point. I always love to just emphasize that because Nathan's heart is bigger than his brain. And we were just married, so he was really testing our limits. And a lot of back and forth, and he had this bright idea, well, would financial support help you to cancel your abortion? So he offered this mom what she needed to get back into her apartment was what we had in our bank account. And he offered her everything, every single penny in our bank account. And he nudges me awake and he says, hey, do you want to save a life from abortion? And I'm like, yeah, of course, you know.

But how do we do that? He's like, well, we've got to give this mom all of our money. And I don't know if it fully clicked in that moment, but I think I woke up the next day and I was like, oh, crap.

I was all this dreaming of being able to go buy groceries and have some money in our account. And he gave it away. But then it was an obvious thing because we knew we'd be okay. We knew we could figure it out. So we did. We gave this mom all of our money.

We emptied our bank account. And she canceled her abortion. And she sent us an ultrasound. And it was just like in that moment, did we really just do that?

Is that all it took to save this life from abortion? And sure enough, so we started researching and found that majority of women have abortions because of that financial burden. And we didn't have any more money.

So we started asking other people. And it's been five years. We've helped almost a thousand women cancel their abortions with financial support. And we have about 50 staff, hundreds of volunteers, thousands of donors. And God has really just taken this thing.

Just I can't even, there's no words for it, what God does. Yeah. I, you know, I, you told me this last year and I am just like, I, I'm going to cry too. I think you guys had a chance to, you know, hang out with this mom and this baby and all this, you know, we're just talking about one here. You had however many hundreds or thousands at this point in time, but just that one, there's that life, right? And it was just a matter of money. That was all it was going to take to save that baby.

Yeah. And taking like, again, God in that moment, you know, when I said, God used me, I had to be prepared for that. I didn't know what that meant, but in that moment it was a complete sacrifice.

He's like, are you willing to give everything? And I knew that we'd be uncomfortable then with no money, but what we couldn't live with is if we hadn't taken action and help that life. And then we started realizing this is like generational, you know, and because of that one mom and that one moment, um, that critical moment, you know, we helped all these other women and like on Saturday coming up, I'm actually going to the third birthday party of one of the babies that was saved.

And I'm like, how are we celebrating a third birthday? You know, like it's not just, you know, obviously it's all the ones that are coming and hopefully all the people that are seeing this on YouTube or on Facebook or wherever they're watching it, all that would be affected. But it wasn't just that one mom. It was one dad. It was one grandpa. It was one uncle.

It was, you know, all this whole family that got to have life instead of guilt. Right. I could have done something to stop that. However that worked. And so it's cool that God gave your husband this unbelievable.

He did. And it was funny because Nathan was, I wouldn't even know if like if I could say at the time he was like fully pro-life, like he used to be pro-choice and I think he was just maybe more apathetic at the time. And even when we were really kind of into let them live, he would just say, this is your thing, Emily, like I'm here to support you.

And he runs the whole thing now with me. So, you know, it just shows the power of what, you know, this work can do and how God calls us to it. And, um, you know, the importance of it and a big thing too is for us to help other pro-life people have the opportunity to save lives as well. Because one of the biggest problems is we're pro-life and it's something we hold dear, but how do we put that into action? And for people that work, you know, the nine to five or they don't have the time and they can't, you know, go out and start a Let Them Live of their own, um, it's easy for them to donate and know that that donation is saving a life.

So Let Them Live created a solution for the pro-life movement as well. Yeah. If you can see that, Let Them Live, like man, this is the book. So tell us about the book. The book.

Oh my gosh. What an awesome book. Um, I, it's written from Nathan's perspective. Um, it tells the story that I just told you. It talks about just us as people. Um, from everyone that's read it, they've said it's just a very like down to earth, um, you know, relatable type book.

Uh, it's really, really thin. So it's, it's not a long read, but it shares our journey starting Let Them Live and the challenges that we face, not just with, you know, starting Let Them Live, but in our personal lives alongside of Let Them Live. So, um, you know, struggling with, you know, my, uh, losing relationship with my family. Um, Nathan talks about his background and how he went from pro-choice to pro-life and Nathan's journey as well as a Christian.

Um, we just got baptized last June. So, you know, we talk about all these things, um, that, that, that hopefully can encourage people to just take that step, right? It's not impossible to save a life from abortion.

It's extremely possible and it's, it's, it's something that we can all do if we just band together. So the book is, uh, it's, it's, it's really cool just account of, of Let Them Live and, um, stories of also things that we've messed up on because something that everyone could count on is that we'll always make mistakes, um, but we'll always share what they are so that others can learn from them too. Right. And like how cool you just heard a part of the story. Like we have details. Yeah. And, and Let Them Live. It's so simple to think about, again, that, that a lot of times, you know, it's just like I had an opportunity to go share the assisted living, right?

It's just so simple. Go do that. Well, here we are 20 some odd years later, right? I've been doing it and then, and I can't tell you the, the things that those folks in that place have done for me. You know, like, so you got to save these lives, but what has this given your memory?

Oh my gosh. It has given everything to me. Um, before we started Let Them Live, I distinctly remember I would wake up in the middle of the night with sweats and just like just scared out of my mind having panic attacks, being afraid of death. I was so afraid of death and I thought that it was because I would leave this earth not having done anything worthwhile. Like what are we going to leave behind? Because we're all going to go someday, but what are we going to like, what legacy are we going to leave? And so for me, when we started Let Them Live, those fears immediately disappeared.

Like I could die right now and, and I'm not afraid of it. And so Let Them Live gave me that, you know, that security. Let Them Live gave Nathan and I our faith. Nathan became a Christian.

I mean, Let Them Live pretty much forced us to become Christians because how can you handle this type of work without relying on God? Um, our marriage, I mean, you can't work together, run a nonprofit together, live together, do it all together without really growing close. And the fact that we haven't, uh, you know, killed each other yet is a, is a testament.

It'll be six years married in September. Um, and, and to do something with your spouse that you've, you've messed your life with and you've given everything to, to do something this impactful is absolutely amazing. Um, and a couple of years ago we found out we had some infertility issues and, um, you know, again, God being super ironic, um, you know, of course Let Them Live would be our ministry. We don't have kids of our own, but I always say we have almost a thousand and, and this is a little tiny picture of our wall in our home. Um, yeah, so this is like just one wall, but we have a couple more walls which are filled with, um, pictures of the Let Them Live babies because that's, that's our family.

We feel like a mom and dad in that way. So, so here, here's, here's what God gave me this week and I've been studying and this is totally off subject, but I liked it. And so here you go. So the word battle or war, you know, I've been studying it because I have to do a talk on Friday. The root of that word in Hebrew, which I love Hebrew, is l'hem. And I'm, you may know that l'hem is bread, like Beth l'hem. Okay. And so the root of war is bread.

Take through that a minute. So when you say, give us this day our daily war, yes. Yeah, it is a, it's a war for love. It's a war for that baby. It's, it's a, it's a war between me and my wife at times to get to the bread.

In other words, Jesus was giving us the bread of life. And part of that is it's a battle, right? It's not easy. It's not always the the fruity stuff, you know, and that's something we've learned in our marriage too. It's like, how do we balance working together, living together? When do I get my coworker?

When do I get my husband? You know, women having abortions instead of choosing life. I mean, oh, yeah, that's, that's got to be heartbreaking. It is.

And we have to consciously decide every morning like, okay, I'm doing this again. You know, so beautiful. Well, we're out of time. But again, the book is let them live. Yes. And this is Emily burning.

Yeah. And thank you again for what God's doing with you guys. And keep up the great work. Thank you so much. And if anyone wants to know we can go on letthemlive.org and get the book in our letthemlive.org. Letthemlive.org. Yeah. Thank you, Emily. Thank you. God bless.