According to a recent newsletter by the Pregnancy Care Clinic (PCC) in San Diego, “Providing free ultrasounds is an essential service that we offer …”  No surprise therefore that California has sought to stop any physicians practicing as sole proprietorships from being allowed to perform ultrasounds with its AB1720 amendment petition.[9]  The Devil knows what he’s doing as a lying murderer.  Ultrasounds save children’s lives.

Editor’s Note: Pregnancy care clinics in San Diego County—the author’s residence, have recently been under serious attack to be shut down.  Please see the footnote below about today’s December 5 meeting with San Diego County Supervisors and how to influence them.[1]
My wife and I had determined we fully filled my quiver this January with the delivery of our daughter.  So, I was quite surprised this June when she hinted that another little reward was likely awaiting us in her womb!  I responded, “That’s impossible!”—not out of desperation, but confusion about how it could have happened during the identified month of conception.
Yet, indeed, next March we are expecting our eighth covenant child.[2]  We learned through an early blood test that he will be our fifth son, and we are now praying for him by his name, Gaius Ezekiel Van Leuven.[3]  Naturally, we ask of the Lord that our “Little Guy” makes it to full term healthy and strong.  How frightful that such prayer cover proved important for him just to survive my wife’s first gynecology visit!
Right at the start, the lady doctor asked if we had planned the pregnancy.  When my wife sheepishly admitted that through natural family planning we had tried for her not to become pregnant,[4] the doctor cavalierly responded, “Do you want to be?  You don’t have to be.  This is California.”
Thus, she lectured my wife while our then eight-month-old daughter, grinning her fresh cut choppers, giggled and bounced upon my knee—whom the doctor had already googled over upon entering the other end of the cramped patient’s room where we were tucked into a tight corner behind the door waiting with Mamma awaiting her checkup on the examination chair.  My wife and I were flabbergasted; but she quickly reacted resolutely confirming that we would gladly receive our gift from God.
The doctor, a mother of one young daughter who was filling in for my wife’s normally assigned and supportive gynecologist, shockingly defaulted to this sly rhetorical implication and pressure: “No, you don’t, do you?  You have too many children already.  You’re forty years old and you just cut your last child’s umbilical cord only a few months ago—her belly button has surely barely healed over.  Let’s end this now.  You don’t need this.  You don’t want it.”[5]
But after seeing that her preliminary temptation was a lost cause, the doctor conceded to the second selection column of her mental checklist and wheeled over the ultrasound machine, flicking on its hum and beeps and blinks.  As she guided its scanning wand over my wife’s gel-lathered tummy, we watched in wonderment while our son kept kicking with his Mamma’s long legs and his strong heartbeat pulsed and scratched across the screen in real time!  It is always amazing.
I couldn’t believe how this medical professional who would have taken the Hippocratic Oath could now hypocritically look at our baby and enjoy him with us on the monitor just minutes after first offering to kill him; and frankly, robustly suggesting we take her up on that offer.
But what really struck me later as we strolled toward the hospital elevators and paused outside its entryway—repeatedly smiling over the sonogram strip of baby pics, was this: the doctor did NOT propose turning to the ultrasound machine in the room so we could see our living baby until AFTER we had affirmed we would keep him alive.[6]  And that timing it seems to me was strategic.
Had we expressed uncertainty and been led toward aborting our baby, very likely we would never have been presented with the choice to look at him moving on the monitor before the deed was done and he was dead—nor have to face his little face in the aftermath.  How could we see his heart beating and then have the heart to crush it?  Of course, the doctor didn’t provide the pregnancy scan possibility during her initial inquisition!
But how many uninformed others hear no mention of the ultrasound machine before naively leaving it unplugged in the corner and then silencing a baby’s voice forever? —because of the powerfully persuasive and prejudiced push of a snide doctor’s urging?
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My dear friends, glory is our reward with the Lord. “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the Spirit of the glory of God rests upon you.” We need to get our eyes off of this earth and off the temporary problems we have, and on the eternal reward day that is coming. The payday is coming. And God is no man’s debtor. whatever you have suffered, however, we have been faithful to him, that will all be brought up at the judgment seat of Christ. Again, eternal rewards are ours. Let us be faithful. 

So far, we have pondered on the reality of suffering in the world, and have seen from the Bible that suffering is to be expected for Christians, especially since we are engaged in spiritual warfare. Remember that we are not only to teach these truths faithfully, but also to model them in our own lives.
The third thing we need to continually teach our people about is the divine perspective on suffering. If you have your Bible, I do want you to see this yourself. I want you to open 2 Corinthians 4. Now, here’s a passage of Scripture, that I am not exaggerating when I say I’ve used it hundreds of times in my life, it could even be 1000! And I want you to use this when we face suffering and when we help other people, because we do not just deal with our own suffering, as shepherds. Along with that, we have to be faithful to help others through suffering. In fact, I think we spend more time helping other people through suffering than ourselves. And we need to know what Scripture text to go to.
I remember I was training this young man in our church about visitation, going to hospitals dealing with people’s problems. And I remember the first time we went out and an issue came up with the people we were talking to, and I took them to this passage. And this young man said to me later, when we left, “You know, I literally had no idea what Bible verse to open to?” He said, “I’m glad you showed me.” I said, “Well, that’s why I brought you along. So you know how to open your Bible and comfort people who are suffering and help yourself.” Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 4. Second Corinthians, is an amazing book. It is the most autobiographical of Paul’s books, and there is no other book in which we get these insights into Paul as a shepherd of the Lord’s people. And you see at one moment his severity and next moment, tenderness unlike anything else So in verse 16, he says, “For we do not lose heart.” Well, my friends, if anyone should lose heart and get depressed and discouraged, it was the Apostle Paul. He had more problems than all of you put together and multiplied. This man had every problem there is. I have never been whipped, I have never been left at sea, never been hungry. I mean, this man experienced everything. He sat in jail, he had people trying to stone him to death, whip him to death. “We do not lose heart!” Oh! I want to find out why he doesn’t lose heart, because I lose heart so easily.
“Though our outward self is wasting away.” Now if you’re over 55 you know what this means. The outer nature is wasted away. Well, you lose muscle, your skin sags, you have to have glasses, you go get hearing aids, some people get wigs (I look better this way!). And then we have knee replacements and hip replacements. Replacements seem to be nowhere near what they can repair in your body. The outward nature is wasting away, and well, it will end in your death. Now, this is my verse for my philosophy of aging. Are you ready? “Although the outward nature is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” If you’re over 50, you better know this verse. Although the outward nature is decaying (you can do some things to slow it down, but it is going to win), the inner man, the new man in Christ, in the Holy Spirit who lives within us, every day he is being renewed. Well, that is an amazing truth, isn’t it? Your inner man is being fed and he is growing, he is expanding, he is maturing. That should be your philosophy of life.
[In fact, I was going to speak to you about this whole thing: About being a growing leader, a maturing leader. Sadly, many stop growing when they get to be about the age of 40 and older. They do not read anymore, they do not go to conferences, they do not have a greater vision for the world. That is a very, very big problem. But this text says, the inner man is being renewed every day. He is growing. He is learning and expanding. That’s what I want to do as I age.]
Now I want you to get the balance hereof words very beautifully balanced. I wish I had a scale to show this but you can imagine a weighing scale. “For this light momentary affliction…”  or  suffering “is preparing for us…” Well, that’s good to know. “An eternal. weight of glory beyond all comparison.” In other words, these are not comparisons. This is what happens. It is an eternal weight of heavenly glory. Here on earth what we face is a light, momentary affliction. That’s the divine perspective. And he says it is not comparable. So in this life, you have many afflictions, sorrows, heartaches, setbacks, losses, and sometimes very severe, and they really can hurt. But the divine perspective says it is light and it is momentary, lasting a very short time. A whole life here on earth is a very short time. But it is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory.
Now, if you want to know a little bit more about this glory, you go down to Chapter 5 verses 1-10.
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To the Christian who has experienced this efficacious, lavish outpouring of amazing grace from the Holy Spirit will look to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and see the wisdom and glory and power of God though it be foolishness to those who are perishing. Be encouraged: The same grace that saved is the same grace that preserves and the Holy Spirit who breathed new life into you at the first will keep you alive in Christ until we see Him face to face.

Irresistible grace is the fourth part of the Tulip acronym and is the one doctrine of grace that every Christian, deep down, can never deny. No Christian will balk in a Sunday morning worship service when the congregation sings Amazing Grace (written by John Newton, a Calvinist pastor of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century) because every Christian knows that it was the amazing grace of God that saved us and, if not for this astonishing grace from the Lord, we would be eternally lost. It is, in fact, foundational in understanding the other four doctrines of grace. If election is thought of as the work of the Father, and atonement thought of as the work of the Son, then grace must be thought of as the work of the Holy Spirit.[1] It His divine task to efficaciously draw the sinner to Christ.
Salvation is a Trinitarian work, expressed best within the Covenant of Redemption. This Covenant of Redemption is implicitly understood from such passages as John 6:37 and 44, John 17, Ephesians 1:10-11, and many others. The basis of this teaching is that, from eternity past, the Father covenanted with the Son and Spirit, planning salvation, and promising an elect number of people from His creation as a gift and Bride to His Son in an arranged marriage. The Son covenanted with the Father and the Spirit and promised to incarnate as a man and redeem the elect, that He would then have a perfect Bride, not having any spot of sin or wrinkle of unholiness but declared perfectly holy and righteous through union with Him (Eph. 5:25-27). The Spirit covenanted with the Father and the Son, promising to efficaciously draw the elect to Christ through the preaching of the Gospel, and to seal them with an eternal seal until the day of their glorification (Eph. 1:13-14). It is within this framework of the Covenant of Redemption that the doctrines of grace are properly understood.
Man, who is dead in his trespasses and sins, is unable to come to Christ of his own accord; his will is stubbornly opposed to the things of God. Yet, God has elected a certain number from the human race to come to the Son, and the Son has already procured salvation for that elect number. Not a drop of Christ’s redeeming blood can be wasted.
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