Today marks the 40th anniversary of the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade.
Since that decision, 55 million babies have been aborted.
This is a national tragedy.

When it comes to many of the hot-button topics of the day, you can usually find good people on both sides of the issue. But when it comes to the topic of abortion, or killing a pre-born baby, there can be no debate. The fact is, the Bible is very clear about when human life begins: It begins at conception.

Listen to David’s prayer as he spoke about being in the womb before birth: “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book” (Psalm 139:13–16).

These verses show that God had a distinct plan for each of us, before we were born. In Jeremiah 1:5, He declares: “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesman to the world.”

Each child, no matter what the circumstances of his or her conception, is created by God and should be given the chance to live. God doesn’t say, “I waited until you were born to have a plan for you, because you really weren’t human yet, but only a mass of tissue.”

Max Lucado put it this way: “You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on this earth by the Master Craftsman.”

I myself was conceived out of wedlock, and how thankful I am that my mother chose to carry me to term. God has a plan for my life! And God has a plan for every baby, regardless of the circumstances surrounding its conception. In God’s eyes, there is no such thing as an “illegitimate child.”

Despite these truths, abortions are commonplace in our culture today. As stated, since the passing of Roe v. Wade in the early ‘70s, 55 million babies have been aborted in our country. An abortion occurs every 15 seconds in America, and has grown into a 500-million-dollars-a-year industry.

Abortion is not the answer to the stress surrounding an unplanned pregnancy. It leaves “one dead and one wounded” in its wake. If you have conceived a child and it’s at all possible, marry the father and raise the child. If you can’t do that, raise the child as a single mom. And if you can’t do either of these, carry the child to term and put the baby up for adoption.

Recently Pastor Greg interviewed Randy Alcorn, author and founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries, a nonprofit ministry dedicated to teaching principles of God’s Word.

Here’s their conversation about the recent Planned Parenthood scandal and what the Bible has to say about when life begins.

If you haven’t watched the amazing recap yet, you can view it here.

Also, if you went to a Harvest Crusade or watched online and have a story to share, please use the comment field below. We would like to hear from you!

Recently, Pastor Greg spoke to radio announcer Dave Spiker about the current situations many are facing in the persecuted church. Listen and commit to pray for our brothers and sisters who are being mistreated for their faith in Christ!

Whether you are called to share the gospel in a stadium, in your workplace, or sitting at a table with a friend, there are essentials in sharing the gospel. We want you to be equipped and know God will bring the increase as you trust Him in sharing the plan of salvation.

Here are some essentials to help guide and encourage you in sharing the Good News!

Essentials for Sharing the Gospel

1. Be loving. “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
2. Be knowledgeable. “Always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).
3. Be confident.If you act like you don’t believe what you’re saying, then they won’t believe it either. “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1).
4. Be prayerful. Don’t try to do it on your own. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
5. Be gentle. Be tactful. “Let your gentleness be known to all men” (Philippians 4:5).
6. Be compassionate. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. “Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous” (1 Peter 3:8).
7. Be a listener. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (James 1:19).
8. Be simple. Don’t complicate the message. “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
9. Be focused. Keep the main thing the main thing. “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
10. Be glorifying. We must give the glory where it is due. “I am the LORD, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to carved images” (Isaiah 42:8).

We would love to hear how you shared your faith with someone and the results. Comment below to share your story with us.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

In the following audio clip, Pastor Greg talks about his current project, Tell Someone, and also discusses the future reward of those who are faithful to partner in the work of evangelism.

The happiest Christians are evangelistic ones.

The unhappiest Christians are the nitpicky kind—the ones who, in the words of Jesus, “strain out a gnat and swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24 NKJV). They are so busy arguing theological minutia that they miss the opportunity. They are like someone seeing a burning building with people inside, and they are debating what kind of hose should be used to put the fire out.

There is a joy we are missing out on if we are not sharing our faith. John wrote that his personal joy was made possible by sharing with others the message of Christ. “We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete” (1 John 1:4 ESV).

Jesus said, “There is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:7 NKJV). And when the angels came to the shepherds, they brought “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10 ESV).

It seems like some Christians just want to receive and learn, receive and learn. . . That is a noble and biblical thing to do. But if that receiving does not also include giving, then you are missing the point. Does not Scripture tells us that “it is more blessed to give than to receive”?

The believers I know who make a habit of sharing the gospel are happy. Proverbs 11:25 says that “those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed” (NLT). You are blessed to be a blessing.

But before you preach it, you must first live it. Billy Graham wrote:

“We are the Bibles the world is reading.
We are the creeds the world is needing.
We are the sermons the world is heeding.”

We need people today who walk and talk with Jesus Christ—people who, before they even speak a single word, give evidence that there is something different about them.

We need people who, through their godly lifestyles, have earned the right to be heard.

What we need today are people who have “been with Jesus.”

“This bottle was not marked ‘poison,’ so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice . . . she very soon finished it off. ‘What a curious feeling!’ said Alice; ‘I must be shutting up like a telescope.'”

Few of us are tempted today to dream big. Like Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, some of us seem to be helplessly shrinking smaller and smaller, and we run the danger of drowning in our own tears of unbelief or complacency.

All too often we see only through the lens of our limited experience. And yet, most of us would be able to recite verses such as “All things are possible for those who believe,” and “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” So why, with promises like these, are our prayers so insipid?

What are your prayers like these days? In times past, God has torn open the heavens and come down. I desperately want to see that happen again in my lifetime; don’t you? Don’t you want your children and grandchildren to see it?

The Bible and history tell about times of exciting revival. I’ve been reading a book on the history of revivals in our country: the two Great Awakenings, the Fulton Street Revival, the youth revival that happened in the ’40s and ’50s, and I believe I was a part a revival in the late 1960s to early ’70s called “The Jesus Movement.”

And still, there’s a side of me that subconsciously struggles to even grasp the possibility that God might want to do it again. Maybe we don’t see God working in mighty ways because we don’t believe He would. Maybe it’s because we’ve grown so content with the ordinary Christian experience that we don’t bother asking God for anything more!

What would happen if we started praying big faith-filled prayers like Isaiah’s: “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down!” I know we can’t engineer a revival. We can’t manufacture one, but we can and should agonize for one.

It’s my hope that we’d start right now, today, and join in the prayer effort for revival and begin linking our shields of faith together and begging God to do what only He can!

The immediate focus of my prayers is that God would bless and pour His Spirit out on this great opportunity, Harvest America. We can, even in our doubting, ask God to give us faith to believe in an answer of divine size.

You can join me and thousands praying for the churches to be revived, and for the lost to be reached, through Harvest America. Simply go to pray.harvestamerica.com, enter a loved one’s name, and start praying daily that God would “do it again”!

Having had the opportunity to travel around the world, let me say that I think America is the greatest country on earth!

We are far from perfect. We have our many flaws. But we have so much to be thankful for as a nation.

Imagine what kind of world we would live in today if there had been no America. No one to turn back the rise of Nazis and their allies in World War II. No one to stand up against the tyranny of Communism over the years. No one to stand up for the small nations that cannot help themselves. Then there are the billions of dollars in aid we have sent around the world to help those in need.

Why has America been able to do all those things? Because we have a foundation that has taught us what right and wrong are, that there is a God who has given us His Word to guide us, and that there is a responsibility that comes with His bounty.

We learn those things from the book our country was founded on: the Bible.

Thomas Jefferson is said to have written, “The Bible is the cornerstone for American liberty.” Of Holy Scripture, Andrew Jackson said the Bible is “the Rock on which our republic rests.” Abraham Lincoln stated, “All the good Savior gave to the World was communicated through this Book. But for this Book we could not know right from wrong. All the things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found in it.”

The Fourth of July is this week. As you know, our founding fathers framed a document that we call the Declaration of Independence, authored by Thomas Jefferson and signed in 1776.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

We often forget that in declaring independence from an earthly power, our forefathers made a direct declaration of dependence upon God Almighty. The closing words of this document declare, “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

So it’s not only a “Declaration of Independence” from foreign tyranny. It’s also the “Declaration of Dependence” on God Almighty.

God has blessed this great nation of ours over these past 200-plus years. We rightly sing “America, America, God shed His grace on thee . . . ”

A symbol of our country and our liberty is the Statue of Liberty. Inscribed at the entrance to it are the words:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

And come they have from around the globe. There is no other country on earth people flock to like America! There are no walls around America, forcing people to stay in. They are free to leave if they choose.

Instead, we have more and more people who want to come in, searching for the “American Dream,” searching for this happiness we speak of in our Declaration of Independence.

And as we have seen time and time again, it’s still possible to come from another place to the United States and live the “American Dream” Hard work really can pay off and you can still succeed and prosper in this country.

But the question is, are we a happy people? Let me personalize it: Are you happy?

Some of the unhappiest people I know are those who are in the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps that is why philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote, “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness,” Playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.”

In America, the accumulation of material goods is at an all-time high. But so is the number of people who feel an emptiness in their lives.

Forbes magazine devoted its 75th-anniversary issue to a single topic: “Why we feel so bad when we have it so good” Noting that Americans live better then any other people on the planet, Forbes invited prominent observers of modern culture to speculate as to why we are “depressed,” or in the words of editor James Michaels, “Why is this Nation that marched so proudly into the 20th century slouching so dejectedly toward the third Millennium?” The articles in this special issue chronicled an alarming loss of values, absolutes and meaning in contemporary life.

Why is this? Abraham Lincoln answered this question many years ago.

We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

President Lincoln was right. We have forgotten God. It’s even more true today.

We have thrown God out of the classroom. We have thrown Him out of the courtroom, a judicial system built on Biblical truth. And we have done our best to throw Him out of modern culture.

We have, as the Bible says, “sown the wind, and reaped the whirlwind” (see Hosea 8:7 NKJV).

In spite of being a nation at peace and having a robust economy, we have “trouble in paradise.” As many as 20 percent of Americans—54 million—will battle major depression in their lifetime. As many as 45 million Americans participate in drinking binges at least once a month.

There are 650,000 attempted suicides a year in our country. Every 17.2 minutes in America, someone kills themselves. Approximately 500,000 people received emergency room treatment as a result of attempted suicide. There are more suicides than homicides, and the highest rate is among senior citizens. Teenage suicide has reached epidemic levels.

I read in a recent article on young people and suicide that the number of 10-14 year olds taking their lives has gone up dramatically since the early 1980s. According to a study by the American Association of Suicidology, up to 60 percent of high school students report having suicidal thoughts. The word that experts use over and over again to describe kids is “hopelessness.”

And why is there this hopelessness? Because we have forgotten God.

How can this be? In our pursuit of “freedom,” some have lost sight of the Creator who has given us the clear parameters to live by. And for many, that “freedom” and “pursuit of happiness” has led to bondage and despair.

On the wall of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. are these words from Thomas Jefferson: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

The answer for America’s problems is not a political one. It is spiritual. We need to turn back to God. Why? Because the real problem is inside of us, and only God can change us!

A news reporter asked a person on the street, “Do you know what the two greatest problems in America are?” The man responded, “I don’t know, and I don’t care!” “Then you’ve got both of them!” was the abrupt reply.

We sing, “God bless America, land that I love, stand beside her, and guide her, through the night, with the light from above. . . ” We are in that “night” in America right now, and we desperately need that “Light” from above.

Not some nebulous, whatever-you-conceive-God-to-be spirituality. We need to turn back to the True and only God.

The same God our founding fathers invoked when they established this nation. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God who gave us Jesus Christ as His Son to die on the Cross in our place. The God who gave us the Bible as our guide and manual for living. The only God who can save America and us as individuals.

The happiness we all seek as Americans can be found not in the pursuit of it, but as the result of pursuing something else, or rather someone else. And that someone is God.

Scripture reminds us, “Happy are the people whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 144:15 NKJV).

May you have a happy and blessed Fourth of July!