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Advice always seems easier to take when you are giving it to someone else! I recently ran into a woman of God that I had not seen in a while. She is someone who I had admired because she had one of those testimonies that reassure that God can do anything. She had made some mistakes earlier in life, but had determined to live a godly life and to "preach" to every single (and married) women about keeping ones' self sexually pure and the lasting emotional heartache of an abortion. Well, when I asked how she was doing, she confessed that she was stressed to the point of her health being compromised because she had backslidden, was now pregnant (and un married), and was considering having an abortion. She asked me what I thought, she was looking for me to affirm her plans ... I could not.

Whatever choice she makes, I am planning to stay in close contact with her, either way she needs to feel the love of Christ. And because I knew her well enough and she had given me permission to speak into her life, I asked her why she was telling herself that this path she was considering was "Okay"; when just weeks ago, she was counseling a friend not to follow this same path. She said, "things are different when it happened to you." She was ashamed, guilt-ridden, and wanted to make her "problem/ sin" go away before anyone knew what was going on.

Her words were not unfamiliar to my ears. It saddens and concerns me, that we Christians are way to guilty of preaching one thing and doing another. After my conversation I had to seek God for myself and repent of my own lack of consistency in my spiritual walk. If I really want to be a woman of integrity, a woman who proclaims living a life pleasing to God ... then I have to make sure that I am walking the talk in every area of my life. In every area seen by the public and in every area hidden from all eyes but God's. I am not judging my sister -- I have no heaven or hell to put someone in. But I am now ever more aware of the frailness of my own testimony. I Corinthians is a reminder that there is no temptation that is not common to [sisters] ... all the more reason to encourage our sisters who have fallen, help them back up, and remind ourselves that , but for the grace of God ... it could be us.