Unborn. Untold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YZW6q9vcl0

Join us for an insightful interview with Ruth Coghill as she shares her powerful experiences and reflections on the themes of life and faith in 'Unborn. Untold.'

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Transcript

hi everybody it's chris and marilyn from the national house of prayer and we are here today with ruth coghill and we're going to talk about her book the unborn untold it's a compilation of stories uh from women and men both young and old and how abortions have impacted their lives so ruth i love the story that you tell about your grandson odin and you know where you use that term generational blessing and you know and and this is this what this is what uh stirred you to finally write this book would you mind just telling that story because i just i love it well i'm privileged to be the mother of four children but they didn't come all in one decade as we had prayed they were spread out

and uh after three children i was ready to go back to work and uh but then one day i thought i was in menopause but lo and behold i was pregnant with our fourth child and since our oldest uh two were 16 and 14 this was quite a surprising time to get the fourth child we'd always longed for but when i was in my first trimester we were sent for some tests and at that point we were offered an abortion the word was never used but it we knew what terminating a pregnancy was and that was not why my husband and i were there at all we were there so that our child would be in the right place but this really impacted me that being offered an abortion it it struck me very deeply and and i had a lot of

processing to do over the next few months well our child was born our third son and fourth child and over the years as i shared a little bit about that story i heard different stories from different people starting to come to me with their stories of abortion well on january and one of those stories i need to to remind you of is from rebecca who begged me to tell her story and she was a beautiful senior she came to my bible studies for years and years and i loved her but she had a hidden pain behind that beautiful face and it was that she had had two abortions earlier in her life and she had never told anybody and she sat in our living room and said to me ruth

would you please tell my story as tears are running down her face and i said it's your story rebecca why don't you tell it she said i can't because nobody else knows except my fiance well part of that story is in the book but i promised her that day it's 20 years ago that someday i would tell her story and it never seemed to be the right time but on january the 8th in 2019 our son alexander james we call him aj he stood in the hospital holding his little boy odin that you just referred to marilyn my husband was standing beside me and all of a sudden it was like the lord was saying this is the generational blessing of choosing life and that day when i went home

the heart stir it's time to tell the story wow that's that's really impactful it is true we have grandkids and and we just look at that generational line and and that god's mercies they run and his blessings run to a thousand generations and that is so impairful um one of the threads in your book is one of healing and god's redeeming grace you even end a chapter from a psychologist speaking about emotional healing after an abortion um can you share with me can you just um what would you say to people who describe your book as just a book of stories that's a great question and i think i have to go back we have a ministry called words to inspire lifelong empowerment from god's word and so

everything that i write as a matter of fact i was in the middle of writing my fourth book in a bible study series in 2019 when i was paused to write this book but everything that comes under our ministry has to have god's word in it because that's the redemption that's salvation but it's sanctification and god's word has all of the power so when i was looking for stories and believe me i didn't have much when i when god told me in january 2019 it was time to put this book together i am thinking lord i have rebecca's story i have candace's story and i have my story that's not a book and god kind of whispered to me and i sensed him say watch me and and the story started coming in but

one of the criteria for this story was that there had to be a redemptive scripture in the story because that's what our ministry is about we want god's word into the heart of every single person that that knows him and that does not know him because the word of god is so alive and so powerful and we know from these stories that god has healed through his word people that have been hiding their shame and their guilt and then when they come to the cross and they see the forgiveness in all that christ has done for them he wipes away all of that shame all of that guilt and that forgiveness is readily available so when we first were looking at a title for the book we were

looking at please tell my story which which certainly applies to the story of the story but it wasn't enough but when uh true stories of abortion and god sealing grace wow that just resonated deep into my spirit and i knew that's how we had to go when you refer to the psych the psychologist that wrote the final chapter you know she's a beautiful christian and i love the way she came a very compassionately non-judgmental into the lives of people that have had abortion so that they could readily accept god's healing grace but you know she was very reluctant to write that chapter i've known her for a number of years and i didn't know why she was having such a difficult time

saying yes to writing the chapter and i i sensed that she was the right one but she came to me after and said she had labored because she had helped assist a woman to have an abortion or encourage a woman to have an abortion and that had plagued her you so you see there are many ways that we're impacted by abortion but god has healing for all of us amen that's awesome yeah that's that's that's really amazing now we we know about a lot of we know that there are christians that are sitting in churches and they're sitting silently they've had abortions and they're still sitting silently because the church doesn't seem to many churches don't know how to talk or uh and and there's that stigma and

there's a shame attached to abortion so many women and men are are sitting silently in the pews and not being able to get healed um so can you tell us why this message is really important to bring to the church well i think there are a number of reasons but i would just focus on two i think often we look to the government to make all the changes and to make our lives better and we are not looking to the one who really can make our lives better and the light is the church the light in the community is that church on the corner and i have to say that i am so thankful that my pastor from a little church in bob cajun ontario here when i asked him if he would read the stories

and potentially endorse it he said that he went through a box of kleenex because the stories were gripping his heart and he also said for years he really wanted to do something but he didn't know how to do it and when he read these stories and i said do you think we could open the conversation in our church he said let's do it and i was so thrilled because this was where god kind of redirected me when i thought it was going to be a book that was going to impact the elections in 2019 and i had a few political people politically minded people as endorsers on my list and and uh but by the date that we needed those endorsements in we had no positive responses but i looked

at those that had responded to the endorsements and there were three pastors and their endorsements were wonderful they were they were saying the this needs to be out in the church and uh and so they were blessing me and i'm thinking of the three pastors right now two of them have already had me come share my story and bring with me a story of a post-abortive woman and the impact it's had and so it opened up the conversation and it's amazing i don't know uh what your pastor would do but my pastor said after having the unborn movement in the church on two occasions once on a sunday morning and then once for a book lunch a few months later he felt that there would be people that

would be very much against what we had done he said instead people were saying thank you for opening this conversation because you know chris and marilyn i don't think any of us have any idea how much pain there is in the pews because of abortion because there's a ripple effect and i have heard i can't verify this but i've heard that one out of every three people are impacted by abortion in some way think of that going to your church and a third of those people are impacted and most of them are afraid to say anything yeah that's really really sometimes we can be so judgmental and to have the father heart to see the father heart for everybody in the world you

know we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves and this is so pivotal that we love and we care for all of those around us and one of the stories that you had in in the book was of a young woman who was addicted who had a really rough story i actually know the the woman and uh today and she is a a beaming example of of what god can do in their lives he how he has taken her um out of darkness into his glorious life and she she today has this beautiful girl to prove that and alongside of his goodness so what would you say i just gotta find myself to make a long story short she had a beautiful girl she came to know the love and grace of god and now is an advocate for the pro-life movement

what does your what is your message today to the church well i'm going to read from a little excerpt that is really speaking to me as i'm endeavoring and want to take this message i'm just going to show the book here unborn untold true stories of abortion and god's healing grace see those little sneakers there they've never had feet in them and this is the message we want those little booties to have feet in them i'm also wearing the little tiny feet pin uh on my sweater here it's so tiny you can hardly see it but it is a 10-week pair of feet uh from in vitro and so we have those actually uh on hand here but but this book that i'm reading as called restoring all

things by smith and stone street and they say in there can we take the brokenness of the world seriously and still have hope even more than feeling hopeful can we actually live in such a way as to champion hope and make a meaningful difference in the world we believe so but only if we learn two things first we must learn to see culture differently second we must learn the power of story and i'm gonna jump ahead a little bit as we learn of the great work god is doing through his people in the world not only will we be inspired to embrace the redemptive responsibility the church has in the world but we will be inspired to join in and we will tell these stories to others

we may find a lost world regaining familiarity with the truths of christianity and more importantly being drawn to christ the storyteller they need to know that is so good so we are going to post at the bottom of this video the links where you can get this book we're going to also put ruth's uh email address her website there so if you want to invite her to your church to speak this would be a good thing pastors i'm speaking to you and so this would be awesome um ruth what else would you like to say to our audience today you know the there's so much is in my heart it's it's actually bursting and i'm trying to put all of this into just a few words but won't you join in you know i never knew

just how pervasive abortion is until i started listening i didn't know the coercion that women face from their husbands from their families from their boyfriends i didn't realize the deep pain because i was judgmental so i'm looking to you today and saying you can't unhear what you've heard this morning you can't unknow it but what are you going to do now that you've heard you know we can impact our nation for the lord jesus christ because we join in a movement i'm not just talking about the unborn movement although i'd love you to join in and help me find new ways to to expand this message but we can make a difference in the world god has called us to make a

difference when we join forces and chris and marilyn i can't tell you how grateful i am that you have partnered with me this morning and or today to to just get this message across we can make a difference we can be the light we are the light but is our light shining why not join in and be part of something bigger than you or i'm that is so good well thank you everybody thank you ruth for this today this was so enlightening we love that we love the power of stories and stories do indeed transform lives the scripture tells us we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony so this is really really important so people thank you for listening today thank you

ruth we just pray blessings on you and uh that's in fact let's just pray right now and and we'll close off thank you father for ruth father thank you for these stories lord thank you for the testimonies of lives changed where you've taken the broken and you've brought healing lord you've given beauty for ashes joy for mourning in the garment of praise for a spirit of despair so father we thank you for this book and father we pray a special blessing on ruth today lord and again we declare you are merciful and your mercy endures forever in jesus name yes and father we pray that you would bring connections yes that this message would be able to get out lord so that

there are so many that would be able to find your love and your grace through the redemptive message um in this book father so i just pray that you would expand um enlarge ruth's tent so that um it'll go she'll be able to go to all the places that you want her to go and this message will get to all the areas that you needed to get in our nation and through the world in jesus name jesus amen amen well thank you everybody i'm chris this is marilyn and ruth coggle here today thank you thank you we'll see you next time bye for now bye bye