Choices and Consequences

 Here's Nancy Leigh DeMoss with a special announcement.

 

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I just want to take a moment and remind you of two upcoming events that I know many of our listeners will be interested in. These are area-wide Revive Our Hearts Conferences that we will be hosting in the month of February.

On February 1 & 2 we will be in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area in Florida. And then the last weekend of February (February 29 - March 1), we'll be in the Houston area.

These conferences are Friday night and all day Saturday. During the conference we'll spend time looking in to the Word of God and letting Him search our hearts and show us the pathway to true revival.

We'll also be led in worship through each of these weekends by my friend, Shannon Wexelberg. If you've not heard Shannon, you'll be so blessed by her tender heart and her passionate love for Jesus Christ.

So if you've not been to a Revive Our Hearts Conference before, or even if you have and you just need a refresher, check your calendar—particularly if you live in Texas or Florida and can join us February 1 - 2 in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area or February 29 - March 1 in the Houston area.

I look forward to meeting many of our Revive Our Hearts listeners on one of those two weekends.

Leslie Basham: For more information and to register, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call 800-569-5959.

When Nancy Lincoln was leading a promiscuous lifestyle, she didn’t think much of the consequences of her actions.

Nancy Lincoln: I never thought about the choices I was making at that moment, that they would have any kind of impact on my future. Yes, I thought, “I want to get married some day and have a family.”

Of course I wanted that dream, but I never connected the dream and how I was feeling emotionally to what I was doing right then; and that was huge, because I never realized that those choices would actually impact me for the rest of my life.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s Monday, January 21. As we remember the anniversary this week of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, Nancy’s here with a special guest.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I remember when I had the chance to participate in our very first Pure in Heart Conference that we’ve been in the process of developing to help mothers plant seeds of purity in the hearts of young women, in the hearts of their daughters.

There were several speakers at that conference, and one of them got up and shared just briefly—it couldn’t have been more than 10 or 12 minutes—about how God had rescued her life from destruction, from a pit.

You could tell there was a lot of history there, a lot of story; but as a result of what God had done in her life, she has had such a vision, as a mother and as a woman, to help her daughter and other younger women to be rescued from some of the same lies of Satan and some of the same traps he sets.

Nancy Lincoln has become a friend. I got to hear her at that first conference, and since then we’ve had the chance to get to know each other a little better.

Nancy, I want to welcome you to Revive Our Hearts. Thank you for being willing to share out of your life and out of your story, which isn’t all easy to tell, I’m sure. But God is using what Satan intended for evil to bring great good and to be a blessing to so many people today.

So thank you for joining us. Tell us some about your story.

Nancy Lincoln: It’s an honor and a blessing to be here. That’s actually one of my favorite Scriptures in Genesis about what Satan has intended for evil, God has turned around and used for good, for the saving of many lives—first and foremost my own life, but now hopefully this generation of young people.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: You’re involved today in a ministry with a pregnancy resource center as the Abstinence Director. You’re involved in abstinence training in schools and churches.

You’re involved in our ministry in the development of these Pure in Heart Conferences, and the Lord has you sharing your testimony to help other young women not make some of the same choices and mistakes and sins that you did as a younger woman.

Christ has so redeemed your life. So as we hear your story, I want to say at the outset that though there are sad parts of it, there is so much hope because of what Christ has done for you.

Before we get to the hope, we have to go back. I wonder if you’d help us understand a little bit about your growing up experience. We’ll just start by saying that it was not a Christian home that you were growing up in.

Nancy Lincoln: Exactly. It was a religious home, though. I went to church and had a form of religion. I went to a religious school. I had religious training.

Basically, I knew a lot about God. I knew the traditions of God. I’d heard from God’s Word, but I did not know God personally, did not know that I could know God personally.

So that was my understanding of spiritual things. It was very different from what the Word of God teaches us.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Tell us a little about your home, your relationship with your parents. How would you describe that?

Nancy Lincoln: It was a good home. I had loving parents who were supportive. I’m the fourth of five children. My parents were not believers, so I believe that they did the best they could.

My dad was a partier, social, a lot of energy, very well liked by people. He was a role model of somebody who’s living life to the full, and I’ve always been attracted to that side of my dad.

My mom was on the other end of the spectrum. She was really quiet, introverted, and just didn’t say a whole lot, really. That was the upbringing I had. It was chaotic, of course—five kids all going in different directions.

I was definitely the black sheep of the family. I was more of the extrovert. I followed in my dad’s footsteps and wanted to live life and take life for all that it had to offer.

My siblings before me were not that way. They were much more introverted, more reserved. They weren’t very social. So I was a real challenge, I think, to my parents.

They were doing the best they could, and they were setting boundaries for me, which I’m so thankful for now. I understand that, but I rebelled against those. I rebelled against their authority.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: How old were you when that started to manifest itself, and how did it start to come out?

Nancy Lincoln: I entered the public school, and that’s when it began—the first day of high school. I got involved with the wrong people—people that were living life on the edge, using drugs and alcohol, and tempting me and leading me astray. Right away, the peer pressure in my life was huge.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Was there something in your heart that was empty, that was longing for something you felt you weren’t experiencing with those friends?

Nancy Lincoln: Attention. I wanted to be included. I wanted to feel like I belonged. My best friend, Patty, who is still my best friend today, was really pretty, and she got a lot of male attention.

The longing in my heart was to be loved, ultimately, and I think that’s why I made the choices I did, because I was always longing to fill that void of wanting to belong and wanting to be loved.

When you get into high school, it’s all about the guys, and it’s all about the attention of the boys. So I did make compromising decisions very early on as a freshman.

My only salvation in school was that I was very good in sports, so I had to go to class, and I had to go to practice, and that kind of kept me on the straight and narrow, which I’m thankful for today. I don’t know what would have happened . . .

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: So you were being drawn into unhealthy relationships with friends. What did you find or feel you had to do in order to get love and acceptance from those friends?

Nancy Lincoln: Participate in compromising things, like smoking and drinking. Remember, I’m involved in sports, so I’m cutting class, I’m smoking cigarettes, I’m using alcohol, and eventually I would become sexually active. In fact, I was the last person in my little group to lose her virginity.

My friends—not a boy, but my very friends—were the ones that actually teased me that I was still a virgin.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: How old were you?

Nancy Lincoln: I was a freshman. Fifteen.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Did that become a pattern for you through your high school years in your relationships with guys? Was this a lifestyle of promiscuity?

Nancy Lincoln: It all went together. The peer pressure, the smoking, the drinking, and then the sex outside of marriage—it all went together. It was all that path of destruction. Those voices of deception were louder.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: What were they saying?

Nancy Lincoln: “If you want to participate in the crowd, there are certain rules that you’ll have to live by. You’ll have to do certain things in order to be part of this group.”

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And were you happy?

Nancy Lincoln: I think I was happy when I was going through it. I didn’t know anything else. This was all I had ever seen. This was all I had ever known. I’d never had any other instruction.

So it wasn’t as if I knew there was something better on the other side. This is just what I was handed. This was deception—I know that now—that’s what I was living under.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Did your parents have any clue what was going on?

Nancy Lincoln: No clue. My dad knew about the drinking, but they didn’t know I was smoking. They didn’t know I was having sex. They didn’t know anything. I was really deceptive; I was a good little girl, and I kept my curfew.

I just played the game and let them believe what they wanted to believe. You know, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of mentality. Plus, I stayed in school. I stayed in sports. I excelled at sports, so I don’t think they had any clue.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Let me ask you about the promiscuity. When you were giving your body to guys, how did you feel about yourself?

Nancy Lincoln: In the moment, I thought it was fun. I thought it was wonderful, the attention, the love. I thought it was great.

But it was after I would go home, or even during sometimes—now remember, I’m using alcohol, too, so I’m not really processing, and I’m not really thinking, “What am I doing and why am I doing this?” I’m just kind of going through the motions because this is what everyone was doing.

After, I would just know deep in my soul that I probably shouldn’t be doing this. Plus, I knew that I didn’t want my parents to know, so in my conscience I knew I was doing what I wasn’t supposed to do, because if I was doing what I was supposed to do, I wouldn’t be hiding it.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Were you finding satisfaction in the relationships with guys, or was this just a physical thing?

Nancy Lincoln: It was totally physical. In high school I actually did have a boyfriend, but I just wanted more attention than that one guy’s attention. So I would actually have him as my boyfriend, but then I would have other boyfriends on the side and stuff.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: So we’re talking multiple guys that you were involved with during high school?

Nancy Lincoln: Well, it depends on what you consider multiple. I mean, if I have a boyfriend and I have one other boyfriend, then that’s too many boyfriends. Do you know what I mean?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Were you thinking that someday you’d want to get married and have a family, or were you not even thinking ahead?

Nancy Lincoln: I never thought about the choices I was making at that moment, that they would have any kind of impact on my future. Yes, I thought, “I want to get married some day and have a family.”

Of course I wanted that dream, but I never connected the dream and how I was feeling emotionally to what I was doing right then; and that was huge, because I never realized that those choices would actually impact me for the rest of my life.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: So you’re a mother now. If you were speaking to a young teen or girl who is a freshman in high school, what would you be saying to this young woman to help her think through the choices she’s making in high school?

Nancy Lincoln: Well, I do this for a living now, so that’s an easy question. The choices you’re making today do affect your future. They do affect your dreams and your hopes for your future. Every choice we’re making today is going to impact our future, positively or negatively.

You are worth waiting for. God has designed you for one person for one lifetime, and you are part of a story that God wants to write in your life.

I would encourage her, as I do girls that I talk to all the time, that she is worth more than just this moment; that there’s a lifetime story that God is writing. She’s the main character, but she gets to choose.

I would want to give her as much information about why saving herself and having a dream of marriage—which is God’s plan for her to express herself and to live out that love story on earth, God’s story for her—starts right now.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: If you don’t wait and save yourself, what’s the downside of that?

Nancy Lincoln: Regret. Guilt. Shame. Pain. The consequences are devastating. They’re physical. They’re emotional. They’re social. They’re spiritual.

Probably the biggest is the shame and the guilt that I’ve carried, knowing that I have given myself away, when now I have a husband, and I haven’t saved myself for him.

That’s a deep, deep regret that I have, and a deep shame. Thank God that He’s taken that away, and I don’t have that anymore, but I didn’t wait. I didn’t have that information, and I didn’t know; I wasn’t able to have that story.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Thank God He knows how to write, to rewrite, the story by His grace, and we’re going to get to that. But you had a long road to go still before you really came to the end of yourself.

You got out of high school and then went into the career world. Tell us a little bit about that chapter of your life.

Nancy Lincoln: Well, my dad worked in Manhattan. Of course, you know the parties in Manhattan. I wasn’t going to college. My dad got me a job working in corporate America, and right from the start I got involved with the party crowd at work.

I was drinking at lunchtime, going out after work. I had moved out of my parents’ home, so I had an apartment. I had a nice car, and now I had lots of older gentlemen asking me out to dinner and taking me to clubs.

Really it was just an extension of what was happening in high school but on a larger scale, with men and money. The glitter, the lights, the whole lifestyle—once again, the deception is that there’s life there, and I wanted to be a part of it; I didn’t want to miss it.

So now I’m living it. I’m going to bars. I’m going to clubs. I’m going to tops of buildings in New York City, and I’m being wined and dined by some very, very nice gentlemen.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And one of those became an important part of your life during that season.

Nancy Lincoln: Yes. I met a man. We fell in love. I would consider it the first man that I really loved, to whom I’d given my heart. We had a relationship, and I thought things were going along well and strong, and that maybe this would be the person I’d marry.

Then my day of truth came, I had a pregnancy. I was happy about it. I was like, “I’m pregnant! This is great!” So I told him, and the moment of truth came when he said, “Well, that’s not good.”

I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, I don’t want it. You’re going to have to make a choice, and it’s either going to be me, or that.”

He couldn’t even say “baby.” I was devastated. So off to a Planned Parenthood clinic I went to get some information. The woman there told me that what was going on was nothing more than a blob of tissue.

The test was positive, it was a blob of tissue, and it was nothing that couldn’t be done quickly and easily. The solution would be to have an abortion.

Of course, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. My boyfriend just told me he didn’t want the baby, and she’s telling me it’s a blob of tissue. I’m thinking, “Well, it’s my body, my choice. I’m not going to lose my boyfriend over this pregnancy.” So I left there, Nancy, empowered to kill my child.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Now, at that point were you really thinking of that as a child or a baby?

Nancy Lincoln: I don’t think I’d thought about it much. I think I just thought, "I don’t want to lose my boyfriend. I don’t want my parents to find out. It’s my body. It’s my choice, and I want to go back to the party.

"I want to go back to the way it is. I don’t want this in my life right now. I like the way my life’s going. I’ve got this great guy; I’ve got this great life; I’ve got all these wonderful things going on in my life, and this is getting in the way. This is an inconvenient time for me. This is a burden."

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: So you never really thought ahead to that being a baby.

Nancy Lincoln: She said, “It’s not a baby.” And she’s the medical person at the Planned Parenthood clinic, and I had no reason not to believe her.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: But in your heart, was there some lack of certainty about that?

Nancy Lincoln: I think for a moment I might have thought, “I know it’s a baby, but I just need to do this.” I rationalized and made the decision just to do it right away, but I never thought about it more than a second, if I thought about it at all. I’m truly guessing.

The voice of deception was louder than the voice of truth. Nobody came and said, “It’s a baby, and you’ll regret that, and that will hurt you.” They never told me all of the consequences that might come from the fact that I was going to have a blind surgical procedure with instruments put inside of me and a machine turned on.

They didn’t tell me anything. They didn’t tell me about fetal development. They just said that it would be a quick and easy solution, and “you can get back to the party. You’re so young. You don’t want to be bogged down by a pregnancy now.”

That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. She empowered me to kill. That’s what she did. She empowered me to murder my child.

And that’s exactly what I wanted her to do. So, honestly, I’ve had to say to myself, “If somebody would have come and said at that time of my life, ‘It’s a baby; don’t have an abortion,’ I probably wouldn’t have listened.”

So I did go and have the abortion. My friends took me. My boyfriend didn’t even go with me.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: How did you know where to go?

Nancy Lincoln: Planned Parenthood gave me the number of a doctor who had performed abortions in the first trimester. I went there, and it was just like going to the doctor. There was really nothing unique about it.

I just went in and lay on the table, and the nurse held my hand, and they did a first trimester suction abortion, and it was . . .

Again, I’m in total crisis here in my heart, because I know I’m empowered to have the abortion. She’s just empowered me. I know it’s the right thing. All that stuff’s going on.

But in my soul, as they’re performing the abortion on me, I know that I’m killing a child. Even though I would never have that conversation, I just know.

I believe that God has written that on our hearts as women, that we are called to protect and preserve and nurture and love, and not to destroy and to kill our children.

Yet that machine went on, and that’s what I did. That’s exactly what I did. I said, “Do that to me. Take the child out of me. Take the blob of tissue out of me, and let me be free of this burden.” I let them do that.

And then it was over, and we left the clinic, we went to the bar and got drunk.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: So the moment of regret or soul searching passed as quickly as it came.

Nancy Lincoln: It was only there for a moment, and then I was back out in the car and we were heading to the bar. My friends were trying to help by taking me to the bar and getting me a couple of drinks.

What happened was, the moment I stepped off the table, the cycle began of numbing it and pushing it down and trying to deny what I had just done, because I didn’t know how to resolve it.

I didn’t know how to face what I had just done, because remember, our society’s saying, "It’s okay to do that. It’s your legal choice to do that. It’s your body."

The clinic is telling me it’s my choice. So now I’m in this conflict in my soul, I like to say: "I’m empowered to do it, I just did it," and now I’m like, “What did I just do?”

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Now the battle is going on?

Nancy Lincoln: The battle is intensified because there’s a huge battle going on already just in my whole life. But that’s what I did. I went and got drunk. Then I went home and cried myself to sleep.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, by God’s grace, Nancy Lincoln’s story does not end this way. But for many women, it does.

In fact, maybe you’ve been thinking about a daughter or a granddaughter or a friend whose life is headed in the same direction as the story we just heard. Or maybe you can even personally relate to Nancy’s story.

I think what we’ve heard is a sobering reminder that sin will always lead to destructive consequences, even as Nancy said that she never considered that her bad choices in high school would affect her future.

I know we have a lot of younger listeners who perhaps have not experienced all the things that Nancy has been through, but her story is a warning for us all, a warning to flee temptation, a warning not to begin to get involved in impure relationships.

In fact, if you’ve already started down that road, I want to plead with you: Stop. Stop before the choices you’re making now lead to even bigger choices that can result in a lifetime of regret.

If you find yourself on that pathway today, I want to remind you that we have a number of resources on our website to help women who are in the kind of difficult situation Nancy Lincoln found herself in.

These resources will help you discover biblical options and how to find a pathway out of those wrong choices. Just go to ReviveOurHearts.com. When you go to the website, you can also get a copy of the complete interview on CD, including some portions that we were not able to air this week.

You may not relate to this story yourself, but you may know someone who needs to hear the story of what Nancy went through, the results of her choices, and her ultimate healing and redemption through God’s grace.

Over the next couple of days, we’ll hear about the negative results of Nancy Lincoln’s abortion, and then how God reached down into that deep pit and drew her out and now is glorifying Himself through her life.

Tomorrow is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal throughout the United States. I want us to take just a moment now to pray for our country and for those who are being affected by that Supreme Court decision.

O Father, how we cry out to You on behalf of this land and the moms and the dads and the grandmoms and those unborn babies—40 million of them—who have been affected by this decision over the past 35 years.

As we’ve listened to Nancy Lincoln’s story today, we realize this is not just a theoretical issue. These are not just statistics. These are real lives. These are people. These are people who, apart from Your grace, are hopeless and helpless and lost.

The women who have made these decisions and the parents and grandparents involved, many of them are crying out for grace and perspective and help. Lord, we pray that You will have mercy on us, that You will have mercy on our nation; that You will cause us as Your children to know what part You want us to have in making a difference in the issues related to life.

Lord, may we love life as You love it. May we seek to protect it and to uphold the sanctity of life. I pray that even through this week, as we reflect back on this 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, that it will be a time for many young women who are today where Nancy Lincoln was those years ago, a time of their finding hope and help and grace through Christ Jesus our Lord, in whose name we pray it, amen.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

 

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