Reasons for Abortion
An unfamiliar car pulled up in front of the box-brick duplex rented in crime-ridden north Denver. A little boy called out immediately for his mother, Shirley. Since gang members were known to hang out in the neighborhood, she’d warned him to watch out for strangers. But this time, the five-year-old, Greg, recognized the driver. “MA, one of my daddies is here,” he said. Shirley stood at the kitchen window, where she’d been washing dishes. A cigarette hung from her mouth. “Paul,” Shirley growled. “That jerk!”
Shirley’s husband, Paul, had walked out only a few months earlier. Paul was back now, looking to claim a tax return check. “Where’s the bat?” Shirley asked. In reply, young Greg held up a small plastic bat that he often played with. Shirley had something else in mind. She reached behind the front door, pulled out a Louisville Slugger and stormed out of the house, cursing and shouting at Paul.
She shattered Paul’s windshield, knocked the side-view mirrors loose and left dents around the vehicle. Paul jumped out of the car to stop her, but he never stood a chance. Shirley bloodied him with the bat until he climbed back in his car and fled.
A Tough Family
Shirley’s entire family was tough. Her five brothers were body-building, street-fighting siblings, dubbed by the Denver Mafia as “the crazy brothers.” Not only did Shirley beat her husband with a bat, but her brother Jack spent time in jail for choking two cops who tried to arrest him, and another brother, Bob, nearly beat a man to death.
The Gospel Changes EVERYTHING
Born to a counterfeiting and bootlegging father, a tough Southern preacher, known in the community as Yankee, came to faith in Christ at age 18. He attended Bible college and eventually planted a church in the Denver suburb of Arvada, where he met a man who knew Shirley’s family. This man dared Yankee to share the Gospel with them, and Yankee accepted the challenge. He started with the toughest one of all, and when Jack came to faith, the other dominoes began to fall.
The family came to Christ, including young Greg, who accepted Jesus as his Savior at age 8. As Greg matured as a believer, Yankee taught him how to share his faith with enthusiasm and preach sermons that led the lost to repentance. Later, Greg even participated in preaching competitions through his Christian high school. In his latest book, Unlikely Fighter, Greg admits, “Having struggled all my life with feeling like a misfit in my own family, I had a burning desire for both peer acceptance and adult approval coursing through my veins.”
Evangelizing One Way or Another
Greg wasn’t alone in his evangelistic zeal. Other family members earned a reputation for sharing Christ without shame—and often with flare. For example, Greg’s brother, Doug, once pulled up his bicycle alongside a car full of young men at the stoplight of a busy intersection. Doug began to share the Good News but couldn’t finish before the light turned green. So, he grabbed hold of the car as it accelerated to nearly 40 miles an hour. Doug pedaled and preached as he held on to the car, not letting go until he finished his Gospel presentation. When Greg heard what his older brother had done, he reprimanded him. “You could have been pulled under the tires and killed,” Greg said. Doug simply replied, “Those guys need to know Jesus.”
On another occasion, Uncle Jack shared Christ with another bodybuilder at the gym. Jack hadn’t been a Christian very long, and he hadn’t quite overcome all of his rough-and-tumble habits. As he shared the Gospel, another man began to jeer at him and interrupt the conversation. “I’m trying to tell this guy about the love of Jesus,” Jack said. “Why don’t you shut your stinking mouth?” Jack warned that he would take him down if the man didn’t stop. When the heckler continued to interrupt the conversation, Jack made good on his threat.
A powerful right hook sent the message that Jack wasn’t kidding around. “Jesus didn’t go around hitting people,” the other man protested. “Well, I ain’t Jesus,” he replied. “I’m Jack.”
Shirley’s Unwanted Pregnancy
While most family members were transformed from the inside out, two holdouts resisted the call to faith: Uncle Richard, who lived out of state, and Shirley. Greg shared, “My mom never thought God could forgive her.” On many occasions, he recalls, his mother would cry when she looked at Greg. “I’m a bum,” she would say. “I’m nothing but a no-good bum.”
When Greg was older, his grandmother revealed that his mother’s fits of rage and sadness grew from the shame of unwanted pregnancy and that Shirley nearly had an abortion before changing her mind. The child she carried was Greg, and the shame made her slow to turn to Christ. “He’d never accept me into His family,” Shirley told Greg. But her son refused to give up.
Can an unwanted pregnancy have a happy ending? Watch and find out.
How to Support Someone with an Unwanted Pregnancy:
- Supporting Birth Mothers in Their Journey of Unexpected Pregnancy
- How to Respond to an Unexpected Pregnancy
- How to Help a Couple Dealing with Unplanned Pregnancy
- When Two Lines Are Pink: How Parents Can Support Their Pregnant Child
- Be an Everyday Hero
- Choosing Life: Changed by a Heartbeat
- Hopeful Choice: What is a Pregnancy Help Center?
"I'm In"
When Greg was 15 years old, he once more urged his mother to follow Christ and find forgiveness for her sins. After listening once again, she took a drag on her cigarette and looked out into the distance. At last, she spoke: “I’m in.”
That same year, Greg’s grandfather died, and the family encouraged Greg to preach the sermon at the funeral. They all wanted his uncle Richard—the family’s last remaining holdout—to hear the Gospel, and they knew Greg could share it better than anyone in the family. Standing in front of some 500 guests at the funeral, Greg proclaimed the message of salvation. He spoke for half an hour, and when he called on those gathered to turn to Christ, many did. But Uncle Richard was unconvinced, arms folded, staring at Greg and shaking his head. He refused the call of Christ that day, though God used Greg to lead Uncle Richard to faith 12 years later as his uncle was dying of cancer. Even as Uncle Richard remained unmoved, Greg Stier discovered his true calling in life during those 30 minutes in the pulpit–an evangelist!
Unwanted Pregnancy Turned Preacher
Because of all that he had seen, Greg never hesitated to share his faith. “If you found the cure to cancer and everybody had cancer,” he asks, “why wouldn’t you tell everybody?” Yankee and others taught him that sin and its consequences were as bad as, or worse than, cancer, and they instilled in him a sense of evangelistic urgency. He had seen for himself how Christ could transform an entire family, which stirred up his passion for the lost.
Greg watched how God transformed his whole family from a gang of lawbreaking street brawlers into a family filled with passion for Jesus and how his mom finally let go of her shame and sorrow. Greg writes in Unlikely Fighter that it wasn’t just urgency that lit up his preaching. It was the surety that the Gospel could change lives (as it did in his), change families (as it did in his) and change entire cities. And that realization has led Greg to start a global ministry, Dare 2 Share, that mobilizes teenagers to share the Gospel around the world. A fantastic result of keeping an unwanted pregnancy.
