Woman Whose Google Anti-Abortion Talk Went Viral Says Christians Must Pray Before Confronting Culture

A pro-life speaker whose talk about abortion at Google's headquarters went viral, is urging Christians to think deeply and not skip deliberate prayer before confronting cultural evils. Such is the approach of Jesus, she argued.

During the Wilberforce Weekend sponsored by the Colson Center in Washington, D.C. Saturday, Stephanie Gray, who hails from Canada and co-founded the Centre for Bioethical Reform, recalled that a year ago, the night before she was scheduled to speak at Google, she was panicking.

"I was riddled with anxiety and I thought the presentation that I had prayerfully prepared I should scrap," Gray said, "and come up with something new in 14 hours."

She decided to contact her sister and told her about her nerves. Her sister called it out for what it was: a spiritual attack. She also told Gray to "tell Satan to go to Hell," and then to get some sleep and give the talk she had planned to give. Her talk was called "Abortion: From Controversy to Civility," which summarily rocketed around the internet.

The experience reminded her of the passage in Ephesians 6 which speaks about the battle believers face against spiritual wickedness and demonic principalities and powers, she said.

"We are in a spiritual battle," Gray emphasized, "and if we are going to confront the culture and enter into that battle in a very serious way then there are three things that we need to do."

The first is that contemplation be prioritized over confrontation, modeling Jesus while doing so, she said, and from there ask good questions and tell good parables.

She came upon this bit of wisdom following the advice she got from one of her spiritual directors to read the book, The Soul of the Apostolate. The book explained that people in ministry tend to focus on the section of scripture in Luke 10 where Jesus says that the "harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few," but then rush to get out onto the harvest field since apparently so few workers exist and do the hard work of harvesting.

"That's not how that passage ends," she maintained.

"It ends, 'Pray, therefore, that the Lord of the harvest will send more laborers into the harvest.' It is to redirect us to praying," she said of the temptation to become so busy doing things and reduce the amount of praying and preparing.

When the laborers take the time to pray deliberately, they become like reservoirs that fill up and then the excess overflows, as opposed to mere channels where the water continually runs through, she said of the insights in The Soul of the Apostolate.

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