On Tuesdays, I am typically at the Hinds Co. Penal Farm doing a Bible study for inmates there. After studying one evening a few weeks ago William (names in the story have been changed) asked if I knew Doug standing there with him. “He has been with you out at the abortion clinic.”

I admitted that I didn’t recall him. He reminded me. “I and my girlfriend were headed into the abortion clinic and you confronted me. Asked me what I was doing. Challenged me a bit. Sent me to a nearby restaurant with a friend of yours.”

“Yeah,” I said. “What happened?” He reached into his Bible and grabbed a picture and handed it to me – a picture of his wife and an adorable baby girl.

He was grinning from ear to ear. I was getting misty eyes.

He lifted up his hand to “high-five” me and said, soberly, “Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.”

We don’t get those stories much because after you have your baby, going back to someone who helped out at the abortion clinic isn’t what is uppermost on your mind perhaps, I suspect, out of shame or even disbelief that you ever were abortion-minded in the first place.

But it has happened a couple of times to me across the years and, honestly, it gives rise to this thought – there are hundreds and hundreds of people out there across the last decade that decided to have their babies that we will never know about. We will never know the cumulative effect of our work until heaven. But, it is working.

Stay faithful. It. Is. Working.

Matt Friedeman is pastor of DaySpring Community Church and Professor at Wesley Biblical Seminary. He has been a sidewalk counselor for 18 years.