The last two months have been a life-changing process in my life. I am only scratching the surface of it right now but I am feeling God moving in my life in a far greater degree than I can recall at any one point in time. God is a GOOD God. He is loving and kind, but he is a God of Justice. He loves me so much that he want to work out every area of shadow, of darkness, in my life .I have to admit that for the last few years, I have pretty much been on cruise control in my walk with Jesus Christ.
The last time I experienced a life-changing moment remotely to this caliber was six years ago this July. I was working at a small grocery story witnessing to a co-worker and in the process, I stirred up a dormant demonic stronghold in his life that soon manifested itself through my co-worker. It was the most intense and brutal spiritual battle I have encountered to date. My faith grew to a new level with that battle. I came out on top, but my co-worker refused to surrender his life to Jesus Christ. That battle was part of a new stage in my life where God called me into writing. I used that battle as a key plot point in a spiritual warfare novel that is now between contracts with publishers. More on that on a later post.
But in the last few years, I have seen a little growth spurt here and there but nothing that would qualify as going to a deeper level. Until the last two months. It began with a sermon at my church, Restoration Fellowship. My church in the last ten years has grown but lately has started to wane. And my pastor gave a stirring message that has begun a movement to step it up. The very next day, my brother introduced me to another pastor/speaker, Eric Ludy, via a few of his YouTube clips. Eric Ludy, most well-known for his books and talks on dating/marriage relationships and courtships, is now leading a leadership training program called Ellerslie in northern Colorado. His short sermon: "The Gospel" awoke me to something I had never seen. The clip is posted here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPIOkdNL-QQ&list=PL0AD28844A82EDD10&index=2
This presentation is not about "How to get Saved" but rather, what is the "Good News" and what does it mean? I have 22 years of missions experience and I have never seen what the Christian life should be summarized so simply and yet so deep. I'll go deeper into what that all has entailed at another time. To make a much longer story short, I began to listen to other short sermons and even some of his full-length ones. I also began to listen to some of Paul Washer, Leonard Ravenhill, David Wilkerson, and a few others. And a lot of what I have been hearing from these men is a great lacking of spiritual fervor in the American church. We don't have great men of faith anymore. That's not a God-problem. That is a church-problem. But some men are rising up and saying, "We need what the church was meant to be." Ludy is one of them, and he has inspired me to join him.
Things got even more interested two weeks ago when I attended the Colorado Christian Writer's Conference in Estes Park, Colorado. While there, one of the authors/speakers addressed the need for the church to get ready for spiritual warfare. The US has not endured times of harsh persecution but it is coming and it is coming fast in order for the End Times Prophecies to be fulfilled. This author asked me and a few others to help him work on a massive scale project God has called him to design.
The concept is "What if there was a role-playing game that helped you deal with your problems before your problems deal with you?" One of the ideas of this game/project is "Every army in the history of the world has use "war games" to prepare its soldiers for war, except one: The Church. Why? It is a spiritual battle and how can you "war game" a spiritual battle? This game is one way we can do. We can practice testing what the enemy would do and how we would respond to such situations. My job in helping him with this game is to develop the "warrior's order". In Star Wars' terminology, I would be not only creating the lightsaber but establishing the Jedi Order. My job is to dig deep into the Armor of God and come up with a martial arts tactic system on how to use that Armor in a metaphor of the spiritual battle.
As I have thought about this, I came back to my spiritual warfare novels. I now have a contract offer from OakTara Publishing for my first book and the sequel which is now with beta readers. I did not realize I did this, but my books do exactly what the game above intends to do: War Game. My book is a very practical covert spiritual warfare training manual put in through a fiction story, and yet reveals some of the ways we can and do engage in spiritual warfare. I have more books to come but this is a potentially HUGE thing God may be doing.
God is calling me to sound the "Call to Arms". For the church of God to rise back up. He is taking me to a brand new level so I can come back and bring others with me to that deeper level. The foundation is laid. It is time to start digging. There is too much to say in one blog post and I intent to be blogging a lot more frequently that I have been lately so I have a means of getting my thoughts down and sharing what God is giving me. I need prayer in this time. Prayer that I will have the strength and the courage to expose my areas of sin to my Father so he can clean them out. I need prayer for the endurance and the drive to dig down to this level. And I need prayer that I will be alert to the whims of the enemy as he seeks to keep me back or knock me down. What is going to come from this process will be bigger than I can imagine. Bigger than I can contain within myself. And I believe it has the potential of changing a generation. I have lived a life of the impossible where God shows up bigger and mightier each time. What I am about to take on is bigger than my abilities, but it is not too big for God to carry it through me. War is coming. And I intent to rise up to meet it head-on. More to come later.
Charlie
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