Author Paul Hastings is on a mission to share powerful stories about “ordinary people” inspired by an “extraordinary God.”
In fact, that’s part of the title of his book, “Compelled: Ordinary People Extraordinary God,” a project that shares incredible testimonies of people who have gone from darkness to light, have faced difficult circumstances — and found freedom.
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Hastings, who hosts a podcast by the same name, said his mission to tell such powerful stories developed after years of working full-time in politics.
“I got really burned out, as you could imagine, just like the political cycle always, always on,” he said. “And so my wife and I just began praying like, ‘Lord, there are other things that you know I could do.’ And one thing that I was convicted about is that the whole time that I was in the political sphere, I had never once stopped to pray for my political opponents. I just cared about their personal destruction, which just sounds terrible, but I’m just being honest.”
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This conviction led Hastings deeper into prayer, and he reflected on how God can change any heart, regardless of how terribly a person has behaved. This became the root of the “Compelled” podcast. The book simply builds upon that effort.
“The whole premise of the podcast, the radio show, and the book ‘Compelled’ is to find people with these amazing stories that their life truly exemplifies what it means to live a life compelled by Christ,” Hastings said. “So stories of stark transformation.”
He had to narrow over 100 stories down to just seven for the book, including everything from people who have been missionaries to cannibal tribes in Papua New Guinea to a mom who was falsely accused of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
“Each of these people has an amazing testimony … Christ just radically transformed who they are and how they lived,” Hastings said. “And trying to choose the top seven to place into our book was not an easy feat. That was probably one of the hardest tasks about the book, but hopefully we did a good job.”
Hastings said one of the stories that most stuck with him was Laura Perry Smalts, a woman who previously identified as transgender and lived for years as a man before finding Christ.
“When she was in her early 20s, she made a decision to reject everything that she’d ever been taught,” he said. “She thought that she would find answers by transgendering herself into a man. And so over the course of 10 years, she surgically removed every female organ from her body.”
Ultimately, after altering her body, going on testosterone, and growing a beard while living as an individual named “Jake,” Smalts changed her heart and mind.
“Today, Laura lives a completely different life than the one that she once lived,” he said, noting that she has shared her testimony. “And it’s just an incredible testimony of the Lord’s goodness and kindness that no one is too far gone, that the Lord can save anybody in any type of circumstance.”
Ultimately, Hastings said he wants people to know it’s never too late to change.
“The Lord can save anybody,” he said. “So if you’ve got an aunt, an uncle, a child, and a cousin, a friend, a neighbor, and you think to yourself, ‘Man, this person is too far gone. They’re too far lost. They cannot be redeemed.’ That’s not true. … The Lord can take the most hardened sinner and transform their life.”
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