<\/p>\n
Author Paul Hastings is on a mission to share powerful stories about \u201cordinary people\u201d inspired by an \u201cextraordinary God.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, that\u2019s part of the title of his book, \u201cCompelled: Ordinary People Extraordinary God,\u201d a project that shares incredible testimonies of people who have gone from darkness to light, have faced difficult circumstances \u2014 and found freedom.<\/p>\n
Listen to the latest\u00a0episode\u00a0of \u201cQuick Start\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI got really burned out, as you could imagine, just like the political cycle always, always on,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so my wife and I just began praying like, \u2018Lord, there are other things that you know I could do.\u2019 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\u2019m just being honest.\u201d<\/p>\n ***Please sign up for\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>CBN Newsletters<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0and download the\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>CBN News app<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to ensure you receive\u00a0the latest updates\u00a0from a Christian perspective.***<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n 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 \u201cCompelled\u201d podcast. The book simply builds upon that effort.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole premise of the podcast, the radio show, and the book \u2018Compelled\u2019 is to find people with these amazing stories that their life truly exemplifies what it means to live a life compelled by Christ,\u201d Hastings said. \u201cSo stories of stark transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cEach of these people has an amazing testimony \u2026 Christ just radically transformed who they are and how they lived,\u201d Hastings said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen she was in her early 20s, she made a decision to reject everything that she\u2019d ever been taught,\u201d he said. \u201cShe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, after altering her body, going on testosterone, and growing a beard while living as an individual named \u201cJake,\u201d Smalts changed her heart and mind.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, Laura lives a completely different life than the one that she once lived,\u201d he said, noting that she has shared her testimony. \u201cAnd it\u2019s just an incredible testimony of the Lord\u2019s goodness and kindness that no one is too far gone, that the Lord can save anybody in any type of circumstance.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, Hastings said he wants people to know it\u2019s never too late to change.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Lord can save anybody,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if you\u2019ve got an aunt, an uncle, a child, and a cousin, a friend, a neighbor, and you think to yourself, \u2018Man, this person is too far gone. They\u2019re too far lost. They cannot be redeemed.\u2019 That\u2019s not true. \u2026 The Lord can take the most hardened sinner and transform their life.\u201d<\/p>\n ***Please sign up for\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>CBN Newsletters<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0and download the\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>CBN News app<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to ensure you receive\u00a0the latest updates\u00a0from a Christian perspective.***<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Author Paul Hastings is on a mission to share powerful stories about \u201cordinary people\u201d inspired by an \u201cextraordinary God.\u201d In fact, that\u2019s part of the title of his book, \u201cCompelled: Ordinary People Extraordinary God,\u201d a project that shares incredible testimonies of people who have gone from darkness to light, have faced difficult circumstances \u2014 and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[10834,336,685,392,1760,790,660],"class_list":["post-32507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-detransitioning","tag-live","tag-man","tag-part","tag-podcast","tag-powerful","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}