The Book of Steve

I sat on my butt and waited for God to give me a writing project. It’s been four years. I can’t believe it, now that I look back.

I thought I was going to work with my old pastor, but God saved me from that. His ideas about God did not comport well with mine. I was okay with that, since the plan was for me to donate the writing and let him put his name on it, but I think he was wrong about a lot of major issues, and my guess is that God would not have been too excited about me working with him. Anyway, the pastor hired a PR lady to oversee the work, and she was impossible to work with. I never objected to anything she said, but somehow, I seemed to rub her the wrong way. I suppose something supernatural was at work. She eventually quit communicating with me.

That was 2008, I believe. I had a few ideas for books, but none panned out. I could have forced something. I could have barfed out a carnal idea on my own and thrown a book together, but there was just no way I was going to do that. I walk by faith, and one thing I know about walking by faith is that you don’t jump off a cliff without instructions. It was frustrating to wait and do nothing, but I had money in the bank, and God was constantly working in my life, so I didn’t worry too much.

Last week I got an idea. I sat down and started writing. Within a couple of hours, I had 3500 words. I don’t mean to sound like a snot, and I know that natural talent is utterly useless and even dangerous without divine guidance, but God gave me a gift. When I’m ready to go, I can produce. That’s a big blessing for a writer. Most writers love being writers but hate writing. Give a writer a thousand-word assignment, and right after he quits pumping his fist, he’ll turn white and go hide in a closet. I write a thousand words just to get warmed up. I once wrote a 44-page legal brief in one day. I’ve always been able to generate material without hesitation. Getting the opportunity is the hard part.

Here’s what I’m working on. As of now, I call it The Holy Spirit Diet. It’s not really about dieting. I explain that in the introduction. It’s about using God’s power to control your flesh. You can use it to lose weight. That’s not a small blessing. But you should be able to use it to beat other character problems. Drug addiction, alcoholism…who knows? Maybe even homosexuality. We’re always condemning it; surely God must have provided a way to beat it.

I’ve already written about this here. If you want a quick-start guide, it goes like this: get baptized with the Holy Spirit. Pray in tongues every day; at least two sessions. This builds your faith, and you will need supernatural faith in order to succeed. Fast regularly. Spend a lot of time praying with your understanding, and try to learn to hear from the Holy Spirit. When you start to feel God’s power in you, begin taking authority over your flesh. Talk to it the way you would talk to a dog or a mule. Order it to do what you want. Tell it to stop coveting money, or to stop craving drugs. Whatever it is you need. Tell it to be healed. Tell it to sleep better. Tell it to forgive and to stop being angry without cause.

This stuff works for me. My flesh is getting weaker and weaker all the time. If it continues to work, I plan to try to have the book published.

It’s very strange. The book isn’t funny. I’m writing it in a very straightforward way. To a reader, there would be no indication that I have the ability to write anything other than simple, clear prose. Ordinarily, when I write, I like to spread my wings and fly, like a musician exercising his chops. No one who reads this book will have any idea what the rest of my writing is like.

I’m also looking at houses. I haven’t visited any in person, but I’m looking. I was considering moving to the Winter Haven area, where my church has a new sister church. The other day, my friend Mike started telling me about Ocala. This is a town farther north in Florida. It’s full of horse farms. The soil and climate are better than they are in Winter Haven. The people are insanely conservative, and they’re religious. You can get a nice house with several acres of arable land for under $150,000.

In my church, God speaks through people, so getting a prophetic word is a very common thing. Yesterday a friend told me I should wait until I felt the desire to move in my spirit. He also told me I should wait for confirmation from my pastor. Because this is a Spirit-led pastor who isn’t out to milk me like a cow, I am content to do that. He’s not going to tell me I’m going to hell if I take my offerings to another church. He’ll give me the straight poop.

I don’t know what to do with my father and my sister. I can’t really say much about my sister, except that her life has utterly collapsed because of her extreme rebellion. I can’t give details, but I know homeless people who are much better off. My father wants to move to an area near the ocean, because he has a boat. He’s 80, and I don’t want him to be alone, but I am not going to make a major life choice based on his hobby. I pray for them both. I’ve asked God to do extraordinary things to help them get with the Holy Spirit program, and he has agreed, and he has put his seal on it. But that doesn’t mean they’ll listen to him.

What if I become an effective man of God? What if I succeed in helping strangers change their lives, while my sister ends up in prison or living on a bus bench? I suppose that’s not unusual. Jesus wasn’t respected in Nazareth. You can’t always help the people closest to you. They may be the people who respect you least.

It would be used against me. People would say, “If you’re so great, how did this happen?” The answer is that I’m not so great. God is great. And I can’t help anyone who won’t listen, regardless of their relationship to me.

God himself raised Satan. Look how that worked out. Had there been a way to fix him, it would have been done. He chose his own destiny. God is not to blame. You can’t save everyone, in a universe where there is free will.

In other news, I’m composing music. I’m too lazy to go back and see what I’ve written about this. Here’s my first piece. It has some structural issues. I was not expecting to write a piece of this nature, with its inherent complexity, so it’s taking me a while to get up to speed. My teacher is helping me. I’m hoping my next piece will be simpler. A song people can sing in church.

Lament for OA

This was originally based on nightmares I had when I was a kid. I had terrible nightmares every night. Satan appeared to me and tormented me on most nights. Sometimes I saw loved ones twisted apart over and over. This piece was supposed to capture the hopelessness, and then it was supposed to express the emotions of deliverance.

Last month, a pastor at my old church died. He was there for decades. He was not concerned with money or positive thinking. He wasn’t obsessed with filling stadiums or appearing on TBN. He cared about God, and about the people around him. He was treated very disrespectfully and relegated to unimportant jobs. I decided to dedicate the piece to him. We called him Pastor O.A. The working title is “Lament for O.A.” I’m hoping I can polish it up into something usable.

What else is happening? Fiddling with firearms. Still trying to come up with a new truck gun. Latest option: a Saiga AK47 with a trigger conversion and folding stock, so I can shoot it at an OAL of 26″. These guns are cheaper than Yugo pistols, and you don’t need a federal stamp to put stocks on them.

I feel like my life is my own, more than it used to be. I’m getting freer. That’s odd, because I am increasingly devoted to God. The other day I awoke early in the morning (as many people in my church do), and I started praying. I felt the Holy Spirit moving in me so powerfully I wondered if I was going to leave my body. I told God if he wanted to take me and leave my body for other people to worry about, to go ahead! I was completely serious. I surprised myself. This world is a mess. I’d like to accomplish more here, to make up for the stupid way in which I’ve lived much of my life, but I would love to live in a place where things actually work. I am tired of being beset by invisible, cowardly enemies around the clock. I’m tired of disease, age, and constant opposition. Victory and peace don’t sound so bad.

I can understand how Paul and Peter went to their deaths with eagerness. The Holy Spirit will give you that mindset when you need it.

If you want progress in your life, and you want your steps ordered so things work the way they should, for God’s sake, pray in tongues every day. Try to do it whenever you have a spare moment. More than ever, I see that this is the key. The other stuff will come, if you put this first.

That’s all I have right now.

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