(All this week, WP Films will be making each of their films free to watch for one day. Today is the fourth of those films, Holy Ghost. You can watch it for free at wpfilm.com/holy-sharathon/.)
After Father of Lights, I thought I was done making these movies. I was ready to move on to other types of documentaries, and I was happy with the trilogy I had created. But then a funny thing happened on the way to presumption: God showed up and redirected everything.
In late June, 2012, I was invited by my friends at Jesus Culture to come out to New York for their massive arena conference from which their Live From New York album was recorded. It was a great event, but was also where God decided to give me new marching orders. Bill Johnson was speaking on one of the nights, and I was just sitting there minding my own business when at one point, Bill said the words “Holy Spirit.” It was just a part of his train of thought, but you would have thought I had received an electric shock. By this point, I knew this feeling pretty well, and I knew God was trying to get my attention.
The Lord had arrested me, but I wasn’t quite sure why. I knew it had something to do with the Holy Spirit, so for the rest of Bill’s talk I just sat there and prayed, asking the Lord for any clarity—what was He doing here? What did He want me to do? At this point I was fully His, and He knew I would do anything He asked. The main impression I got was that it felt like I was supposed to make a movie about the Holy Spirit. But I didn’t want to make these movies anymore. I had finished that journey.
Almost as soon as Bill walked off stage, I grabbed him and told him that the most curious thing happened to me while he was talking. I told him that when he said the word “Holy Spirit” at one point, the Lord did something to me, and I thought I was supposed to make a movie about the Holy Spirit.
Bill then did something I’ve never seen him do. He stiffened up like a board and said, “Whoa!” Then he held up his arm. “Look at that,” he said. The hair was standing up straight on his forearm. He just looked at me, kind of smiled and said, “I think you’re supposed to make that movie!”
So that was that. I was about to head back into making these films. I really didn’t want to do it, so I had one condition for God. If I was going to make a movie about the Holy Spirit, I wanted Him to be the one to direct it. I was always kind of freaked out by the Holy Spirit, so it’s not like I had a great handle on this subject. So for the next few months, I’d just kind of sit in my studio and pray a lot about where I should film and who I should take with me. I’d hear little whispers from Him. He gave dreams to other people and to me. I’d receive prophetic words from people who had no idea what I was developing. It was just nuts.
We launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the film (Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing platform) and when it was over, Holy Ghost became the most funded Christian film in Kickstarter history, just beating out Blue Like Jazz. God was definitely on this thing. Now I just had to jump into the great unknown and see if it was even possible to make the first film in history to be directed by the Holy Spirit.
Holy Ghost is available to watch free today, April 19, at wpfilm.com/holy-sharathon/. You can watch the rest of the movies in the series each day leading up to Easter, when you can watch our newest film, Finger of God 2, also free.
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