The Fortress & The Firebrand
Prophetic Stories of God's Grace In the Fire With a Vision of Purpose and Hope
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They were calling for me to come. “Pastor, we need help here. Now!” I thought it was a little rude. I was praying for people at the altar. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
As I went to the back row, I saw a man sitting on the floor. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and it looked like he had swallowed his tongue. Now, mind you, I had only been a pastor for about two years and a Christian for about five.
My first thought was fear. “This man is dead. He’s as white as candle wax,” I thought. But before I let that fear come over me, the “Fortress” showed up! I began commanding him to come back! “I claim the blood of Jesus over your life. You get back down here and live! Jim, live in Jesus’ name!” Suddenly he jerked like he had been hit by a defibrillator. Then he began to get nauseated, and we called for a waste basket. An ambulance was called by then, and they took him to the hospital where doctors said he had just had a heart attack. But he was fine now, they said. So, Jim insisted on driving himself home that afternoon!
When this middle-aged businessman was ‘gone,’ he said that he heard the spiritual warfare for his soul. Then he found himself standing in the presence of Jesus. When he heard the prayers to come back – did you catch that, our prayers were heard in heaven – he said Jesus reached out his arms and said, “You have to go back.”
I’m sharing some of these stories with you to help you understand that when we need God as our fortress, He often reveals himself after we’ve spent a fair amount of time in preparation. This whole book is about the encouragement needed to prepare. All those hard things that we go through are trials that are not meant to be wasted. God has a plan, but as someone said, we often find Him, not in church but under the rug in the bathroom where we’ve lain all night long in agony. Hard things don’t mean defeat. They’re just the canvas upon which God is about to paint His victory. But oh, how painful the unrolling of that canvas can be at times.
My preparation to stand up against the devil who resisted the word of healing that day was a long journey. But if you’ll be patient and keep reading, I’m going to weave a canvas upon which God is at work in your life and in our nation to get us ready for a great day.
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About the Book
Do you want to reclaim your nation, your family, your church, and your life? Then this is what God is calling you to do! To help you understand that calling, author Terry Hartikka offers his life message from heaven to you.
The Fortress and the Firebrand presents Pastor Hartikka’s journey through an unusual number of difficulties that might cause people to question how a God of love could allow such things. It details how God often turned the pain of the past into power for the future. Pastor Hartikka is as a brand plucked out of the fire, and Jesus is his fortress. Through the many lessons he learned along the way—from extreme fatigue to being used to raise a man up from the dead—he provides an honest look at how God took an ordinary man with many faults and showed him His love and presence.
This inspirational personal narrative serves as a message of encouragement and preparation for our future as individuals and as a nation.
About the Author
Terry Hartikka has dedicated himself to embracing the pain that life brings and turning it into a positive eternal force, the result of a lifetime of difficult experiences. A husband and father, he has been a pastor for forty years, served in the military, worked in the mines, and served as a television broadcaster with his own business.