 to be in a spiritual battle, you are in one. There is a battle for good and evil, but there is good news for you on Hope Today. I'm Amy Schaefer, I'm here with Corey Langford. Corey, I cannot wait, cannot wait to dive in to this topic and discussion today. Listen, Spiritual Warfare is at an all time high. We are joined with us today by award winning author, Laura Gallier, of the Delusion Series, and let me tell you, she is loaded with information, she is loaded with resources. If you have a teenager, if you have a young person that you seem like you cannot reach at all, you need to get them to watch this today, this is gonna be incredible. Yeah, that's why I love Christian television most of all, because we discuss things that are happening in the world, what's happening with the youth, what's happening with kids, and on today's program, you are gonna gain some wisdom as to why today's youth are fascinated by the paranormal, yet are skeptical of the Bible. Wow, can you believe it? We'll also feature Jean Watson's timely Lord of the Dance, Irish Ballad, and we will minister to you and pray for you as the Holy Spirit moves in your life. Here's the deal. Now, Corey, I don't know if you know this about me or not, but I love fiction books. No, like love. Really? Yes, so to me, I just feel like a kid in a candy store with these books today, how applicable they are to what's happening in culture. And you know what, here's what I say, bring on the spiritual warfare. We are not unequipped, we're not unready, but we have been equipped with everything that we need for life and godliness, so bring it on. Yes, and I'm excited, because I've always been a young storyteller. After school, I used to go upstairs in my room, I used to write little stories about angels and fighting demons, and so when I saw this today, I said, oh, I'm so excited to interview because it is a spiritual warfare. Even Ephesians 6 and 12 says, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness and high places, and we have to go into understanding how we are fighting and what we're dealing with. So, our guest today, Laura Gallier, seeks to bring awareness and understanding to issues surrounding the supernatural. Having battled her own enemies of the soul throughout her teen and young adult years, she is on a mission to expose deception with the light of truth, bringing hope and healing to a generation in need. Laura is the author of an award-winning series called The Delusion, and we welcome her to hope today. Laura, welcome, so glad that you're here with us today. Thank you, glad to be here. Thanks for your program. Yes, listen, let's get right into this. First and foremost, why did you feel inspired to start this series? Right, well, it really dates back to my own broken teen years in childhood. I grew up in a fatherless home with a single mom who did not teach the things of God or any kind of biblical worldview, and ultimately went through very broken teen years, early promiscuity and things, just looking for love in all the wrong places. So, ended up having just this dramatic encounter after encounter with God that ultimately led to living for him and having a heart to teach biblical sexuality, and in that, as I would address parents and teens, I realized there was such a disbelief even in the church about the presence of evil, and so our morality was really about being a good girl or a good boy, and we weren't understanding that God's commandments are for our protection, not just of these consequences, but also that demonic realm that seeks to explore our rebellion and even our pain. So that led on this journey of going from writing nonfiction materials for parents and teens, particularly about biblical sexuality, to writing a fiction that centers on a high school that's plagued by suicide epidemic, since suicide so epitomizes believing those lies and being hurt and wounded and the enemy rushing into that hurtful place, and so the main character begins to see the battle that's taking place in his school. Now, what I love about what you decided to do is you're doing something that's kind of abrasive because I feel like a lot of churches today don't really wanna talk about the spiritual realm or the demonic realm. Some just like, hey, God loves you and get away from sin. When did it shift for you to start to deal in the supernatural aspect of things? Yeah, because if we don't have a biblical worldview that we're in a war, our whole spirituality is gonna be off. And some churches may avoid the topic because they falsely presume it's gonna breed fear when actually it's very empowering and we need to know the schemes of our enemy. We do have all victory over him. We don't have to be afraid. I will say very boldly that any kind of religious legalistic spirit hates teaching on the demonic because it is ultimately exposing their father, if you'll allow me to say it so boldly. And so there's different reasons that churches avoid it, but when we don't understand, Jesus made many, many references right there in scripture to that demonic realm. It's not that everything's a devil. I'm a huge proponent of a holistic spirit soul body approach in my own life. I've had to renew my mind to things that were, there was just me. It wasn't the devil, it was me. It was my stinking thinking. So I certainly don't blame everything on the devil, but to not understand his schemes and how he seeks to get us off track and really still kill and destroy, it's dangerous to call ourselves a Christian and not be aware. You know, I was watching a clip on YouTube from the potential movie that is to come and we know that there's gonna be a movie because this is incredible about a young man seeing into the spirit. Have you had your own supernatural encounters throughout your life where you had a demonic encounter within your life growing up by chance? Absolutely did. A friend's mom conveyed the gospel to me when I was just in elementary school and when she went to grab my hands to pray with me, the phone rang and she picked it up and no one was there. She hung it up, grabbed my hands, phone rings again, picks it up, says hello, no one's there. Third time, she finally unplugged it from the wall. And so you could say there was that supernatural element, but again, sometimes we think of the devil and those kind of eerie experiences, but where he really was the most devastating in my life is I believed lies, I had childhood trauma and I was partnering with the enemy in my pain and doing things his way, which led to destruction, an unplanned pregnancy, which of course, the baby was amazing, she's my daughter and she's now grown into mother herself, but that was not the consequence, but not being prepared for that pregnancy, experiencing a quick marriage, a quick divorce. I went through a devastating time and even way back in 2019, which hasn't been that long ago, had all this childhood trauma explode in my life, which was just fear off the charts. And we have to understand that Satan works through fear, but God's perfect love thrives out fear. And so that's really the message in the journey. Wow, what I'm learning from these books and learning from you is that you're like an ambassador or an advocate to teenagers in their life. Looking at some of this, it says more than four in 10 youth report that they feel persistently sad or hopeless, but from reading this series, there has been a transformation. Why do you think that is? Why do you think them reading these books is really changing the narrative for them? Yeah, I actually have a testimonial on my social media of a young man who read the series in seventh grade when he was experiencing suicidal thoughts and it was such a defining paradigm shift to realize that those weren't just his thoughts. Now he had the choice to agree with them or disagree, but if those were not his thoughts telling him to kill himself and when he had this paradigm shift that, wait a minute, there's a fight going on and I'm the valuable prize. I'm who God loves, I'm who the enemy hates because God loves me so much. It truly started his life in the right trajectory. And he'll tell you even in that testimonial that he is now a young man who's married and has a wonderful life and he wouldn't be there. Had he not ultimately read the delusion and had this paradigm shift, which is meant to point people to the Bible. I think that the title of these three books are really important and I would like for you to unpack why you titled them that. The delusion, the deception and the defiance. I mean, it's things that we are seeing and experiencing and talking about and watching in the news right now in our culture. Why did you choose those three D's? Yeah, great question. Well, ironically, I actually chose the delusion because I know what delusion means. It means to believe a lie, right? And consider the truth to be a lie. So it's to have our whole paradigm flipped and the protagonist in the story is wrestling with what is truth and what is lies. And it was after I had chose that title that I even saw it jumped off the pages of Second Thessalonians that in the last days there will be a great delusion. So certainly having clarity of mind and seeing reality is at the core of what we want in our lives. And that centers around getting free from delusion. The deception, again, closely related to delusion. It's believing a lie, believing we're right when we're wrong. And so that fits that storyline perfectly as the protagonist and that story continues with his journey. He's so headstrong and arrogant in some areas. You'd have to read it to see how he ends up getting back on track. And then finally, the defiance. We are either defying evil or we're defying God. There really is no gray area. Jesus said, if you're not for me, you're against me. If you're not helping gather skulls, if you're not helping gather souls, you're scattering them. And so the titles end up being, in a sense, very prophetic call to this generation, I believe. I think you were spot on with those titles. You also did win a Christie Book Award. So congratulations on that. Are these books just for the young? Because honestly, I love almost addicted to fiction books. And I love books that mean something. Are these for adults, grandparents, or are they just for teens or kids? Definitely not just for teens and kids. The main character is a senior in high school and he grows older throughout the series, but we have a lot of people contact me that are adults that have received a ton out of it. I'm an adult, clearly, and I've written it and certainly spoke to me even in the writing of it. So you have been carrying this vision for such a long time, so many words, so many dreams. Can you share with us, what is your vision from here? Where would you like this to go? Yeah, I would like as many people as possible to read it for all the right reasons because I truly believe it's a prophetic parable. That's how the Lord has helped frame it for me and it points people to him, especially people who don't believe. So it's meant to get in the hands of people who they're not gonna go to church, they're not gonna read the Bible and believe any of it. The main character is atheistic. He doesn't have a biblical worldview and my heart just bleeds for that generation and for those kind of people who are critical thinkers. It's okay. And secondly, we are working on that feature film, would be a series of films and we could have made it by now. We could have done it. We've had enough finances to do it by now, but we don't wanna cut corners. We wanna do it excellent. We want it to go around the world and be top quality. So definitely working on that and further along than we've ever been. And then there's two more books in this series in my heart, if not some prequels to follow. So there's a lot more content coming out as well. Wow, that is absolutely incredible. Just talking about that a little bit, I love how the main character is an atheist. Many wouldn't take that position, especially with like Christian type work. It's like, okay, let's make the first person the believer in this and that. What made you go that approach to make him an atheist? Yeah, I appreciate people who ask hard questions and in a sense want proof. I know that sounds like it's antagonistic to faith, but we do need some level of proof or we'll just fall for anything. And certainly the prophecies in the Bible, creation alone, I just recently did this on my social media and talked about how creation speaks to the very proof of God. And so I appreciate people who ask hard questions. I've had to ask hard questions. And our main character wrestles with, hey, there's these, he calls them watchmen, but we would understand them as angels and he doesn't understand, why don't they show up more? Why don't they do more? These are very real world questions that if we're gonna walk out our faith authentically, we need to be asking these and know that God is not afraid of our questions. And I wanted people to be able to journey along with Owen in his authentic journey. He doesn't arrive at faith overnight. And even when he does grow in some faith and his faith is challenged, I wanted it to be realistic to life in that way that people could identify with and grow from. You know, in this trilogy, you do address heavy topics, you know, as we discuss suicide or mental health and atheism, but what hope filled faith? Are we gonna find weaved through these series of books? Yeah, what we're gonna find is God is there and he understands us and he's compassionate and he's so much bigger than just a church building. He's with us and he meets us in our raw gritty needs and he's compassionate. And he truly is a God that in him we can live and move and have our being. And he has defeated the evil one. It doesn't feel like that at times. Satan's the master of illusion. A lot of times it looks and feels like he's winning, but truly God has the victory, but we have to do things God's way. And that's where we get caught up sometimes. We think we're gonna do things in our own strength. It doesn't work, but he's right there to pick us up. And all of that is a part of the thread of the story throughout. Wow, listen, you know, we're gonna be praying for you through this, because I know one thing about spiritual warfare is when you start uncovering things that the enemy does not want people to see, he tries to come after you. Have you been experiencing levels of attack since you've been really doing this ministry and changing people's lives yourself? I mean, no question back in, it was literally the exact date of April 8th, 2019. And all this childhood trauma just exploded in my life that had been suppressed that I haven't dealt with. I hadn't dealt with at the time. And again, it was the process of mine renewal. It was very physical and that my chemicals went crazy because fear does that. It was also very demonically charged. And I had had a dream in the eighth grade of defeating Satan on a movie set, but it was this horrible nightmare where he was trying to kill me. And so it's a whole story there to tell the whole dream, but suffice it to say it was prophetic. And ultimately this double-edged sword, and I was only in the eighth grade, I set a sword with a line down the middle. Didn't even know it was the type of the word of God. The devil was in the stream, literally Satan. And he saw the sword and gasped and just shrank at my feet and cried real tears, by the way. In the dream, I couldn't believe how fragile he was as much as he acts like he's big and tough. He's actually very afraid and very fragile. So it's been, it's been very prophetic because that dream took place on a movie set when I was just a teenager. Wow. Wow, there's something that I'm feeling here. When you were talking about this and sharing this experience, I feel like there is a book behind the book. I don't know if you thought about that at all, but the true story behind the writer of these stories, would you ever consider a type of book that went into your life and what you've experienced yourself? I mean, it's honestly so amazing that you would say that because just yesterday with my daughter, we were praying about all this and the movie and there's a lot going on with all of it. And we were just saying, man, there's a story behind the story. We just had that. So yes, I'm open to anything God calls me to do that would potentially bear fruit in other people's lives. Well, that's confirmation. Cause I felt like the Lord was saying, there's a lot in your own story that people can say, okay, what inspired her? What did she go through? Cause I think that's what people want is that authenticity of us telling our true stories. Laura, can you tell us how can people pre-order the delusion series or where can they find it to get it? Any information about how they can get this book? Yeah, it is right there on Amazon already and they do sell the three books set in either Kindle or Softcover. You can just click it. If you'd like an audible or hardcover, you just search up the name of the particular novel right there on Amazon and you can get it. And I do offer a free download of the first chapter on my website, laragallier.com. Laura, real quick before we have to end this interview, how would you encourage parents of your main character, Owen Edmonds, today? How would you encourage them if they're believing God for their son or their daughter? Yeah, I would just say do not fail to pray for them and ask the Lord what is that scripture or two that he would have you stand on and we don't walk by faith. I mean, excuse me, we don't walk by sight, we walk by faith. We do not walk by sight, we walk by faith. So cling to that verse he's given you and know that love drives out fear behind every depression and most mental emotional disorders, there's fear. So as parents, if we can ask some good questions, especially with God guiding us, we can get to the root of the fear and God wants to bring assurances and drive out those fears that then cause us to be mentally and emotionally unstable. Laura, this has been an incredible conversation. I'm gonna be praying for you. We're gonna be praying for you here and just know that God is getting ready to do something powerful. I see this in cinemas, I see this everywhere. I see you touring and he's healing you through this process. Thank you so much for being with us today on Hope Today. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Great conversation and topic today, but right now we have a throwback Thursday with the song from Jean Watson in 2015, Lord of the Dance. We danced to the moon and the stars and the sun. People said it was a shape. They whipped and they stripped and they hung. I feel today like the devil is dancing all, not on just your shoulder, but on your life and in your house. And I mean, you might be even trapped with a spirit of fear, not knowing what to do or what's gonna happen, but I just wanna remind you today, like we're talking about the supernatural. We're talking about good and evil, God and Satan. And I think it's so important that you remember who the characters are in the story. This is a game changer because it says Satan is roaring around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, but it also says that Jesus crushed his head, ripped him of all authority and power over your life. It kind of reminds me, Corey, of the movie The Wizard of Oz. Remember the little Oz? He sounds all big and bad and scary and demonic and controlling, but he's just a little, little guy behind a curtain, pulling a bunch of knobs. And I'm just saying Satan is not that big. He's not that bad. He has been stripped and ripped of his authority over you. So what you have to do is you have to rise up and you have to know who you are, know who's you are, and you have to know your authority as a believer in Christ. You walk into that room and devils have to flee and tremble because it's Christ in you, the hope of glory. Yes, Amy, and you said it. You said it when you talk about authority. That is something that the enemy is most afraid of, is authority. When we don't know who we are in God and when we don't know our identity in Christ, we have no authority. We had a great interview today with Laura Gallier and it was eye-opening about her book series. We talk a lot about supernatural, but one thing I want you to understand today is that there is evidence of the glory of God that's being revealed in your life by how you got attacked when you were in your childhood. And many of you right now, you may be watching this right now, you're saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, where's this going? Even as a child, one thing the enemy tries to do is plant seeds in you when you're a baby to destroy you. What does he did even in scripture when he knew that there was a great deliverer coming? He tried to kill all of the two-year-olds in younger, trying to look for Moses. And then that was a foreshadow of Jesus. Once again, here's King Hare, kill all of the babies. There is something about knowing the potential in your life by how the enemy attacks you in your childhood. But listen, I want you to pick up those books, get those audible books as well to listen to while you're driving and get it into your teen's mind or your children so that the narrative can change and that they don't feel alone in their struggle. Because I know, Amy, you are a pastor and you lead a bunch of young people, you have a great ministry. I know young people struggle because they feel like God doesn't understand them or that they can't relate. Do you experience that? Do you know that they're calling this age the age of anxiety? Wow, that makes sense. It makes sense. That should bother us as believers. The age of anxiety? Are you like the visuals that we're seeing all the time, the things that we're watching, the things that we're looking at? It is feeding fear. It is feeding and suicidal thoughts. It is feeding, you're not valuable, you're not worthy, you're not loved, you're not good enough, you'll never achieve this, you'll never have that. Why do you even live? Why are you even existing? And it is a spiritual battle. But here's the thing that the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus said, I've come to give him life and life more abundantly. That's why we exist as a Christian television network so people can know Jesus. So people can meet Jesus because Jesus changes everything. Jesus will break that oppression off of your children. Jesus will bring life back into your home and into your soul. Will you give us a call today at 888-665-4483? We wanna pray for you. We wanna see freedom and breakthrough and light and life in your home today.