For The 1st Time Ever!
MY FULL TESTIMONY
by Bishop Steve Pegram
(WARNING! This is a long read. But, if you want to know
who Steve Pegram is, and learn about the journey that
brought him to the place in Christ he is at today, you
seriously need to read this entire testimony)
I have held the things that you are about to read within my spirit for my entire life. I have never shared my testimony with anyone outside of my wife, Kathy. Many circumstances lead to my keeping these things within my spirit, but I have been prompted by the Holy Spirit that it is finally time to share my full story. (I did share once a partial testimony, but never ever what you are about to read). I do so now with sincere humbleness of heart, for I know that the ONLY reason I am here today is because of the grace and mercy of a fantastic God!
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Although I had been raised in a Pentecostal church by Godly parents, and came to know Christ and was filled with the Holy Spirit at 9-years-old, my teenage years were a constant up and down spiritual, and truthfully, mental battle. I never felt like I truly fit in with anyone. I was basically a loner and after graduating high-school I honestly didn't know where my life was going. And then, I found the military. For the first time, I fit in. For the first time I felt a kindred-ship with the brotherhood of warriors that I was now around. From the moment I joined the U.S. Army, there was no doubt about it, I wanted to be a career soldier. And it was from that perspective that I actually began to plan out my career goals. First, be an airborne paratrooper with the elite 82nd Airborne Division; second, transfer to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne); and third, after retiring from the military I had already set my goal to become a paramilitary operator. (At least wise, that's what “I” thought was going to happen.)
It was after I was already in the military that I married the most amazing woman I had ever met - my now wife of 42 years, Kathy. And I am so glad that God brought her into my life, because my early twenties serving in the U.S. Army were a constant up and down spiritual battle. The constant pressure to be an elite warrior in any elite unit is stressful enough, but when you add in certain experiences that you go through in the military, they can be a detriment to both your mental and spiritual health as well. Kathy was there through the thick and thin of it encouraging me, keeping me grounded, and yes, putting me in check if I started straying off the path too far. I am so glad that God gave her to be my wife, because I truly needed her through two instances that have forever shaped me and still have an impact upon me to this day.
The first one was being sent to war. I remember it like it was yesterday. The date was 23 October 1983. I was sitting on the couch teaching Kathy how to play the card game Rummy. Our phone rang with an alert notice that I was to instantly report to Fort Bragg. You see, as part of the 82nd Airborne Division (America’s premier elite paratrooper unit), we were expected to always, and I mean always, be ready to head to base, if that phone call came. (And it did several times in my career). Meaning, we always had to have a combat rucksack packed ready to go so that all we had to do was pick it up and head to base immediately.
The 82nd Airborne Division prides itself on its eighteen-hour deployment window, which means that once the President of the United States (POTUS) issues the order to launch an attack, from that moment until we were up in the air heading to strike, is only eighteen hours, which is quite the feat given everything, from every unit going within the Division, having to be loaded up, taken to Pope Air Force Base, and then loaded onto the planes carrying us to whatever far off country we were heading to.
After leaving Fort Bragg behind, we flew first to Barbados to unload our attack and utility helicopters so that they could fly straight into Grenada on October 25. We then loaded back into the aircraft so that we could be transported to the island to bring contact with the Cuban and Russian troops that were embedded on the island. Due to the already intense firefights that were ongoing between the enemy and the Army Rangers and Delta Force troops that had earlier that morning entered combat operations, the runway at Point Salines Airport was a hot zone. Thus, our C-130 aircraft could not land. Rather, upon descent to the runway, the Air Force crew lowered the tailgate of the aircraft and we were told to be prepared to jump off as soon as the plane’s wheels touched down.
Upon the wheels hitting the pavement, you could hear the loud whine of the plane trying to slow down. Within just a matter of a few seconds, while the plane was still moving, the order was given for us to disembark as fast as we possibly could. Before, all I could hear was the engines of the airplane screaming as the Air Force pilots attempted to slow the plane down as much as they could for us, but, now that I had jumped off the tailgate onto the tarmac, I could hear the sound of mortars exploding all around the landing zone, as well as heavy machine guns firing off on full automatic.
Over the next couple of days, in addition to firefights against Cuban forces (I know I said that this would be my full testimony, but I just am not comfortable sharing those details), we executed countless patrols and missions all over the southern part of the island. One incident though really stands out. On 27 October we were tasked with flying in squads from both the 1/75th and 2/75th Ranger Battalions, to attack Camp Calivigny, the Cuban barracks housing both Cuban and other pro-communist forces. The assault was devastating; resulting in 3 out of our first 4 UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters either crashing or being shot down, resulting in the deaths of 3 soldiers and the injury of 12 others. Out of the 8 Blackhawks deployed to Camp Calivigny that day, only 2 were undamaged, with some of our aircraft having up to 45 bullet holes in the rotors, fuel tanks and cabin.
The second incident that has forever affected me, especially mentally, happened on 13 March 1985. On a training mission at Fort Bragg, one of my unit's UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters crashed. It immediately caught on fire as aviation fuel and hydraulic fluids spilled out all over the aircraft. The fire was so intense that no one could even get close to the helicopter to try and pull out the 12 paratroopers that were aboard that day. Sadly, all 12 of those precious souls that lost their lives that day were burned so badly that they had literally been burned out of their very own skin and it was hard to distinguish whether or not all their body parts were accounted for. Over the next few days we spent hour after hour going through the wreckage, pulling out and separating any items that were left inside. The smell of burnt flesh was overwhelming!! It was absolutely horrible. Sifting through the wreckage we found everything from burnt off feet still inside boots, to their dog tags, and further everything else imaginable. I had never smelt anything like it in my life. Horrifying would not even come close to describing how awful the stench of it was! I have carried the names of those 12 soldiers in my wallet ever since. Even now, 40 years later, I still get teary-eyed and emotional as I remember those twelve souls.
The fast pace of a rapid deployment force never slows down, so as all this was happening, we were continuing to train and jump out of airplanes. And let me tell you, I had some wild times doing that! Everything from sustaining multiple concussions, to tearing every tendon and ligament in my left leg from the knee down, to being drug across the drop zone due to high winds, to the Air Force one time missing the Drop Zone entirely and giving us the green light to jump at the wrong spot causing 87 of us to crash land through trees. That day I bounced off of limb after limb getting cut, scratched and bruised all over my body until all of a sudden I came to an abrupt stop 20 feet off of the ground as my chute was hung in the tops of the tall N.C. pines. I was hurt, but I was alive.
Even with the heartache and pain that I had already been through, it was during that same year, 1985, that I re-enlisted for another 4 years in the Army. After all, I was career Army! Over the next couple years my career was advancing rapidly as I was sent to multiple military schools to expand my expertise. After I was promoted for the 3rd time, I was assigned to a very prestigious assignment, as the 82nd Airborne had just been assigned as the first ever Airborne unit to receive that brand new AH-64 Apache helicopters. I was promoted to be the section sergeant of a unit and was then transferred to spend six-months training in Fort Hood, Texas in preparation of receiving them. But it was there that my life began to suddenly change and change drastically!
While on a parachute jump into Hood DZ, Fort Hood, Texas, on 29 Nov. 1987, I broke my back at T8 – T9 vertebrae. And, it shouldn’t have happened either! The winds that day were 22 knots! The maximum wind speed for executing “safe” airborne operations was 14 knots. Anything above 14 knot winds, the jump is supposed to be canceled. But a General and his staff wanted to watch an airborne operation and he overrode the normal safety requirements just to watch us jump. When I hit the ground, I broke my back, and my head slammed into the ground so hard that I was knocked unconscious with a severe concussion, a traumatic brain injury, and lost all my memories of recent events, and although I didn't know it at the time, would end up losing entire years of my early life that I have never recovered to this present day. Upon arriving at the hospital I was later told that I didn't even remember my wife's name or our phone number, and that they had to go through my wallet just to find my contact information in order to contact her back at Fort Bragg.
The next incident that continued to re-shape the narrative of my future life, happened on 31 May 1988 back at Fort Bragg, N.C., my duty station with the 82nd Airborne Division. After going through 6-months of therapy and living in a back brace, I finally was well enough to start back full-time duties once again as a United States Paratrooper. After being discharged from medical care and authorized to go back on jump status again, I was manifested on another airborne operation, this time jumping onto Nijmegen Drop Zone at Ft. Bragg. Sadly though, my back wasn’t healed enough and when we jumped that day, sure enough, when I hit the ground, I broke my back again at the exact same place! Thus, once again I had to go back to medical care, being treated for my second broken back.
Finally, if all that wasn’t enough, in addition to those injuries I sustained while on Airborne Operations, also in the Fall of 1988 I received one additional serious injury on a non-Airborne Operation. I sustained a compression fracture to my spine at T7 - T8 while jumping off the back of a 2 1/2 Ton Truck. So, all totaled, there were three times in the short space of 1987 to 1988 that I fractured my spine! The first two times I fractured T8 – T9 and the third time T7 – T8!
It was during these times that the Lord really began dealing with me. I had allowed my spiritual life to wane during my years serving as a paratrooper, but now God had my attention and had it good. Not only did I rededicate my life to the Lord in a new and profound way, He also began to call me to preach His Gospel. It was not an easy thing either. You see, Kathy had told me that she would NEVER, and I mean NEVER, be married to a preacher. But, every single time that I would pray I would hear the Lord calling me to preach His Word. The truth is, I said no. As a matter of fact I said no many times, for every single time that I would pray I would hear Him calling me. Eventually it even got so bad that I quit praying for a while just so I wouldn’t hear it. After all, I was a career Airborne soldier and thought my life was already planned out.
After six months though of fighting against the call to preach, needless to say, God finally won the battle and in 1989 I accepted His call upon my life to preach the Word. Initially it was a really hard decision to make, but the amazing thing was that from the moment I said yes, to the time I was in a pulpit preaching my very first message, was a mere two-weeks! Talk about a God thing! During the next few months, as I gradually pressed forward with my leaving the military and going into the ministry, I began to preach here and there at local churches near Fort Bragg. As I did, God began to reward me, even though my somewhat reluctant hesitation was still there. But, praise be to His holy Name, He knew what He was doing all along!
As the years started passing by, now that I was a civilian and a minister ministering to churches all over the United States of America, God allowed me to see some of the most amazing moves of His Spirit that a person could ever hope to see. I was a nobody with no preachers in my family to help me get started. I had no contacts, no connections, no inroads, no nothing, except God. But, within only a year or so of preaching I was asked to join the state evangelism team in Eastern N.C. I did so, but at the same time God was opening doors for me now all over the U.S. After spending three-years on their team, I was then called to North Georgia and asked to join their state evangelism team in 1993. Now, within a space of only three years out of the military, I had been offered two slots on two different state evangelism teams, as well as preaching all over the nation establishing a national ministry also.
There is a lot that I could mention that happened during the course of my ministry, but that is not the emphasis here. I will say that over the past 36 years of preaching His Word, we have seen 15,000 experiences in Christ, preached over 3,000 messages, saw 4,044 people baptized in the Holy Ghost, was invited to speak at over 500 cities, 31 states and 4 foreign countries (Bahamas, India, Pakistan and Africa), became the author of 4 books, ("Take That Devil!", "The Inner Realm Of The Spirit", "Select Messages On The Holy Ghost", and my new book due out in 2025 “The Spiritual Warfighter Manual”), published my own magazine for over a decade, and conducted many long running revivals from four to eight weeks each, including a mighty 28-week revival that saw an entire region set on fire by God’s Spirit. Through the years we have seen God do many miraculous things and have seen the power of God move in mighty ways. But we also have seen the enemy move against us through every imaginable way. We stirred up a lot of devils, that's for sure. The stronger the anointing of the Holy Spirit became, both upon me and in our revivals, the more the enemy fought.
In addition to God calling me into evangelism, though, He also placed on me a prophetic and apostolic anointing to cover churches and ministries as well. Due to this, we established relationships with hundreds of churches across the world. Specifically, God gave me 4 areas of ministry that I have concentrated on for all the years that I have preached the Gospel;
1. Teaching people how to be baptized in the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance.
2. Teaching about the Anointing and the Glory of God and how it relates to the Tabernacle.
3. Teaching on the Kingdom of God and establishing dominion in the earth.
4. Teaching on Spiritual Warfare and dealing with territorial spirits.
And it was the last one, Spiritual Warfare, that led to multiple battles with the enemy that are hard to believe. Shoot, I might not even have believed it myself if I hadn't lived through it! But, I promise you, each of the things that I summarize here actually did happen. I even hesitate to share these things, due to their sensitive nature, but if you are going to know who I am and understand where I am now in my walk with God and why I have the passion that I do for the advancement of the Kingdom of God, then you need to know that I have actually fought a few battles. Although I am reluctant to do so, I now realize that the time to finally share some of these stories has come.
My first encounter, having to cast a demon out of a human being, came early on in my ministry. It was after a revival service one night when some men came running in to get me and the Pastor of the church I was at. They were bringing a lady in that lived next door to the church that had just attempted to kill herself. When they carried in to the church, she literally went insane. She started talking in a deep guttural man's voice screaming, “No, no, you will not take me inside there!” It literally took 5 men to carry her in. But it was what I saw that shocked me the most. She was covered in blood. On both sides of her neck were two long incisions from behind each ear almost down to the juggler vein. I was to find out later that the demon that inhabited this lady had told her that she needed to kill herself if she was to be free from the anguish she was going through. It had actually told her to get a knife and slit her throat, to which she took the knife and cut her throat from behind one ear down almost to the middle of her throat, to which the demon then told her that was not god enough and to cut the other side of her throat as well, which she did. It just so happened that one of the church people who knew her had felt led to go to her house and see if she was okay, where they found here covered in blood. Thank the Almighty God though! That night God drove that demon out of her and set her gloriously free, and even healed her throat by the time she was through praying through. Such was my introduction to real, hardcore, serious spiritual warfare.
In addition to having to cast demons out of people through the years, I also had multiple attempts made on my life: once by the Freemasons for preaching against their organization, and once by drug dealers after I had a vision of a huge marijuana field and was shown by the Spirit how to get to it. I revealed it and 3 days later the DEA raided that exact field and seized over 3-million dollars worth of marijuana crops. (Mind you, I had never even been to that area of the nation before to preach, so I knew nothing about it, much less how to drive anywhere). During these times, myself and my family literally had to be kept in a private house that the Pastor had found for us, of which they told no one where we were staying in order to protect us, so no one could find us while we were in revival with them for 4 weeks.
In addition to these, and other attempts, we also had a multitude of wild battles through the years; such as, driving home from revival one night and finding our house shot up with bullets; having witches come to my meetings and sit there the entire time chanting against me and the revival. (It didn't work. The Holy Spirit drove them out of the building and we watched them literally run out.); had the power go out in the churches I was ministering at, when there was not a single other building anywhere near the church that had lost power; broke my toe in two different revivals; tore my groin muscle in an altar service at another revival; had a severe case of shingles attack me where I couldn't walk for three-weeks; had a deep, dark, black ominous cloud settle over the top of one church I was at after once again preaching against Freemasonry; had to keep documents stored in a safety deposit box due to the threat of people breaking into our offices to steal sensitive documents we had concerning a well known television newscaster who had made threats against a ministry; received phone calls in the middle of the night from people telling me that if I didn't stop preaching like I was that they were going to skin my family alive, burn pentagrams into their foreheads and nail their bodies to the walls of my house; have had cars come out of nowhere to try to hit me head on, time and time again, with one of those times while driving to a revival, a lady pulled out in front of me and totaled my car. I was knocked unconscious, suffered yet another TBI, broke my sternum, cracked three ribs, and broke my back at T5 – T6. (YES! This was the 4th time that I broke my back). There are many more stories I could tell but you catch the drift – my ministry was a spiritual warfare magnet.
But it was to be the next event that would forever alter my life, both personally and as a minister. It happened on 9/11/2001.
“9/11” SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 and AFTERWARDS
9/11/2001 – 2002: Although I was still ministering wide open, after 9/11 happened, sometime during the spring of 2002, something started changing in me. Suddenly I started experiencing the exact same problems, the same nightmares, the same torments that I had previously experienced after both returning home from Grenada in 1983, and after the horrific helicopter crash in 1985, but this time it was even worse. I began to hear about my former unit and the combat operations they were involved in. And that led to me keeping up with all of the other combat units. I started keeping up with the KIA counts and even carried a detailed printout of the latest casualty numbers in my wallet. (I still carry it to this day, of which the final KIA total was 7,051 American lives). I began to follow everything I could on the news about anything that was going on. And I didn’t just read about it or hear about it either - it was like I was living it. Almost every single time I heard of a new KIA, I would break down and start crying uncontrollably.
I started sinking into a deep, long-term depression, and whereas I had never had nerve problems before, now all of a sudden I was experiencing full blown panic attacks and anxiety attacks on a regular basis. I started losing sleep, having severe nightmares again, and started sleep-walking. During this time frame, I even had full blown panic attacks every single night for six-months where I would start panicking, feeling like someone was trying to kill me by suffocating me to death, and I would run out of my house into my backyard, where I would spend the entire night standing back there with a flashlight until the sun broke the next morning. I literally had to sleep outdoors every night for six-months.
During all of this, for the next three years up until 2004, I started to have one health problem after another begin to manifest in my physical body. Although I had always had problems with my back, due to the multiple breaks I have had, now everything began to happen to me. Slowly, month after month, new things would begin to occur, and as they did my health started spiraling downwards. Due to all of this happening, I started to not be healthy enough to conduct revivals like I had always done before and started to limit my full-time schedule.
2004 - Although my health was getting worse by the month at this point, between 9/11/2001 through 2004 I still conducted 90 weeks of revivals and conferences. But then, the unthinkable happened. In mid-2004 I received a call to come by the headquarters of the denomination I am an Ordained Bishop with. I honestly went in thinking that all that was happening was that the official who called me in wanted to just see how I was doing, since he was a friend of mine. (Or so I thought!) At this time I was working on their evangelism team and upon arriving I was promptly told that their board had voted to remove me from their evangelism team. I was further told by this official that they were NOT a “welfare agency” and that they were not going to support me. (I found out later that year by one of the board members that was a lie and that they had actually voted to give me another two years to see if my health got any better!!!) I drove away that day literally crying so hard that I have no idea at all how I made it home without crashing, but thankfully God somehow helped me to make it home.
In one fell swoop, I was lied to by someone who I thought was my friend and lost both the housing allowance and health insurance I was receiving for being on their Evangelism Team! Now, we didn't have any way to pay our house payments any longer due to my decreased revival schedule, and we had no insurance to pay for all of my medical bills! It was immediately after this incident that I entered into a very deep, dark depression. After the initial shock of what happened wore off, I was mad, but more than anything I was hurt. Let me change that - I was devastated. (Just as a little side note here though: Yes, at first, I was bitter, angry and hurt beyond words. Now, though, I have forgiven him and hold no malice or bitterness in my heart. It was hard at first, but I have made a conscience decision to not allow bitterness, or offense, to be a part of my story any longer. I will not allow the hurts of my past to dictate to me what my future in Christ looks like.)
After that, our finances were suffering now almost as bad as I was. We did everything we could do to pay our bills, but it wasn't long afterwards that time and time again Sheriff's Deputies came to our door with summons to court by creditors trying to seize our house. They tried and tried to take our house from us, so much so that we actually had two different couples offer to let us move into houses that they owned should we become homeless. But we kept fighting and we kept praying, all the while selling everything that we owned that wasn't nailed down. And somehow, through the grace of God, we were able to keep our house.
It was at this point though that everything literally fell apart. My depression got worse than ever and I actually spent an entire year doing nothing but staring at the walls. By this time my pain levels were off the chart. I started sleep-walking and sleep-standing every single night. Kathy would find me night after night all over the house. And those were the “good” nights. On the “bad” nights she would be awoken to death defying screams as I would have fallen somewhere. On at least seven occasions I had horrible falls into our bathroom shower, destroying the bathroom in the process, with one of the falls fracturing my elbow. On another occasion, I fell into our living room fireplace and fractured my tailbone. On yet another occasion, I fell in the kitchen hitting my neck on the side of the kitchen counter and had to be rushed to the Emergency Room for fear that I had broken my neck.
As I continued to try and preach as much as I could, there were times that I would be hurting so bad after preaching that I would immediately go to the church bathroom afterwards and throw up due to how severe the pain was. My health just kept getting worse and worse. And as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continued on, so did my depression, anxiety, panic attacks and nightmares.
2007 – 2014 - By the end of 2007, since I didn't have the strength to conduct actual revivals any longer, for the next 7 years I preached only occasionally and started teaching men's Bible studies on Spiritual Warfare. But I did so each and every time by having to remain seated, as I could no longer stand to minister. By 2014 my health had finally reached the point that I could no longer even preach or teach at all. It looked like my ministry was now officially over - forever.
While all of this was going on, my health continued to spiral downward, until finally I ended up having to be placed in a wheelchair. I spent a combined total of 7 years in a wheelchair, using a walker, and finally moved to having to use a cane for several years. I even started having hallucinations so bad that one time Kathy was driving me somewhere, and while she was driving down the road, I opened my car door and tried to jump out of the car. Thankfully she reached over in time to stop me and pull me back in. Later she told me that when she asked me what in the world was I thinking trying to jump out of a moving car, she said that I told her “I saw a flying banana outside the car” and I was going to go get it.
Through these years, I had to start receiving my healthcare at the VA Hospital. For multiple years, I was now being treated at the VA an average of three times a week. It was during this time that three distinct things happened.
1. Due to my multiple Traumatic Brain Injuries, I had lost almost all of my Hand/Eye Coordination. The VA's TBI clinic tried to work with me as best as they could and gave me every tool they had in their arsenal, but to no avail. Finally, after they had done everything they could do, my wife Kathy came up with the idea to buy me a XBox and some video games to see if that would help. At first, I was a complete mess, but eventually it started helping me until finally my Hand/Eye Coordination came back!
2. Due to the severity of my PTSD, and due to how bad my nightmares were concerning the burning alive of those 12 soldiers during the helicopter crash in 1985, in 2012 the VA tried to put me into their Trauma Recovery Program. Their answer to help me? Place me into a confined room and then pump into the room the smell of burned flesh. Needless to say I fought them on that one and refused to go through that.
3. Due to how bad my spine had now gotten, especially my neck, which now had crushed vertebrae which were pinching my spinal cord, the VA Orthopedic Surgical Clinic told us that they wanted to remove ALL of my Cervical bones and rebuild the entire thing with cadaver bones! We said we would pray about it and then never went back.
4. I was diagnosed with 59 different health conditions (30 of them for my spine, 8 for depression, anxiety and panic, 7 for damage to my brain from the TBI’s I suffered on airborne jumps, and 14 various other illnesses). Some of which are as follows:
Chronic Anxiety Attack Disorder, Chronic Cervical Neck Pain, Chronic Loss of Both Short Term & Long Term Memory Functions, Chronic Panic Attack Disorder, Chronic Thoracic Mid-Back Pain, Cognitive Disorder, Damage to Central Nervous System, Degenerative Joint Disease, Depressive Disorder, Extreme Chronic Debilitating Pain, Fibromyalgia throughout entire body, Late Effect of Intracranial Injury, Loss of Cognitive Abilities, Neuropathy, Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Severe Chronic Depression, Sleep Apenia – Central & Obstructive, Spinal Cervical Disc Protrusions, Spinal Cervical Endplate Spurring, Spinal Cervical Facet Arthropathy, Spinal Cervical Radiculopathy, Spinal Cervical Uncovertebral Hypertrophy, Spinal Degenerative Bulging Discs, Spinal Disc Deterioration, Spinal Disc Space Narrowing, Spinal Facet Joint Disease, Spinal Herniated Disks, Spinal Lumbar Degenerative Foraminal Encroachment, Spinal Lumbar Peripheral Tear, Spinal Neuropathy, Spinal Slipped Disks, Spinal Spondylotic Disease, Spinal Thoracic Chronic Anterior Vertebral Wedging, Spinal Ventral Chord Impingement, Traumatic Brain Injury with Ischemic Damage
I only included about half of them, but you get the picture – my body is an absolute mess from all those years jumping out of airplanes! Additionally, from 2001 to the present day, I have been prescribed over 350+ prescriptions! 120+ of them have been for Pain alone!
2014 to 2017 – Although God had always used me in the area of revelation knowledge concerning His Word, and had always allowed me to expound deep truths from the Word of God to share with fellow Christians seeking deeper walks with the Lord, now I was receiving revelation like never before. God began to constantly speak to me from the Word and show me things that I had never seen before. (That is still with me to this very day.)
During everything that was going on with me, though, a strange thing was happening to me at the exact same time – God was molding me into something better. Through everything that had happened to me I had never blamed God or was mad at Him. Although certain “so-called Christians” told me that the reason I was going through all that I was, was because I had sin in my life and that I must have deserved it, I just had to laugh inside because my walk with God was stronger than ever. I began to view both life, and other people, in a new light. I began to have true empathy towards people that were suffering, especially any that had back problems or that dealt with mental battles. I especially started to have genuine compassion towards other combat veterans that were dealing with the aftermath of the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Due to this, two things came from it:
1. I started a new ministry dealing especially in Mental Warfare, or as we know it, Spiritual Warfare, called “The Art Of Mind Warfare Psychological War Studies Group” which deals exclusively with Teaching People How To Wage Spiritual Warfare In Their Minds – And Win!
2. At the same time, due to joining military online gaming groups dedicated to the healing recovery of combat veterans, I was asked to become the Military Chaplain to two different organizations. As such, I was privileged to talk to Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines that were battling things in their lives. I was able to talk some from committing suicide, others into saving their marriages, and more importantly being able to witness to them.
Remember back in 2007 when I said that “it looked like my ministry was now officially over – forever”? Well, I guess God definitely does have a sense of humor because never in my wildest imagination would I have dreamed that one day He would use me through video games!
2018 to Present Day : Prayers Are Answered – It has now been twenty-four years since my health first started failing me. During this time prayers have gone up for me all over the globe. It’s strange, isn't it, how we always want God to answer our prayers instantly according to our timeline? And if He doesn't do it when we want it, we think that He isn't listening, or doesn't care, or any number of other imaginations. At the same time, we also tend to give the devil more credit than he deserves. But many times when we go through things it isn't the devil's fault at all, but rather either due to our own stupid mistakes or from God allowing us to go through something that is going to work out something greater in our lives. This was my case.
I'll be honest with you, after spending seven-years in the Army fighting for your country, you find it never leaves you. For those of you that have been there, you know what I am talking about. The patriotism, the loyalty to the Armed Forces, the love for your country, the love for all that she stands for! But, at the same time, there is a dual nature that is always there. No, not sin. And not carnality and the other things that people may instantly think of if they know what the Bible says about dual natures. No, not any of that kind of thing. But rather a duality of knowing what it is to have both "peace" and "war" in you at the same time. To know what the Bible actually means when it talks of God as a God of Peace, but yet at the same time it talks of Him as the God of War. And with that comes the understanding that sometimes in order to have peace, there must first be war, or at least wise the threat of it in order to make the enemy back down and retreat. And fighting the devil from a Christian's standpoint is an everyday job that never has time outs, or half time shows where you can refresh yourself from the battle.
Although there have been times, many times truthfully, that I have wanted to quit, to retreat, to find solace somewhere under a nice shade tree like Elijah and let someone else do the fighting awhile, I just can't do it for long. Sure, there are many times I would prefer to just sit down and rest because I am so weary. And I will admit that the weariness of so many years of fighting has taken its toll on me. And although there have been times where I have felt like I have reached the end of my worth to the Kingdom of God, I always end up finding myself at great discomfort when I am at ease in Zion. I find myself being kicked back up into the battle either by God Himself, as He grows tired of my constant whining, or by myself at realizing my own lack of self-worth when I am not out in the battle fighting something, anything, somewhere, somehow, and some way. I have even found myself at times being kicked back up into the battle by others around me who know my potential and hate seeing me waste it by sitting beside the battle and not standing directly within it.
Thus, after several years I started getting better in one area of attack after another. My strength started coming back to me. My sleepwalking and falling stopped. My panic attacks started becoming less frequent. The pain throughout my body started slowly getting slightly better as well (it has never totally gone away – I still have pain every single day of my life. I still have to be treated by the VA and have spinal injections and other treatments, but praise God I don’t let the pain dictate to me any longer what my life is going to be like. Through all of this I have learned to trust God more than I have ever done and it is marvelous to see His glorious hand at work through this pain). I want to be honest with you, though, although God has been healing me of many of my issues, I still suffer from time to time with panic attacks. My spine is still a mess and hurts every single day of my life. But I am walking on my own now! I am able to stand now without falling! I am able to deal with mental battles better than ever! But most of all – I am closer to God than ever before!!! And from that standpoint – I AM A VICTORIOUS WARRIOR OF THE CROSS!!! To God and God alone be ALL the glory!
In His Presence,
Steve Pegram