All this week, WP Films will be making each of their films free to watch for one day. Today is the second of those films, Furious Love. You can watch for free at wpfilm.com/holy-sharathon/ .
People often ask me if it’s difficult to make my movies or is it just a total blast the whole time? I wouldn’t call them “fun” to make necessarily, simply because of how stressful they are. After all, my natural inclination in life is not to confront witch doctors, hang around demon-possessed people or do things that are inherently dangerous. I am, by all intents and purposes, a hobbit. I am an introverted homebody, and I like my little hobbit hole. I only go on these wild adventures because Gandalf/God shows up knocking on my door asking me to. Of course, once I’m out on the adventure, I have been blessed to see God do some of the most amazing things all over the world, and I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.
That being said, I will freely admit that my second movie, Furious Love, was probably the hardest movie to make. The Holy Ghost series was the most stressful, but Furious Love takes the cake for being just the most intense experience from start to finish. I guess that comes with the territory when you make a movie about spiritual warfare.
It all started in Istanbul. I was finishing up my final shoot for Finger of God, and I was convinced that I had no story at all in the 100 hours of footage I had shot. This was going to be an epic failure. At the same time, it didn’t really matter because even if I made the worst movie ever, it’s not like anyone was clamoring to see what I made. I was a nobody, a college professor making a weird documentary in his spare time. At least I could go back to teaching and not be too embarrassed by what I’d done.
All that to say, the idea of a sequel to Finger of God was literally the furthest thing from my mind on that final day of shooting. I was filming with Georgian and Winnie Banov and a tour group they were taking around Bulgaria and Turkey, and Heidi and Rolland Baker had joined us for the final few days of the tour in Turkey. At one point, Heidi asked if she could pray for me, and what followed was a pretty typical prayer for wisdom, safety and so forth.
But then, out of nowhere, she stopped praying. I peeked one eye open to see what was up, and she had this weird, almost pained look on her face. Then …
“Oh … oh my … oh my …”
Uh. OK.
She finally got to it.
“I don’t know how else to say this, so I’ll just tell you what I see. I see you filming the demonic. I see you filming the occult.”
My only thought was, “Is that good?”
Then, it was as if something clicked inside of her, and the next thing she said came out with total authority.
“Darren, you have to go into the darkness to show the light!”
Later, I pulled Heidi aside to ask her what the heck that meant. Her answer: “I have no idea.”
It was months later while I was in a church service that it finally clicked. The idea hit me so hard that I literally fell back into my chair during worship. At that moment, I knew that I had to make a sequel to Finger of God, and I also knew exactly what I had to do.
The Lord was giving me permission to put His love to the test. I was to go into the darkest spiritual climates I could find on the planet and see if there was anyone too sinful, too dark, too corrupt, too far gone for His love to reach. I was going to go into dark places to show the light of God.
Having grown up in the church, the phrase “God loves you,” had stopped meaning much to me by the time I was in my 30s. I mean, of course He loves me, I’ve been told that a thousand times. But I had lost sight of what His love actually looked and felt like, and this film was going to be as much for me to rediscover that love as it would be to show the world anything. So I raised the money and went for it, and I’ll admit, it almost crushed me. This world can be a cruel, horrible place, and so many are suffering in almost unimaginable ways. I honestly don’t know how God puts up with us. We can be terrible, evil people. Yet the darker things got, the greater His love shone through. He’s not afraid of anything we might throw at Him.
The shoot was a very emotional experience for me, so I knew I needed to make a truly emotional film. When it came time to edit, I had one rule. I wouldn’t move on to another section of the film until the one I was currently working on brought me to tears. The result is a film that many tell me they cry almost the whole way through, and that’s kind of the point. After all, love is something felt in the heart, and God’s furious love for you should absolutely break your heart in the best way. It’s more glorious, tender, forgiving, long-suffering and radical than anything you could imagine. My prayer is that this film helps bring even a little more understanding of that truth for you.
Furious Love is available to watch free today, April 17, 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, for free.
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