We obeyed the Great Commission to go and make disciples, and became accidental missionaries here. We started small discipleship groups, ministering to families, going on mission trips around the island, spreading the gospel, feeding children, and just basically forming communities here.

Our house church started in October 22, 2022. It’s been an adventure homeschooling and parenting our children and while overseeing a church, evangelizing, fulfilling our other ministry duties while making a living doing business, speaking and training—and yes, of course, writing.

I’ve asked God why He brought me to this island to oversee and pastor a church when I’m supposed to be a writer.

And the answer He gave me was this: from the stories of the people we’ve met and ministered to, God has so richly provided so much to write about. (I’ve been working on a new project called 365 Days in Boracay.)

The Kairos Moment: Finding my Calling as a Writer for the Lord

Let me start by sharing a story that I never get tired of sharing because it was a Kairos moment.

It’s the story of the smiling girl with the brown rimmed eyeglasses that I met in Tokyo. This girl came up to me after a church service and told me, “I became a Christian because of your book.”

It was just caught me by surprise. I was at the crossroads, not knowing if I should really continue with my writing ministry, and I was still dilly-dallying whether to go to LittWorld in Mexico.

She began telling me about the story of the book that she was referring to. I was floored and amazed that she was talking about a book about personal finance from a biblical viewpoint, Pera Na Hindi Bitin (“Money that’s never short”). She told me, “This was the very first Christian book that I have read from cover to cover. Little did I know that not only will I learn how to manage my finances, but also more importantly, the freedom from the punishment of sin that can only be attained when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. I remember praying that day for Jesus to come into my heart and save me.”

Amazing. I had actually forgotten where in the book did I even write about the good news? And I realized later that I did write half a page about how Jesus paid the debt of our sins. I realized that we often get stuck in this paradigm that we have to write gospel tracts to share the good news. But it could be like that book—a personal finance book.

That was a Kairos moment that led me to accept that invitation to Mexico. It was in Mexico  that I really discovered my calling, vision and mission as a writer for the Lord. My hope and prayer for this webinar is that many of you will have a Kairos moment.

A Kairos moment will push you into action, to commit, to write your stories, to evangelize, to write with beautiful feet. A Kairos moment is that significant opportune moment or time when God intervenes in a powerful way, fulfilling a purpose or calling us to action.

I was surprised to discover that the Greek word chronos means something that devours you.

It eats you up. And that’s basically the story of our lives. Chronos time. It’s the most common excuse that everybody uses that for the reason why we don’t write.

But Kairos is a God moment. God is speaking to you and invites you into making a life changing decision to take up His cross and follow Him. It could be writing a book, creating content, going into a ministry position full time.

The question is: How will you respond to that Kairos moment?

Clarified into my Calling

Kairos moments are God’s way of prodding me into action, into my calling. It’s His way of clarifying my purpose, vision and mission.

One was many years ago when I was still in my early 30s. I asked the Lord, “Lord, what is it that you purpose me to do with my life?” He led me to open up an old Bible to Psalm 26:7, “I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving and tell of all thy wondrous works.”

It was like God answered my prayer and told me, “That is your purpose, my son, publish with the voice of thanksgiving and tell, publish and tell, write and speak.”

That was a Kairos moment for me.

Many years later, I found myself again trying to confirm my calling. I was in Haifa, Israel, at the Mount Carmel School of Ministry. I was a successful entrepreneur. I had veered away from writing. I’d written about two books by this time that were mostly business and sales and marketing books and then I asked the Lord, “What is really the thing that you want me to do?”

He prodded me. He told me, “Ask the pastor who just gave you the message.” I was kneeling down at that time but before I could stand up, I felt a hand on my shoulder. And when I looked up, it was a pastor. He just said to me, “You are a writer for the Lord. So go and write for the Lord.”  

Ever since then, I’ve been trying to sell and exit my businesses.

I came up with a vision for myself, “

I am a writer for the Lord, a creator of evangelistic content for Filipinos worldwide.” And what followed after that was a mission.

Mission is a vision acted upon, says Dr. John Edwin Haggai. My mission is to, “Write, create and publish evangelistic content so that Filipino families all over the world are presented the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The beautiful thing about having a purpose statement, a vision statement, and the mission statement is that it laser focuses your life. Now you know what to do with your time.

Whenever you have decisions you can ask yourself, “Does this fit in with the vision and mission that God has given me?”

Part of that really is writing with beautiful feet, the title of our webinar. This is inspired from a verse in the Bible, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, your God reigns.”

Writing with beautiful feet is writing with a purpose. It’s writing to bring good news, proclaim that salvation is through Jesus and that He truly reigns.

Every Christian writer is called to use their gift

Every Christian writer is actually called to use his gift, to write, to evangelize, using the gifts and talents that God has given.

I love this quote from Martin Luther, “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write. John wrote?” John 20:31 says, “These have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that you may have life in his name.”

Why did John write? It was God’s strategic weapon and tool for evangelism. “These” are the miracles and signs that Jesus performed that John wrote about. Writing all these miracles was a strategy.

Our part today is to record God’s works by writing.

Why? So that people who read it may believe that Jesus is Christ, the son of God. The subject is Jesus and no one else. It is so that people may have life in His name. That’s the purpose of the gospel and should be the purpose of our writing.

Evangelism is the queen of all Christian ministries. It is the highest calling of all of the Christian community because the community itself is born of evangelism and exists to evangelize.

And the only problem is that the workers—or in this case, the writers—are few, but the harvest is truly plentiful. I challenge you all to join God’s army of writers to evangelize.

Start with the story God’s given you

Start with a story God has written in your heart, because readers respond and connect more to a personal story shared than being preached at. Rick Warren says shared stories build a relational bridge that Jesus can walk across from your heart to theirs. My question to everybody is: “What’s your story? If your life were a book, what would be the title?”

If I were to write my story, the title of my book would be From Pornhagen to Born Again.

When I was a teenager, I dreamt of becoming a millionaire. I grew up in a middle-class home with a loving mom and dad who provided for our needs. We never went hungry. But I compared my life with my very wealthy classmates and I too wanted to be rich. I had very worldly dreams and God was not part of it.

Friends who had become Christians would try to share the gospel with me. But I knew they were out to convert me and ruin my life of sin. I would say to them, “If you’re born again, I’m born against.” I believed then that the Christian life would be miserable. So I ran away because pleasure was my God—and pleasing me, me and myself, my priority.

One day, I read the autobiography of Hugh Hefner, the millionaire founder of Playboy magazine who has sex with hundreds, thousands of Playboy models. I thought I wanted that kind of life. And I was headed in that direction.

I even published a porn magazine for a popular men’s club in Manila.

Then I fell in a muddy pit of the debt and depression as a business venture failed big time. I cried out, “God, if you’re real, please save me.”

Right then my girlfriend—who became my late first wife—knocked on my door to announce that she was leaving for a Bible study. I told her, “I’m going with you.”

And there the word of God became alive.

Every question I had, God showed me the answer. It was amazing. That night I prayed to receive Christ as my Lord and Savior. I felt like I was a newborn baby looking at the world with new infant eyes. I couldn’t lie anymore—even if I wanted to. The desire to chase my dream of being a porn publisher died.

I had a bonfire in my garage and burned all my pornographic materials.

I opened the Bible to read the Word. The Lord renewed my mind and I was a new person.

A new fire in my heart was lit and all I wanted to do was share the good news.

I read up also on how to free myself from debt. Christian books ministered to me.

The authors became my mentors and the Lord blessed my new businesses and gave me a new vision. I even wrote a gospel tract called Ang Buhay Na Hindi Bitin (“Life That Is Not Short”), which became a bestseller. Since then, I’ve written nine books.

Many people tell me that they have been inspired to receive Jesus as their Savior and their Lord through my books. God is so funny because I used to run away from people giving out gospel tracts—today, I give out hundreds of my gospel tracts wherever I go.

I’ve gone from a porn again publisher to a born again publisher. From playboy to prayboy.

I am Ardy Roberto, a sinner saved by grace and now a writer for the Lord. This is my story.

The point is this: Don’t be ashamed of being canceled.

Don’t be ashamed to tell people about our Lord. Because God has written a unique story in your heart that needs to be written and shared with the world. Just like a fingerprint, your story is unique. The Bible says, “They have defeated him, the enemy by the blood of the lamb and by their testimony.” They did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die. Praise God.

At War through the Written Word

We’re in a war for souls. We are in a battle. Praise God for MAI—whose mission is to train us, to teach us, to fight the enemy through the written word. Your writing can be a powerful counterpunch.

In World War II, Nazi Germany dropped hundreds of thousands of pornographic pamphlets to distract soldiers, causing them to ignore the front line. The same thing happens today.

We are bombarded—not by leaflets, but the internet. Pornhub keeps on growing.

We are in a war. We have to counterpunch. We are writers with beautiful feet. Writers as evangelists. We are in a spiritual war for souls. The war for purity for our children and our future generations.

I wrote a book, Real Men Are Pogi. “

Pogi” means handsome in Tagalog. But I use that as the outline of my book to mean Pure, Obedient, is a Gentleman, and is Intense in his relationship with his future wife and his God.

One reader said that he was a sex addict, but because of Real Men Are Pogi he accepted the Lord Jesus. A former transgender said that because of the book, he now knows what it means to be a man.

We can use our words to battle for the minds of the next generation and this generation. The biggest battleground is literature—books and blogs and vlogs and podcasts and posts. The internet and devices have exponentially exploded the marketplace of ideas.

The enemy gives not knockout punches, but subtly jabs at us in the following ways:

Pride. “Believe in yourself” is the primary idea. Self-worship is now the world’s fastest growing religion. Self-help books that tell us to follow our hearts, but the Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked.”

Pursuit of happiness. “You only live once” so we are tempted to pursue happiness through materialism, pleasure, recognition, adventure. This has only brought us to 350 million people suffering from depression—and where suicide is now a global phenomenon.

We need to combat all this with words that come from scripture, from Jesus Himself.

Publish and tell. Be strong and courageous. Don’t be afraid of being canceled. Be counter-cultural.

Counter with your story of redemption. You were chosen to tell about the wonderful act of God who called you out of darkness and into His wonderful light.

A friend and author, Pastor Vince Santiago, came out to write his story.  

He was one of the Philippines first transgenders to get a sex change operation. But an encounter with Jesus changed his life. He is now a pastor who ministers to people who are gender confused and has written a book called Trans Transformed.

I have another friend who is a doctor at the Christian Medical College in India. In that hospital, they have about 9,000 outpatients per day and 2,000 inpatient beds. They decided to produce gospel tracts to be given to doctors to invite their patients to a gospel meeting. They also have more than 20 racks in front of the operating room with very specific topics: tracts for children with leukemia, tracts for perioperative periods on their way out of the operation, tracts when the treatment is complete.

In the tracts, patients are invited to a gospel meeting every Sunday afternoon in the outpatient areas. About 100 come every Sunday. After the gospel presentation, they’re asked to fill up a feedback form, and are invited  to a retreat. Some travel a thousand miles to join. Some who are baptized are given training in evangelism.

One man who came to faith wrote his own tract to evangelize—because of that tract, his grandfather came to faith, and then the son, and then the grandson.

Three generations from one tract. Isn’t that amazing?

The Grand Adventure of a Surrendered Life

I truly believe that a life surrendered to Christ is a life surrounded by miracles. I read this quote from Dr. Paul Tournier, “At any moment, an unsatisfying life may become once more a grand adventure if we will surrender it to God.”

Are you willing to surrender the life that you have right now?

Let me end with this story. When I went to my first MAI LittWorld in Kenya, I decided on the last day to go for a run. When I scratched my leg against some rocks, I got a leaf from an aloe vera plant and wiped the wound on my leg—which turned out to be unwise.

When I got back to the Philippines, I was itching. A couple of days later, the itching became unbearable. I had a checkup and the doctor told me that I had a parasitic infection. I praise God for that parasitic infection because it kept me up at night. At 2-3 in the morning the parasites would wake up and I would scratch my back against a concrete wall.

I ended up writing an email during that time to Ramon Rocha, telling him of my idea for a book called Ang Pera Na Hindi Bitin, a short book that would tell the story of how I got out of debt and into financial peace and stewardship. I used my recovery time to write the book.

It became a number one bestseller and sold 200,000 copies in its first few months. And who would know that 15 years later, I would meet this lady from Tokyo who came up to me and said, “I became a Christian because of that finance book.”

Romans 10:14-15 says, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.”

My challenge to you is: Don’t wait. Don’t wait for perfect conditions. King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 11:4, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.

Talking about writing with beautiful feet.

If you’re stuck, start by writing a short book. (The shorter the book, the more people will actually finish reading it.)

• If your book is 100 pages or less, guess what? 60% will finish it.
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• 200 pages or so. Wow. Only 20% finish the book.
• If you have more than 200 pages, only 3% finish reading it.

Whether you write a short book or a long book the important thing is: Write—because the harvest is ripe.