And I remember sitting in a room
where we were sharing at some point
with our CRU group that came from UNI and they were asking,
"Anyone want to share what God's been doing?"
And I remember, I started to share,
and I shared the story I just shared with you
about my upbringing, my parents' divorce,
the Lord taking away my enjoyment of these things.
And I said, I just started crying,
and I said, "If the Lord had not done all of those things,
I wouldn't have been here, I wouldn't have come to UNI,
I wouldn't have got connected with you,
I wouldn't be at this conference,
and I wouldn't have known about Jesus
the way that I've just come to understand Him."
And so I suddenly realized,
like, this is the most important thing in the world
and the flesh doesn't die easy.
- Say that again.
- I remember, this was so clear to me at that conference.
There was one evening when we went to a prayer meeting
and all of us got down on our knees
and we were praying and we were so intent.
It was so sincere and real.
I'd never experienced anything like it.
We were just pouring out our hearts to God.
And when we looked up,
you know, this prayer meeting was probably 8:00 or 9:00.
When we looked up, the whole room was empty
and it was near midnight.
We'd been there for hours just praying.
The most sincere and spiritual thing I'd ever experienced.
And the next night, we went back to the prayer meeting
and we were all in our knees and everybody had left,
and I remember someone walking by
and saying, "Wow, are they still praying?"
And pride, just look at how spiritual we are.
And I don't know the sincerity
of the other guys in that circle,
but for me it was, "I've got to keep praying.
We've got to keep praying for hours to impress people."
And it was that same mixture of a sincerity
that I really wanted to glorify God and know Him
and I really wanted to glorify Eric and make him look good.
- That's the nature of spiritual warfare.
In our sort of Christian culture, you hear spiritual warfare
and you think weird stories of demons and deliverance
and people vomiting weird things into a bag.
Spiritual warfare lives where we live every day.
It's in those little moments of life.
There is a war being fought on the turf of your heart.
It's for control of your soul.
And that lives most powerfully where you live,
and where you live is in those little mundane moments
where, I mean, just think how small this moment is.
It's a person walking by while you're praying.
And in the scope of a 70, 80-year life,
that's just a flash of a moment,
but there's a war in that little teeny moment.
That's how small it gets.
The spiritual war is not just a battle
in big, grand moments of temptation
because we don't actually experience those very often.
We do, but in all these little moments, you know where...
Will I give way too impatience
because somebody is making me wait?
Will I return a nasty comment
for a nasty comment that's been given me?
Will I yell at my kids now because they're so audacious
as to need parenting?
Will I flash my gospel knowledge in front of people
just because I want them to think something of me?
That's where this stuff lives every day.