Satan's Strategies Revealed with Eric Huffman
Inside This Episode
In a recent sermon for The Story Church, Eric Huffman warns us about the strategies of our greatest enemy so that we can be better equipped to fight and win the spiritual battles that each day brings.
Transcript
Julie Mirlicourtois: Hey everyone, welcome to Maybe God. My name is Julie Mirlicourtois and I'm the producer of both the Maybe God podcast and our newly released award-winning documentary series called ACROSS. If you haven't already, please head straight to acrossdocumentary.com to check out the trailer and start streaming Episode 1.
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On today's episode of Maybe God, we're bringing you one of Eric Huffman's recent sermons for The Story Church recorded on Father's Day. Eric warns us about the strategies of Satan so that we're more equipped to fight and win the spiritual battles that each day brings.
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Eric Huffman: Hi there. Good morning, Story Family, really glad to see y'all today in the heart of Houston Museum District. If you're new to The Story, my name is Eric. I'm the lead pastor here at this church. It's a real honor to welcome you. And if you're looking for a real place to connect, a place to call home, a place to ask your questions without being judged or condemned for asking your questions or doubting your doubts, listen, this could be a place for you. We've got spots for y'all on Sunday mornings where you can just fit right in and get to know a bunch of people that are on a similar journey, seeking the truth of God together.
So Happy Father's Day to everybody that's celebrating Father's Day today. I hope you were blessed with a great dad. I know that not everyone was, and Father's Day can be a little complicated. But if you were blessed with a great earthly father, I hope you're celebrating him today. And whether or not you have an earthly father that you look up to, you have a heavenly Father who will never let you go. So we all have something to celebrate.
You know, as I think about Father's Day, I think about what's sort of happening in our culture. And what's been happening for the last few decades, let's say is this noticeable diminishing of the role and importance of fathers, of fatherhood. And it's it seems to be a result of many different powerful forces in our culture. It's not just one sector that's to blame.
I mean, it seems like in some ways government has a vested interest in diminishing the role of fatherhood. For some reason that seems to be... You know, entertainment-wise to there seems to be a desire to diminish the role of fathers. How many upstanding, outstanding noble, virtuous fathers have you ever seen on TV shows and stuff? They're very few and far between? When you see them, you really notice them? Because usually they're like Homer Simpson or worse. They're just, you know... At least Homer was home with his family but he was a doofus. He was an idiot. And so many TV dads are, sorry for you Homer Simpson fans. I heard a groan.
So fathers were meant to be servant leaders in the home, but if they're absent, or if they're idiots, they can be neither servants nor leaders in their home. So the question is, why, I guess. Why have so many different interests and entities in our culture in recent years seen to it that the role and importance of fathers be diminished? That question was on my mind this week, especially when I thought about the statistics behind some of this. Y'all it's crazy what these efforts to diminish fatherhood have yielded in our culture.
You know that... this is crazy. But the United States of America has a higher percentage of one-parent households than any other country in the world. So over 25% of our households with kids have one parent present. And look, usually it's the mom. And over 40% of new babies being born across the country are being born to single mothers. So what does that mean for us? What's going on? This doesn't seem natural or good.
Well, I'll tell you what, it doesn't mean. If you're a young person and you're being raised by one parent largely, the majority of your time is spent with one parent, the other one it may or may not be involved in your life, this isn't about shaming you or your situation. In fact, no one can know your family's story and how that all happened. This isn't about judging the past. The past can't be changed, okay?
And if you are a single parent, this isn't about judging or condemning you either. In fact, if you're listening to this, and you're a single parent and you're here, especially if you're here with your kids, you are everyone's hero because you're going above and beyond the call of duty to make sure your family is based on the truth of Christ. So we all just owe you a huge pat on the back for that and keep going.
But there is something to be said about this problem societally, isn't there? And there seems to be something maybe spiritual at stake here. I don't know for sure. But if I were the devil, and some have said that I am, but I'm not, all right? But if I were the devil in my job or my role and my desire was to sidetrack and subvert and condemn humanity, going after the role of fathers in the most powerful nation on earth might be a pretty good way to do that, might be a pretty good way to get to my desired endpoint.
So I believe so much of what goes on in our world is spiritual. And we're engaged in this spiritual battle. I was thinking about fathers and fatherhood and I just think that must be one of the major battle fronts in this battle. And something really keep in mind as we think about Father's Day and this series that we are in the midst of now.
So our series is part three in the series of messages. It is called Know Your Enemy. This is all about getting to know this spiritual enemy that the Bible identifies as Satan, or the devil, or the adversary, or the accuser, or all sorts of other kinds of names. "The deceiver" is another one.
Now, on one occasion, Jesus referred to Satan as a fake daddy, as a fraudulent father. And this is in John 8. When his critics were coming after Him, Jesus clapped back at them and told them that they were basically children of the fake daddy, Satan. So this is John 8:44, where Jesus said, "You are of your father the devil, your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
So the implication here is that you have a true father and you have this other fake wannabe father. And in order to become your daddy, he's got to get your real father out of the picture. He has to fracture your relationship with your true Heavenly Father in order to bring you into submission under his fake fatherhood.
Why? Well, maybe because anyone who lives and serves and abides under the fatherhood of the good Father is less susceptible to the attacks of your enemy. You're going to be less susceptible to his tactics and his strategies if you are under the fatherhood of a good dad. Just like if you have a good dad in this life, you will be more likely to be self-assured, confident in something that's worth your confidence, standing on a firm foundation. You'll be less likely to buy into the lies of evil leaders and depraved ideologies, you will have self-worth and you will not be easily controlled if you are under the Lordship, household of the good father.
So Jesus said, again and again, beware of this other one that comes along to try and be our fake father. And to do that, again, he has to fracture your connection between you and God. So how does he do this? How does he go about this? That's sort of the task that is before us today. I wanted to give you guys a few ideas of tactics and strategies that he employs against us to get us off track and to get us into a place where we're more susceptible to his attacks.
We're doing this not to freak anybody out, not to scare anybody. We're doing this because I love you, I've fallen prey to the enemy's attacks, I've seen where it leads. It's the last thing I want for you. And more importantly, it's the last thing your good Father in Heaven wants for you. And, this is the best part, once you see him for who he is and you see what he's up to, you will see, although he looks formidable on the outside, you will see just how beatable an enemy he really is. You will see that there's nothing to fear when you are in Christ.
So let's look at this a little more closely. What is Satan's strategy in using sort of this fake tactic, this fake fatherhood to drive a wedge between us and God? What does he do? First, he isolates. He will isolate you. He loves the tactic of isolation. Why? Because he's a predator. The Bible repeatedly describes Satan as a predator.
Lord God in Genesis 4 told Cain, "Watch out, be careful, the enemy is prowling like a roaring lion," right? And Jesus repeated the same refrain. Again and again, the enemy is referred to as a predator. What do predators love to do? Have any of you ever watched Discovery Channel or one of those Animal Planet shows or whatever? It's like where, you know, you have the Serengeti wild nature shows.
Every single time there is a predator on the hunts, what he or what those predators together will try to do is to isolate one, especially to isolate one that is weak or vulnerable or small or susceptible. "Let's get that one away from mom and daddy. Let's get that one away from the pack, away from his friends. Let's get that one away from everyone and everything so that we can have our way with that one."
That's exactly what your spiritual enemy will seek to do to you. In fact, I would venture to guess this is his most commonly employed tactic. He probably used it on you this morning. By showing up today, you rebuked his insistence that you isolate yourself from the community of Christ. Think about this. This is exactly what God has always warned us against.
Think about the very beginning of the Bible, right, first three words of the Bible are? Thank you one person that's read the Bible. "In the beginning... In the beginning God created the heavens in the earth." What did God say again and again after He created each thing and looked at it? What did He say about it? Saw that it was good. Saw that it was good. Even the bad things are good. Even the mosquitoes before the fall of man were good. Everything was good, good, good.
Until one instance, in the middle of chapter two, God uttered the phrase "not good" for the first time. And the first time God saw something in creation that was not good was in Genesis 2:18 when the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone — the first time he saw anything He said "not good". Everything else, good. But a man who was alone, not good. Okay?
The same has been true ever since. It is not good for a man to be alone. So God immediately got to work on an upgrade called woman. So then the man was no longer alone and the woman wasn't alone either. They had each other. And this isn't about marriage and stuff. I know we're talking about that next month, The Summer of Love and matchmaking and all that. That's coming. That's coming, all right? But this isn't about romantic love necessarily. You can be married and be alone. You can be married and be isolated. You can be single and be in perfect communion with others and be enjoying the strength and protect when it comes to numbers.
It is not good for a man to be alone. Why? Because when you are alone, you are more likely to believe the enemy's lies. You're more likely to fall prey to his most favorite attacks, and hints and suggestions and whispers and lies, all of it, the deception, all of it. You'll be more likely and prone to believe in isolation that no one really cares about you, that no one really knows what you've been through, that no one really understands the pain that you're in, that no one really knows about your past.
And if they didn't know about your past, they would want nothing to do with you. Especially those church people, they would just judge you and cast you aside. No one knows the real me. No one understands. God doesn't even care if I prayed and nothing happened. Maybe He's not even there. Who knows? When you are alone, those lies sink in more deeply. You're more susceptible to those attacks. I know, I know, I know there's introverts in the room going, "I need my alone time." Okay, introverts, you high-maintenance introverts, I know you need your alone time but man, you better mix it up. You better mix it up lest the devil use your alone time against you. And the good thing about being an extrovert is that you never really need alone time. Maybe we're at some kind of an advantage in that regard.
The enemy wants you alone, isolated. God wants you and community but the enemy wants you alone, thinking that it doesn't really matter how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you treat your body, what you do or with whom in secret because nothing really matters in the end, just so you can be married. Things get dark very quickly in isolation.
So how do we combat this tactic of the enemy? Well, we combat his tactic of isolation with community. Community is the antidote. Community. Whether you feel like it or not, community. Earlier this year on the Maybe God podcast, I interviewed a guy, Father Vincent Lampert. This dude blew my ever-loving mind. Father Vincent Lampert is a Catholic priest, and he is the designated exorcist for the Diocese of Indianapolis. And he goes all over the country, all over the world talking about what he has seen in terms of the manifestations of demonic possession and oppression in people's lives today.
But at one point in our interview, which is our most widely watched interview in the history of Maybe God, our YouTube version of this interview has been watched over 152,000 times, which is wild to me, and it's just since January. In this interview, Father Lampert talked about how badly we need to band together as Christians because of our enemies penchant for isolating us. Check out this clip from Father Vincent Lampert.
Father Vincent Lampert: I think we're living in an age when faith is really in jeopardy. And I think folks that are Christian, regardless of what denomination we may belong to, I think at some point we have to realize that what we hold in common might be greater than what we have in difference. What we have in common is that Jesus Christ is at the core of our lives, the core of our faiths.
You know, when I look at all the different Christian faith traditions, we shouldn't be in competition with one another. It's like being children of the same family. Children in a family will have a different relationship with their parents than another child does but we are all brothers and sisters to one another. So I believe it's important in the world today for people of faith, to really focus on what we hold in common, because I believe the forces of evil are really out there wanting to attack faith, and really cause people to want to abandon their commitment to God. And again, I think it's so important for people to faith to band together, rather than constantly beating ourselves up.
Eric Huffman: So those father bends and laughter and this was easily the most chill clip, from our interview, I could find. The rest of it is all about demonic exorcism and stuff. But this clip was awesome to me because it's coming from a Catholic and there's historically been some, you know, tension, let's say, between Catholics and Protestants like me, right? And yet, he's saying, Hey, we're all one family, we all need each other. We need to band together more than we scatter apart.
And how much division have we seen in our day? You know, alongside these other crises, like the crisis of fatherhood, and things like that, the crisis of leadership, our institutions are crumbling. And at the same time, the churches across this nation have been dividing at such a rapid pace no one can keep up.
Division, isolation, that's what the enemy is up to. The love of Jesus brings us together. The Spirit of God creates unity even if we disagree on things. And yet, the enemy is always in our years saying, now, you don't need each other. You don't need them. Just go your own way. Be your own man. Be your own woman. Do your own thing. Be your own God. Like all of that is lies straight from the pit of hell.
The truth is that we are in a battle to fight for our lives really, spiritual battle that no one can really see. And you won't see it if you're unaware. In this battle, Christian community is your platoon. Your band of brothers and sisters that will get you through every fight, that will train and equip you for every battle, that will pick you up and heal you when you're wounded in the fight.
For many of us, the most dangerous thing the enemy will ever whisper in your ear is not going to be some kind of weird quote from "The Exorcist" movie and your head is not going to spin around in your shoulders. For many of us, the most dangerous thing this spiritual enemy will ever whisper in your ear is "just stay home". Stay home. Stay in the bed. Just don't go. The air conditioner is probably still broken. [inaudible 00:19:52] Even if it's fixed, it's probably going to be like the Arctic tundra in there because they blast it to keep Eric from sweating. Just stay home. You're in control of the thermostat here. You know what I mean? Stay home. Watch online. It's the same thing.
Everybody knows that it isn't a nice substitute once in a while for sure. If you're watching online, no judgement. But we know it's not the same. We need to share space together. We need to break bread together, we need to prepare for battle together. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together?"
How do we spur one another toward love and good deeds? By not forsaking meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another. Our time together is meant to be an encouragement and uplift to your spirit.
Look, the production quality Sunday to Sunday is going to vary, all of the AC and lights and everything's going to work sometimes and not work others. But the communion, the fellowship is what we're here for the uplift, the encouragement of knowing we're not in this fight alone. When we're winning, when we're failing, when we're losing, when we're falling, all of it is meant to work for our good when we are in fellowship with our fellow brothers and sisters. And the fellowship is a reminder that this victory that we are striving toward is essentially already won. That's why it's so important for us to gather and fight isolation with community.
Second, whether or not he's successful in isolating you, he will always... this enemy of ours will always seek to imitate God. He is a cheap imitation of God. In fact, that's his whole backstory is that because of the pride in his own heart, he sought to become a God in his own right. He thought he could do it better than God, even though he lacked certain godly qualities like creativity. Lucifer is not creative. Lucifer is a mocker, a copycat, and a bad one at that. He takes everything God has made and just twists and perverts it and calls it his own as though he made it when really he's just taking stuff that already is and changing it a bit to make it his own. Imitation is Satan's favorite game because Satan is a counterfeit God. He is a fraud.
Now, the thing about this is that whereas the one true God wants to be your God, He wants to be in relationship with you and be your God, this counterfeit God, Satan, doesn't really need to be your God. He doesn't want you to necessarily be wearing like a goat skull at a cold rally or something and worshiping Him, He wants you to become your own god. Just like he tried to become his own god. Because the end game isn't amassing worshipers for himself, it is taking away worshipers from God in heaven.
So the end game isn't you becoming some kind of weird Satanists that drinks blood and stuff. That's not how weird it gets. It's even worse. It's you looking in a mirror and seeing your own personal Almighty Savior, being convinced like Lucifer became convinced that you could do it just as good as him if not better. That's always what he's been about all the way back to Genesis 3 when Satan told Eve, Look, God knows if you eat this fruit you're going to be like him. That's the reason He doesn't want you to eat the fruit is because He doesn't want that kind of competition. That's the insinuation. "You eat this fruit you can be a god or a goddess just like God is and so you won't need him anymore."
So he took it and so did Adam. It turns out they learned a lesson many of us have learned over the years is that we make pretty terrible gods. So it is with Satan seeking to imitate the one true God to fool us and trick us into thinking that we can do it better. Now, think about the best thing that God has ever done for humanity. The best thing God's ever done is what? He became one of us. What do we call it? We call it the incarnation—when Jesus put skin on and walked among us.
And what was the result of God becoming one of us, God becoming a human being? The result was human perfection for the first time really. The result was something beautiful, something good, someone lovely and perfect and innocent, someone heavenly walking among us. But what is the result when Satan imitates the incarnation and seeks to embody or possess the body of a human being? What's the results of that?
Well, if you're not familiar with that, I mean, I know some of you have watched the movies and stuff and that's fine. The movies can be frighteningly realistic though sometimes. The results of satanic embodiment is scary. It's ugly, filthy. It's vile. It's subhuman. The person embodied by evil entity becomes subhuman, becomes something less than human. That's because that's what Satan does. He does what God does—He just perverts it and makes it lower, darker, and vile.
God always gives, Satan always takes. God offered Himself as the sacrifice. Satan is happy to offer you as his sacrifice. Satan's law always imitate God by trying to take words that already existed. Words that meant one thing then and try to twist them and imitate them and make them into something counterfeit. Words like love. Love means something different now, doesn't it? Like out in the culture love means basically accepting and affirming everyone as they are in whatever they're doing. To love them is just to accept and affirm everyone and everything that they're about. To hate is whatever the opposite of that is.
But you know that's not the real definitions of love and hate. Those definitions are counterfeit, because they are a result of evil influence in our culture. The imitator has done his thing. And the same can be said for other good words that God intended for our good, like freedom and indulgence, intoxication. You know you weren't made for drug-induced intoxication, but you were made for intoxication. Intoxication by His indwelling Holy Spirit, that is so much better and so much greater than any substance-based intoxication. He takes good things and twist them or he'll take bad things and twist them and make them sound good. That's just what he does.
So the apostle Paul, in the first century, sort of took up this problem and addressed it in 2 Corinthians 11:3 and then verses 14 and 15. He said to the church then, "I am afraid that just as he was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ." And no wonder Satan himself masquerades. He fakes. He's fraudulent. He masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising then if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness there and will be what their actions deserve.
Your enemy will call what is ugly, beautiful; what is good, evil; what is sinful, virtuous; he'll call what is darkness, light. So how do we combat the tactics such as strategy? Well, we combat imitation with intimacy. We combat imitation with intimacy. Why?
Pastor Kale and I were doing some research for this message this week and we came across this study. There was a report or a story on people that are experts in identifying counterfeit currencies. It was really fascinating story. But what really stood out about this story is that experts in rooting out counterfeit currencies do not spend their time studying counterfeit currencies. They don't need to know what all the new counterfeits look like. All they need to know is what the real thing looks like. And if it doesn't match, it's probably not real. So it really simplifies the fight.
Sometimes I think we try, especially Christians that are really serious about your faith, sometimes we try and figure out all kinds of evil and all of its forms happening all around us. And it can be overwhelming because there's so much of it. You don't need to know everything the enemy is up to. All you need to know is who God is. So the more you connect with God, the more deeply you know Him, the more you worship Him and speak with Him and read His word and the more that that you're into Him the more able and capable you will be at rooting out the counterfeits, the attempts of your enemy to trick you and imitate God because you know who the real one is.
So after isolating and imitating, this is what Satan does next. He will always try and interrupt. He will always try to interrupt. He will interrupt your best intentions. Have you ever noticed how just when you decide to get your act together and get back to church, or just when you decide to clean up your act and get clean or sober or something, like something happens to... It's never easy. It's never as easy to get out of those problems as it wants to get into them. Ever noticed? It's almost like there's something working against you, isn't it?
I know that can seem anecdotal to some of you analytical minds. But let's consider the possibility that may be some force at work and the universe doesn't want you to be healthy, doesn't want you to be here, doesn't want you to be abundantly living in Christ because he's got other plans in store for you. He will always interrupt you with distractions, and anxieties, worries, and appetites.
My favorite... you can't do one of these series... If you're a preacher, and you can talk about demonic stuff, you have to talk about "The Screwtape Letters" at least once. That's the rule. So "The Screwtape Letters" by C. S. Lewis, one of the best little books on the ways the enemy works against us. It's basically a fictional correspondence between two demons working on a patient, working on a person to try to get him in hell. And the understudy is asking the older demon what to do about this guy, because he seems to be getting closer and closer to God. He's thinking more and more godly thoughts. He's like, what kind of seeds should I plant in his mind? Should our plant something evil, something grotesque, something dark, something simple? He's like, "No, no, no, no, that you don't even have to do that. All you have to do is remind him that he's hungry. Don't worry about putting some lustful image in his mind, some girl in a skirt walking by or something. No, no, no. Just make him think of a sandwich. That's all it takes.
A lot of men are like, "Yeah, I could use a sandwich right now." It's true. I could totally... I'd go for a sandwich right now. That's why fasting is such a formidable weapon against the enemy. Because by fasting you are able to bring your own appetites into submission so that you are not a slave to whatever inkling comes into your mind, sandwich, soup, whatever, likes anything, good burger, whatever comes into your mind. You're like, "I gotta have it right now. God, I'll get back to you. I know we were just about to connect, but I'm gonna go have some fries." There's something about that power of distraction that until you're aware of it, it will have you.
The latest studies indicate we check our phones 344 times a day. And I think it's low. I don't know. I'm just as susceptible to this as anyone. And it should come as no shock to us that on the back of these phones is the symbol of Genesis 3, the fruit with the bite taken out of it. That is no accident by the way. Mission accomplished in too many ways, unfortunately.
So how do we... See. Every time. I don't even laugh about it anymore because every time we talk about this stuff, stuff like that happens. ACs break and other kinds of things happen every single time. Anyway, I know I'm gonna weird some of you guys out. So I told our staff to be ready for it. Okay.
How do we fight against this enemy's tactic of interruption? We do so with discipline. Discipline. The discipline of focus, just a lost art for many of us, the discipline of attention and awareness, the discipline of being able to sit with God and just pray or get on your knees and just pray for an extended amount of time. Have you tested your discipline lately? Have you stretched yourself a little bit in terms of the time you're able to commit your whole self to a conversation with God or to devotion before God? That's what this Christian life we're living is all about is growing in our discipline and our focus and our awareness of God.
I gotta land the plane here. I'm out of time. But this is what the enemy is up to in our lives. He is isolating us seeking to. He is imitating God as a fraudulent father, and he is interrupting us with distractions and anxieties. Now, the bad news is that every single day he's coming at ya. And he probably knows you better than you know Him and He knows your weaknesses and his tactics are artfully deployed against you based on those weaknesses. And you are in the fight of your life. That is the bad news.
But the good news is so much better than the bad news is bad. The good news of Jesus and His Gospel is that no matter what your deficiencies or weaknesses are, no matter what your past looks like, or what's your family of origin look like, no matter if you had one parent or two or no parents or whatever, no matter your background, you have an all-time Father this Father's Day who is happy to welcome you home. He loves you and He knows you and He is more than happy to raise you if you let Him.
Psalm 65:6-8 says He is a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows in His holy dwelling. God sets the lonely and family, He leads out the prisoners with singing, but the rebellious live in a son scorched land." These are the opponents in the battle for our lives, the ultimate good father and the counterfeit God. This is our fight. We are in this fight together. Most importantly, we are in this fight under the Lordship of the one who is greater than he who is in the world.
Grateful this Father's Day for my dad who became a father of me and my sister, obviously, but he chose, throughout our childhood, through his coaching of various little league teams and things, he chose to become a father of many, a father to the fatherless especially. All the little boys on our team that didn't have dads, he was always the first offer to pick them up for practice and games and get them home. We always played games like name the state capitals, and you'll get a coat if you get 10 in a row and all these things. Because that's what daddies do.
Some of these boys and girls on my sister's softball teams that he coached had never known that before. That sort of protection and confidence that comes from having a good father. That's exactly what men of God are called to do today. Men, whether or not you have kids of your own, you're called to be a father to the fatherless in the same way that your Father in heaven is for so many the world over.
Last week, I shared the first part of this passage and I failed to share the last part, which is the good part. So I'm gonna share it again. John 10:10 says, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy." That's the thief's end game. What is Jesus' end game for you? I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. I pray that you would choose that life that Christ came to give you today.
Today is the time to make a decision. Make it. Make your decision. Prepare for every eventuality, which probably includes some stumbling blocks thrown in your way by this enemy who wants nothing more spend to divert your attention from God. Rebuke him, reject him. Follow Jesus, and have life and life abundant.
Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this reminder today of this enemy that we're up against, and we thank You, most of all, that You are greater than him. When we are in You, we have nothing to fear. In fact, when we are gathered together as believers in Your church, evil is already overcome in our midst. We just gather for victory parties every week, one after another to celebrate the victory that You've achieved in us, through us, and for us. We thank You for that victory.
Lord, for those who have been on the fence, not sure about this religion stuff, I pray that You would open their eyes and soften their hearts to receive the invitation You've given us all to relationship with You our good Father. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
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Julie Mirlicourtois: For more of Eric Huffman's Sunday sermons, check out The Story Church on Apple or Spotify, or head to youtube.com/thestorychurch. This episode of Maybe God was edited by Justin Mayer, and our social media team is Kat Brough and Justin Keller. Don't forget to head straight to acrossdocumentary.com to check out Maybe God's first-ever documentary series and send us your feedback to [email protected]. Thanks for listening, everyone.