When I wrote the book, Your Story Has a Villain, I went on a podcast tour, which took me over to California.

I flew into San Diego, and then I was driving up the coast to L.A.

I called a pastor friend, because I knew he pastored in that area.

He said, where are you going?

I said, I'm going to Santa Monica.

He said, no, you're not.

I said, why not?

He said, because there's a fire. Well, in Texas where I'm from, when there's a fire,

they put it out. But I learned that he was saying Santa Monica's on fire. And so I didn't go there.

And it was such a wild experience even being there, just to you a picture when i flew out this is what

the fire looked like this is what you would see from the airplane and and it's weird to see like

okay that's what it looks like from afar but when you're actually in it like the firemen who

are fighting for their lives and fighting to save lives.

Like, this is what they're engulfed in. But the really strange thing was before I got on that

airplane, I went to Venice Beach just to see how close I could get to the fire. And it was strange. People were skateboarding. They were,

they were just going about their normal business. What you see in the distance there,

that smoke in the distance, that's the fire that I showed you from the plane. That's the fire

that the firemen are fighting. And yet right to my right where I took this picture, there's a guy on the beach getting a massage.

It's almost as though, unless you're in the fire, unless you're fighting the fire, you're oblivious to the fire.

You're not aware of it.

And as I think about that, I think that's spiritual warfare for us.

We're like, oh, I'm a Christian.

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