If you get hurt a lot as Christians, you can times that by 10, when you're leading a church. And you start to allow that bitterness to come in, and you get a hard heart, and you lose that tenderness, you lose that love, and you start to preach out of anger, and that's not healthy, and so it was a very, it was a good turning point in my life, but I wanted to pick up where I left off last night, because I know a lot of you are waiting for this, 2 Corinthians 12, Paul had this vision of heaven, Paul was touched by the spirit of God, at any time there are mountaintop experiences, get ready for the valley, because there are so many times where, I mean, I think of so many times when I flew, me and my wife flew to be on Fox News in New York, we were on a high for like three days, and this is incredible, Kirk Cameron's there, and the Fox News anchors, and meeting Jim Cimbala and his church, and Brooklyn Tabernacle, and touring Times Square Church, and I'm walking on clouds, and then we get home, the valley of despair, back to the grind, I don't remember what happened, but it was just a difficult season, I think it was a topic I talked on that week, I was getting tagged by like right wing news watch, these left leaning liberal organizations that want to tear you down and make up stuff, and it was just an attack after mountaintop experience, and often when you experience God, and you're excited about God, anybody ever leave here just on cloud nine when you leave church, and then come Sunday night, or Monday morning, it is a whole, I want to go back to church, can we go back to church, and can we just worship again, and so Paul had this incredible experience where I believe he was taken up and saw visions that not many are privileged to, and saw the glory of God, and Paul said, therefore to keep me from becoming prideful, to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to harass me, and now nobody really knows exactly what this is, obviously Satan was allowed to keep Paul humble, and I believe, just personal opinion, you can say it yourself, a messenger of Satan is often a demonic type of oppression, a messenger from Satan, whether it could be persecution possibly, or some type of demonic oppression, I don't believe a Christian, I've taught on this, I don't want to get into detail, but a Christian cannot be possessed as you think of walking around, like I can't do anything, I'm possessed, and like the Exorcist movie, I've never watched it, but I don't want to watch it, but I believe though you can be oppressed, you can open up doors in your life, you can, if you just start, well let me just start experimenting again with Ouija boards, and let me watch all this darkness on TV, and this occult, and the witchcraft, and vampires, let me see what my horoscope says today, and you can start to open doors that maybe got shut a long time ago, and that gives the demonic realm, that gives them some leverage, because now you've opened the door, anybody ever overcome an addiction, and then you think you can handle it again, and you open that door, mine right now, I'll just tell you, is chocolate, I told my wife to hide a bag of chocolate I bought at Costco, and she did not hide it, two days ago, two days ago, I'm like, oh, I know I shouldn't get this, but it's the almond clusters with chai seeds, and it's just dark chocolate, and the whole bag is gone in two days, by years truly, and I looked, there's 160 calories per serving, 16 servings, that's like 2 ,000 calories, I just ate chocolate and walnuts in two days, hide this bag, that's why I like fasting, because after a few days, you just lose the appetite for food, and I'm actually going to do that again, coming up on our election, our nation needs it, and I won't go into detail, but there's somebody from our church here that fasted for 40 days, water only recently, and you will not die, you will be okay, your body switches from burning your glucose in your food, and your glycogen, to your fat storage, and that's what this is for sometimes, is a lot of extra energy that we're carrying around, and that was a rabbit trail, where in the world am I going with that thing, oh, my point was, if you open the door, right, if you open the door to something that you used to struggle with, that, there's a stronghold, and often, if you ever heard, you know, you hear that term, a family generational curse, we really don't believe that, or teach that, because we don't, that's strong language, and you have to go into the Old Testament, and explain how God cursed generation down to fourth generation, but we do see now, I believe that predisposition, so if your father, your grandfather was predispositioned to a certain lust, or what alcoholism, or nicket, or something, that could be still, that DNA could still be then passed on to you, so that's going to be an area of struggle, what you struggle with, we often see this in sexual abuse cases, when people are abused sexually at a young age, guess what, the person who did it was often abused at a very young age, and so, we see there is a predisposition, you have to be on guard in those areas, so that's what we believe in the area of demonic oppression, demonic harassment, so a messenger of Satan was given to Paul, to keep Paul humble, so since we don't know what it is, it can apply to all areas of our life, isn't that good, if we knew, okay, well, Paul's eyesight, he was physically challenged by the devil, well, that's Paul, good, I'm off the hook, no, it can be in any area of our life, the principle is this, God will allow certain weaknesses in our lives to keep us humble, can you imagine if we mastered everything, I haven't struggled with that in 20 years, I'm sorry for all of you, I don't struggle with this, I don't do this, I don't do this, I don't, I've mastered everything, and you begin to be kind of conceited, God says, touches that area, see that weakness, see that weakness, and that weakness is not given to you, so you live in defeat and succumb to it, it's given often or allowed, so you realize, God, I am weak, I can't overcome this, I'm just a frail man and I need your help, so in your weakness, then you are strong, and so something was given to keep Paul humble, and he said, oh, he prayed three times to take this away, I know everyone in this room can relate to that, have you ever prayed, God, please take this away, please take this away, why do I wanna stop at Starbucks again, why do I wanna stop at Panda Express, why do I wanna stop there, why can't I get off the internet, why is the internet calling me, why is this certain thing calling me, why is this subsidence calling me, why is this depression calling my name again, and we, Lord, please take this away, and sometimes he doesn't, sometimes there's a fight until the day you're buried in the ground and with your Savior, and that fight sometimes is to keep you humble and broken and on your knees, and that weight of that challenge begins to put you in the right position as you seek God with all of your heart and strength, so these things that you keep beating yourself up about, I'm not encouraging sin, but I'm encouraging you to point your heart in the right direction through the struggle, I mean, if a struggle comes in, you can say, okay, I'm going to prayer, Lord, I'm going to prayer in this area, I need you, in this weakness, I need you, and you need to know this about temptation, there's a peak where it comes, but then it often drops, resist the devil at that peak and he will flee from you, so we are allowed difficult situations or maybe a lust that keeps battering you, I mean, I've opened up before that even when I was younger, people would tease me, I was overweight and things, and so food has always been, and I know you can't relate, but it's always, you know, it's like, ah, you know, if it's good, I want double, and so it's very hard for me, I have to live a very disciplined life, and people do say, why are you so hardcore, because if I get soft core, I'm going to go back to where I used to be, so I have to remain that, try to keep that discipline down, I discipline my body and bring it under subjection, less when I preach to others, I myself should become disqualified, but God uses that weakness to strengthen us, but here is the danger, I will tell you up front, many people use this as an excuse to keep sinning, well, that's just my one little vice, well, that's my thorn in the flesh, I better just cave into it, no, it's not there to cave into, it's there for you to keep you humble and to fight and move away from, and through that humility and that pushing away, Lord, I'm weak in this area, I've got something that's going to pull me down, I've got something that is lurking inside, and Lord, I need you, I can't handle this on my own, I am not as strong as I thought, Lord, please help me in this area, and in that weakness, you are strong, but let this be an encouragement too, often the greater anointing, I've seen this in the Bible, I've seen this in our own personal lives and many people in the church, the greater the anointing, what I mean by that is the greater the calling that God has on your life, often the greater the challenges will be, that's just the truth, when you're on the enemy's hit list and God wants to do a good thing in your life, a great thing in your life, wants maybe you to become a prayer warrior and intercede for your family and God's called you to do a certain thing and you'll see the challenges increase, I believe it's spiritual warfare, that's what's happening in our nation, is it not?