Fireside Chat 03 · Ries & Williams
Put a Navy SEAL and a former party-scene kid in the same two chairs and ask them about spiritual warfare, and you get two completely different vocabularies describing the same fight.
Chad Williams reaches for the battlefield. An enemy who can shoot at you from a position you haven't identified will keep shooting — it's the moment you locate the threat and take an aggressive posture that he breaks. Then he reaches for C.S. Lewis:
"Enemy-occupied territory — that is what this world is. Our rightful king has landed, and now he's calling us all to take part in his great campaign of sabotage."
Chad Williams, quoting C.S. Lewis
Ryan Ries goes inward instead, and lands the line most men will repeat: "You can't believe everything you think." The random, accusing, discouraging thoughts a man starts hearing after he follows Christ have an author. "Satan's the king of mind games. It's the mental thing."
Ryan also tells the most disarming story in all three chats — a piece of art in his living room he loved, a conviction he couldn't shake, and what he finally did with it. It's a small story about a big principle: purification is incremental, and the Spirit names things one at a time.
Then Sammy asks what each would tell his younger self. Chad's answer is about proximity — he was mentored by Ray Comfort, at his hip daily after the SEAL teams: "If you want to stay fired up, get closer to the people that are on fire. They'll keep you warm." Ryan's is about patience, and it's the line to put on a graphic: he stopped hunting the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when he realized "the gold is on the road."
Worth watching for
- 1:01 — Chad: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled…"
- 1:34 — Chad: C.S. Lewis, enemy-occupied territory, a campaign of sabotage
- 2:04 — Ryan: "You can't believe everything you think"
- 3:01 — Ryan: "Satan's the king of mind games"
- 3:41 — Chad: two dogs fight; the winner is the one you feed
- 4:48 — Ryan: the Jimi Hendrix picture, and what he finally did with it
- 7:59 — Chad: daily ministry at Ray Comfort's hip after the SEAL teams
- 8:19 — Chad: "Get close to the people that are on fire. They'll keep you warm."
- 9:20 — Ryan: "The gold is on the road"
- 10:13 — Ryan: "If you're not there yet, it's because you're not ready"
