You're Beautiful With Brian Trust! Ft: Eric Winn
ALTON - On a recent episode of “You’re Beautiful” with Brian Trust, Eric Winn shared how his faith helps him overcome challenges, trust in God, and be accountable.
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Winn previously served in the Army, and he said his faith guided him through this experience. He once felt unworthy of God’s mercy, but he has since learned that God loves him and will take care of him. These lessons have changed how he views the world, and he makes a point to be understanding and accountable with all of the people in his life.
“To be honest, if brains were dynamite, sometimes I don’t think I’d have enough to blow my nose,” Winn said. “But I try to learn every day. I try to be more understanding about the people that I meet and the people that I come across. I love to hear people’s stories, the way they live their lives, the things they’ve been through…The way we view the world, our opinions, are nothing more than our unique and individual experiences and sort of how we view a certain situation in life.”
When Winn was preparing for active combat, he relied on Psalms 144 — “Praise be to the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me. O Lord, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him?” — to guide him.
This scripture still rings true to Winn, who now understands that he faces battles every day. He believes in the importance of building one’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual strength by praying and developing a relationship with God.
When he is going through these battles, he remembers that God gives him struggles so that he can learn from them. He pointed out that the best blade is forged in the hottest furnace, and people can learn a lot from their challenges.
“With every hardship, trial and tribulation, you have an opportunity to learn, to adapt, to overcome, to keep pushing forward. You have lessons to learn,” he explained. “All you can do is your best. Face the storm, bear it, walk through it.”
Winn said he can be “brash” and impatient at times, and he believes that pride is his “number one downfall.” For a long time, he felt “fruitless,” like he didn’t provide anything.
“After everything, the things that I’ve done, the things that I’ve seen, I genuinely believed that somebody like me didn’t belong in church,” he remembered. “There was no place for somebody like me in the house of God, whether it be in the brick-and-mortar building or actually after death and potentially standing in front of Him at the Pearly Gates.”
But once Winn started attending church and learning about God, he gained a deeper understanding of his own value. He believes he is like a fruit tree, steady and strong, providing shelter for other people.
This is partly why he encourages people to build their spiritual strength and develop their relationship with God. He thinks that by going through challenges and learning the corresponding lessons, you become a stronger person who can help others.
“If you’re in a hard place in life, understand that you’re probably in that furnace so that you can forge the next piece of armor for the next battle you’re going to fight,” he said. “It might not be your battle. It behooves you to pay attention because the next battle might be for your wife or your husband or your mom or your dad or your kids, and that’s a battle you don’t want to lose. You want to be there and be their rock, the shore the waves crash against for them, so you constantly have to be tending to yourself.”
Watch or listen to “You’re Beautiful” at 2 p.m. on Thursdays at RiverBender.com/Beautiful.
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