Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: Pastor James Kaddis on the very real spiritual warfare we face every day. There's a very spiritual war that's out there, and it's very real. It's more real than any of the physical wars we've ever known or seen. If I am going to be effective in this war, I have to be as close to the Lord as I possibly can. Make no mistake about it, there's no rest time. There's no moment where I can say, "Well, I'm just going to let my hair down and it's no big deal, I'm just going to relax." No. The closer you are to the Lord, the more discerning you become.

And let me just tell you this, the more reactionary the demons become. Because when the demons can clearly see Jesus in you, what did Jesus do to these demons, folks? All Jesus had to do was be in their presence. And the moment He was in their presence, what did they start doing? Begging Him for mercy. That's exactly what happened.

Guest (Male): Today on Light on the Hill, a demon-possessed man has an encounter with Jesus that he will never forget. The Lord cast the demon out and conveys some important truth about spiritual warfare in the process. Pastor James Kaddis highlights Mark chapter 1 and verses 23 through 39 today. We'll see how to be effective in the spiritual war. Here's a hint, it has a lot to do with being close to the Lord, drawing on His power, and living in the Spirit.

James Kaddis: Look what it goes on to say. This is interesting. So they're crying out, the demons, saying, "Let us alone. What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God." Pretty heavy. There's an amazing lesson, by the way, that you can learn in this. Because some of you might read this and go, "Well, I guess lesson number one means I have to be Jesus in order for the demons to know who I am." No, it has nothing to do with that.

The one contention that I can make that we can learn from what we're reading right here is that you cannot afford to have moments in your life where you are not spiritually sharp. You cannot afford to have moments in your life where you choose not to walk in purity. I have to remind myself all the time when I allow my mind and my heart to run away with things I should not be. When I allow myself to get dull, I have to realize something. There's a very spiritual war that's out there and it's very real. It's more real than any of the physical wars we've ever known or seen.

If I am going to be effective in this war, I have to be as close to the Lord as I possibly can. Make no mistake about it, there's no rest time. There's no moment where I can say, "Well, I'm just going to let my hair down and it's no big deal, I'm just going to relax." No. The closer you are to the Lord, the more discerning you become. And let me just tell you this, the more reactionary the demons become. Because when the demons can clearly see Jesus in you, what did Jesus do to these demons, folks? All Jesus had to do was be in their presence. And the moment He was in their presence, what did they start doing? Begging Him for mercy. That's exactly what happened.

Think about the picture that that creates. One of the most powerful tools that we have by our side and is available to us is the ability to recognize and understand that God's power in our lives can work proactively, without us ever having to be in the position where we feel like we need to bring it in manually in one way or another.

When we have educated people in the past about the importance of gun safety, people who are just beginning to get their concealed weapons licenses and so on and so forth, one of the things that we used to talk about, and as a matter of fact, this was especially true in police training. You would sit down with these groups of people and you would make it very clear to them, your weapon doesn't do any good for you if you don't carry it. If you don't have it by your side, you are ineffective. If the tool isn't with you, then you're in a dangerous spot.

I still remember like it was yesterday, we were in a situation, I was a police chaplain with my partners, where we ran into a very, very difficult situation with somebody in the jail. I don't know if you know this, but when you're in the jail, one of the things that you have to do is you have to take all of your weapons off of you. You can't bring a gun into the jail. So you go in and we book this guy. This guy is getting a little froggy. It's a not good situation. It ends up becoming a very difficult fight back and forth until we can get him in cuffs.

We get him in a soft room, meaning it's a room where he can't injure himself. He's in one of these rooms where he could bounce around and it won't hurt him. So we get him in there, and as we're cleaning everything up, we hear on the radio an officer who is yelling at the top of his lungs, "Help, help, I'm in trouble. Help. I got a fight." And so we realize this guy's in trouble. So what do we do? As fast as we possibly can, we run up the stairs because the jail is downstairs. We run up the stairs as fast as we can, we get in our cars, and we go to help the guy.

We get there and we realize it's a very, very fluid situation. It's dangerous. The guy is actually trying to go for the gun of the officer that he's wrestling with. It's a very, very scary moment. But the moment got way scarier because when we got there, we realized we were missing a very important tool. Our guns weren't on us. They were left in the jail. How naked does that make you feel? You're there, you're in the moment, the one tool that can help you finish the situation quickly without harm or injury now being absent has just opened you to what might be the most dangerous situation you've run into in your life.

If you do not remain close to the Lord, the tool in having known Him is useless to you. If Jesus is who prominently shines from your heart, then the warfare that you face will literally in many ways be handled on His behalf almost right away. You don't need to have a demon hunter ministry. There's nothing like that that needs to happen. All you need to do is just be the shining light.

God has a way of bringing it all to the surface. Look at the fact that the devils themselves know that this is Jesus of Nazareth. The devils themselves know that He's the Holy One of Israel. The devils themselves know that He's the God of all gods and He's the creator of the universe, including their creator. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Hold thy peace, and come out of him."

In a few words, He just basically says, "Get out. Get out of him." Isn't that wild to just see how quickly these demons can come out? When the unclean spirit had torn him and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him. And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves saying, "What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority commandeth He even the unclean spirits and they do obey Him." And immediately His fame spread abroad throughout the region round about Galilee.

Here's a thing that I think is an important thing to note here. It's kind of critical. The fame that gathered around Him, that developed around Him, was because of the kind of authority that He had shown that nobody else had seen before. And the reason why nobody else had seen before is because the devil, up until that point, was very good at teaching these religious leaders that there is no spiritual warfare, that they don't even exist. And even when they're aware of their existence, they don't feel like they have the ability to deal with the circumstance. They don't deploy the correct tools.

Jesus could come in and do it in a second. Just like me grabbing that little tool that solved a problem in a half a second that I could not solve in eight hours. If you are walking closely with the Lord, then an overwhelming majority of the battle is done, guys. You can have authority when you're close with the Lord and you're with Him, because you have everything you need in order to execute whatever function needs to be executed.

When you know what's right and you don't have a problem doing it, it's because there's an element of truth that's behind you and the spiritual component that drives it is completely gone. When you allow the Lord to live inside of you and you live a life that's yielded to Him, you're not going to have the conflicts that oftentimes come with the gray because you don't see gray, you see black and white. It's very, very clear. It's not a difficult thing for anybody to grasp.

We had a sit-down once with a group of law enforcement officers that I spent a lot of time and a lot of years in a patrol car with. One of the most funny moments, it was one of the most enjoyable moments I had, was talking about how crazy it is to people that the chaplain doesn't mind seeing guys have a heavy hand when they need to have a heavy hand in the field. It's not a big deal, it doesn't move you.

And I told them this one thing, and it stuck with a lot of them. I said, "You don't get this, but here's the truth you need to understand. I would have an even heavier hand than you if necessary, because I don't have a hard time doing what you're doing. I don't have a moral conflict with you utilizing force. I don't have a moral conflict with you using deadly force if you have to. I don't have a moral conflict with virtually any of the things that you do within the context of your work for one simple reason. The Spirit of God lives inside of me and I have a clear and distinct picture between what is good and evil, what's right or wrong.

Every single one of you are great police officers, but you'll become a hundred times better than you are if you allow the Spirit of God to live inside of you. If you give your life to God, you'll become a way better policeman than you could ever imagine. Why? Because you have the Spirit of God indicating to you with clarity, super moral clarity, what's right and wrong.

As long as you know the law and you understand the rules that regulate what you do, you understand all of the sections in your head, you know your vehicle code, you know your penal code, you understand the ethical boundaries that exist, you will be able to do anything necessary in order to accomplish your job without ever having to worry about the consequence. Because the moral clarity that you have established gives you the functional capacity to execute whatever it is that you need to."

It's that simple. And this is one of the most incredibly difficult things to communicate to people when it comes to the subject of spiritual warfare. But it's one of the principles that comes out in the story of this demon-possessed person. If you are filled with the Spirit of God, you're going to have a moral clarity that'll take you through any of the difficult situations. It could be as gray as could be, but if you've got the Spirit of God living inside of you, you know His Word, you know God's voice, none of it's gray anymore.

You know exactly what you're supposed to do. And you know what God does? God does the heavy lifting for you. He does the more difficult work. Look what it goes on to say, this is where it gets even more interesting. So His fame spread. Verse 29, "And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. But Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they tell him of her."

This is really interesting. The Catholics don't like me reading passages like this. They don't like passages like this being read out because they always say Peter was the first Pope, and then they get into this whole vow of celibacy and he was a single man or whatever. Well, what does it mean Peter's wife's mother? His mother-in-law, right? It's just an interesting little side note. Most of the disciples were married. I hope you guys know that. Jesus was the exception and that was for a lot of different reasons, but these were all married men.

I just want you guys to understand that early church history shows it to us and we actually have internal biblical indicators in the story that they were married men. But that's not the point of this. The point of this is Peter's mother-in-law is in really, really bad shape. By the way, have you seen that video that just surfaced this morning? It's probably one of the funniest videos I've seen in a long time.

After Trump got elected, it's this comedian who is Spanish-speaking, but he was speaking English in this little skit that he did. He starts crying like the panicking leftists always cry. And he's crying like the angry panic leftist starts crying. And he's like, "I'm so scared now that Trump is president." You'll only appreciate it with his very heavy Hispanic accent. It's just really funny. It's almost not discernible his English words, but you get it pretty quickly.

And he starts crying and he says, "I'm scared. I'm scared for my mother-in-law, my mother-in-law." And then what he says, "And my mother-in-law, she's illegally in this country and I'm scared that the president is going to take her away and her address is here and this is where she lives and I'm scared, I'm so scared for my mother-in-law. Again, her address is here. She's here during these hours and I'm really scared for her." I thought it was one of the funniest videos I'd ever seen.

But it is interesting. I bring that kind of lighthearted picture up in a very heavyhearted subject. This is Peter's mother-in-law and he's concerned for her. He loves her. There's a close relationship there. He's not trying to get her deported, but that's a whole other story.

So verse 31, "And He came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up and immediately the fever left her and she ministered unto them." Isn't that pretty heavy? You think about the significance of something like that. If a person had a fever back in those days, they were dead. You guys get that? It was a death sentence. They were gone. But Jesus sees her sick, He touches her, she's healed. It's pretty amazing.

Again, the demonstration here is that all of these things, all of these things are all spiritually connected. There's a spiritual connection to all of it. It all starts in the spiritual realm. Look what it goes on to say, verse 32, "And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto Him all that were diseased and them that were possessed with devils." Interesting. All that were diseased and were possessed with devils.

Notice this, "And all the city was gathered together at the door. And He healed many that were sick of divers diseases and cast out many devils and suffered not the devils to speak because they knew Him." Isn't that wild? Can you understand the power of that? He casts them out and basically says, "Shut up." And they listened. These are the most powerful beings in the world. And with the snap of His fingers, He can shut them down.

He's God, He's creator of the universe. Did you know that that power is available to you? You guys understand that you have that tool available to you? The same Spirit that lived in Jesus and rose Him from the dead is the same Spirit that lives in us. To not only give us power over sin and to keep us pure, but to also act on our behalf in dealing with these demon-possessed people and with these devils in the spiritual realm. The thing that people don't understand is oftentimes they do what I did. They take the tool that they have, they put it on the wall and don't know how to use it. They don't even know it's a tool intended for the purpose that we are discussing right now.

Look what it goes on to say, verse 35, "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed. And Simon and they that were with him followed after him. And when they had found him, they said unto him, 'All men seek for thee.'"

Look what He says. "And He said unto them, 'Let us go into the next towns that I may preach there also, for therefore I came forth.' And He preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee and cast out devils." Now, a lot of people will focus on the fact that He went through all the synagogues and He cast out devils, and there is a really interesting discussion to have there in that why is it that He was casting out devils in the synagogues?

A lot of people will take that and say, well, that's the Jews and they're all demonic. It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with the fact that these were people who were tormented by demons who went to the places where they believed they could be delivered from these demons, but they did not have the power to do it because they were not familiar with not only the power that could do it, but they didn't even know how to use the tools that were in front of them.

So that's one subtle point that I want to bring up and I think it's really important, especially in the world of anti-Semitism today. But here's the other point that I want to bring up and I think it's really interesting and this is the one that nobody talks about. Every commentary I read doesn't seem to focus on it at all and I have no idea why. It doesn't make sense to me. It makes zero sense.

But here's the question that I want to ask you guys. What did Jesus decide to do before He inserted Himself in a situation where He was casting demons out and preaching to people? Anyone can tell me?

Guest (Male): He prayed.

James Kaddis: He prayed. But look at what He did with His prayer, folks. Think about this for a second. First of all, wouldn't you argue that Jesus has the greatest connection that any human being has ever had to God because He Himself is God? Isn't that a fair statement? And wouldn't it be a fair statement to say that He's close to His Father? Absolutely. We know that.

So why is it that Jesus, the guy who is the one human being on this earth who was closer to the Father than any human being that's ever existed, would feel the need to wake up super early in the morning to spend time praying? Now, this is not a passage that you use to damn people for not waking up at 4:00 in the morning to teach. If your day starts at 2:00 in the morning or 2:00 in the afternoon, then it's perfectly acceptable for you to wake up at 11:00 in the morning and spend your time in prayer. This is not a time issue. This is a timing issue.

This is an issue of, do you allow yourself to be engaged in regular communication with your Heavenly Father? Now, there's an issue in and of itself related to that very subject that also has something to do with using your tools. Because if you don't know how to pray, then praying is going to be worthless to you.

In other words, if you don't know how to be simple and straightforward with the Lord and be open and honest, instead of doing what all these people tend to teach you. If you're one of these guys that sits down in a corner and just starts speaking very figuratively and very generally, you probably don't know how to pray.

If you're the person who just goes to the Lord and says, "Lord, it's been a tough day, help me," and you leave it alone at that, or "God, you're so good, thank you for all that you've done," if you pray to the Lord in a way where you instinctively repeat the same patterns every single time you pray, maybe the prayer that you're giving is not all that effective.

And I constantly have to remind myself of this. There's a prayer that I pray before I eat. I could repeat it to you exactly the same way every single time. "Lord, thank you for this food, bless this food for the nourishment of our bodies. In Jesus' name we pray, amen." I could say it again and again and again. And I have to constantly stop myself in that moment and recognize, I may be saying the same words, but do I really mean it from the bottom of my heart?

And the thing that I would ask you is this, are you spending time in a daily briefing with God to equip you for the day that you're going to face? It doesn't matter what you do. You could be a clerk, you could be a litigator, you could be a trash man, which is apparently a really great job to have nowadays. You could be a McDonald's employee. It doesn't matter what you're doing.

Are you taking time before you start your day to really level things out with the Lord? Are you spending time having a conversation? Are you preparing yourself for the moments that you're going to have? You know the most common time I do it? I oftentimes do it at night before I go to bed. It's the most significant time that I have with the Lord.

The point behind it is, are you spending time having a real conversation with the Lord and finding what you need from Him to be equipped to do the work that He's called you to do? Because that's where the real heavy lifting is done. You guys understand if you're going to do any real heavy lifting in what you do every single day, the greatest of your heavy lifting has to be in your spiritual preparation.

It has to be in your willingness and your capacity to be able to get your mind and heart in a place where when you execute what you execute, you're doing it in a way that is so instinctive that when you start the rest of your day, you are covered and protected by the tools you've surrounded yourself with. I think that that's a really, really important thing.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us today for Light on the Hill. What you just heard is one part of a study in Mark's Gospel from Pastor James Kaddis. You can hear it again at lightonthehillradio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Pastor James, today we learned about a demon-possessed man and his encounter with the Lord. For the benefit of our listening audience, have you personally encountered someone you believe was demon-possessed?

James Kaddis: Yes, as a matter of fact, me and you have encountered demon-possessed people together in the midst of ministry, and quite frankly, it's not fun. The reason why it's not fun is because you come into a very stark reality and awareness of the fact that you don't have the power to defeat these demons, but God indeed does. Every time you rely upon Him to take care of the matter, He does, but they are very real. They are alive and well, but that won't last for too long, thank God for that. But yes, I have, and it's wild when you think about it.

Guest (Male): Very true, thanks for sharing that. Not long ago, Pastor James released his new book on the first half of Revelation. It's entitled The Last Book. He points out that Revelation isn't a book of fear, but rather a book of hope. Pastor James will help you understand the world we live in and current events through a biblical lens, preparing your heart for what lies ahead. Get a copy by going to lightonthehillradio.com or through Amazon.

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James Kaddis: Demons are real. Satan is real. The spiritual warfare is real. The things that happen in the invisible are real. You have to learn that and understand it and know that to be the case, and then you have to engage. And not only do you have to engage, you have to engage with the right tools. There's only one way to do that.

Reading this passage right here that we just read shows us exactly how that's done. It gives us the understanding of how that works. Now, I chose not to go through the remaining of this, or the remainder of this. I chose to start in verse 40 next week because there's a few very deep insightful things that I don't want you to skip over.

And I don't want to just read it for the sake of reading it, but it is really interesting when you begin to see what takes place when Jesus deals with this leper and what actually happens. There's some very deeply rooted insight that relates to this spiritual discussion that we've been having. But the bottom line is this. You have tools. The warfare is real. Take advantage of those tools and use them the way they were designed to be used.

One of the most powerful tools that you have is communication with God. And one of the most significant ways that you learn to communicate with God is speaking with Him openly and freely, common man talk, the way that you normally talk, and learning to understand what His Word has to tell you in the moment that you're in. Listen to His voice, listen to His Word, because His Word will give you the guidance and the direction that you need in maneuvering what you go through. And the more you expose yourself to that Word, the more comfortable you become in handling the situation that's put in front of you.

Guest (Male): Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

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