Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Have you noticed anger is just one letter removed from danger? Pastor James says when we're reacting quickly in anger, we're treading on dangerous ground.

James Kaddis: Do not allow yourself to become angry. Now, one of the fastest ways to accomplish that is to hold back the emotion and be quick to listen to the matter, even when you don't think you need more information to understand the matter, right? It is good to take some time and learn to understand the ramifications of every issue that you are facing. It's important because being quick to jump to a conclusion based on an emotional state of being will rip you off.

Guest (Male): I have found that peace only comes from you. I have found that joy only comes from you. Cuz all I need is you.

Guest (Male): Do you struggle with your temper prone to reacting quickly in anger? If that's you, please keep listening to Light on the Hill as we'll hear what the Epistle of James has to say on the matter. Pastor James Kaddis will encourage us to get rid of the anger and filth in our lives and replace it with the word of God. We're in James chapter 1 today.

James Kaddis: Here's the bottom line. The bottom line is there is nothing good about reacting quickly in anger. There's nothing good about being angry about anything and allowing that anger to influence you because the reality of it is that anger will always, almost always lead you to a response that is contrary to that which God has actually set forth. That's a tough issue to balance because the real issue here is what is it that God is asking you to do in this situation? And any emotion that you allow to overwhelm you becomes the variable that takes away your sobriety and being able to walk in compliance with God has said and you miss the mark.

It happens. So the underlying issue that he wants us to pay attention to is do not allow anger to become the thing that controls you. Do not allow yourself to become angry. Now, one of the fastest ways to accomplish that is to hold back the emotion and be quick to listen to the matter, even when you don't think you need more information to understand the matter, right? It is good to take some time and learn to understand the ramifications of every issue that you are facing. It's important because being quick to jump to a conclusion based on an emotional state of being will rip you off.

Now, James is saying this for a reason. It's an underlying issue that he's wanting to bring to our attention. And he says it. He says the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God, right? You get angry. That's fine. Don't expect it to produce righteousness, right? And I hear a lot of people say, well, that's righteous anger. Actually, most of the time, it's not righteous anger. You think it's righteous anger, but it's not because it's clouding your judgment in being able to hear the voice of God in that situation. And unfortunately, the result that comes from that is a place of being subjugated to that which the enemy desires for you to do, right?

It's not a good place to be. So he says, do not allow yourself to become angry. And perhaps the greatest way that that is accomplished is take some extra time to listen to the whole matter, right? Listen to the whole matter. Look what he goes on to say. He says, wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness. That's always a funny phrase, right? I'll explain what that means in a second. And receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls. Okay. So this is interesting. He ties in the wilfulness to walk in anger with things that he calls here filthy.

He says, lay apart all filthiness. Anything that doesn't honor God, walk away from it. I always find myself in a position where the people that come to me who struggle with the subject of anger the most often times have to be walked through a bigger problem that is at hand. I've learned this very quickly. Most people that struggle with anger, including me, in the moments of my life where I tend to be given to that emotion, you can always trace it back to some level of participation in that which the Bible calls filthy. Whether it be given to an aspect of your thought life that you shouldn't be given to, whether it be allowing yourself to be exposed to something you should never be exposed to, whether it be maybe hanging out with people that maybe you shouldn't be hanging out with because what your ears are listening to and what your mind, your eyes are seeing and what your mind is being exposed to is opening you up to a realm that the Bible refers to as filthy.

And what that is doing is it is bringing into your life an access of unrighteousness. When it talks about superfluity, that's a is a very interesting word by the way. When it talks about superfluity of naughtiness, it means remove the access of unrighteousness from your life. There should be none of it. Shave it all away. Do everything you can to remove from yourself the things that contribute to those variables. Don't allow yourself to be exposed to those things because they have a tremendous effect on your mind. They can deeply change the way you look at things.

I got teased many years ago by uh a whole shift of police officers that worked the late shift uh in the city that I was a chaplain in. Now, I just want you to know only second to one of the cities in uh the Northridge area, there was more pornography sold in the city in which I was a chaplain in than most cities around per capita. There was a massive adult bookstore in that city and in that adult bookstore, there were really evil things that were happening. Okay. I I would just say that. The adult bookstore obviously uh later on was demolished because the city and everybody else saw the responsibility of removing it and it's that's a whole long story how that ended up happening.

But anytime we would get a call to the adult bookstore Now, and now give you a little bit of history. Uh working in the city that I worked in, it was 2.2 square miles, population roughly uh I want to say close to 90,000, okay? So very densely populated city, okay? You are talking about uh no, sorry. I want to say 48,000, 98% Hispanic. We estimate that roughly 80% of the population were not legal in the country. Of that 48,000, 2,200 registered parolees lived in that city and 1,800 identified gang members. So if you became a police officer in that city, the question was never if you're going to get in a fight, if you're going to get in a confrontation, if you're going to get in a shooting, the question is always when is that going to happen?

That's always been the question. Number one question I used to get from police officers before I got a unit with them, are you willing to pull the trigger so that I don't have to die in front of my, you know, for my go home dead to my wife, right? I I got that question all the time. So I never had a hard time with participating in calls for service where there were fights or anything else. And I the city paid for more than one ripped uniform shirt and all kinds of you know, crazy things that have been It's amazing how they seem to want to go for the fat guy first, right?

It's just a kind of a funny picture. Even if he's wearing some indicator that he's a chaplain, they don't really care. But I just want to bring this up because I was known as the guy who was open and very down kind of till the wheels fall off to be there for my partners every time I got in a police car. That was always the case. But I always turned off in one context and that was when we got calls to the adult bookstore. Even the dispatchers knew if there was a call to the adult bookstore and I was writing that night, if my partner got dispatched, that dispatcher knew to dispatch another officer to go assist him because in 99.999% of the cases, I would not walk into that bookstore.

I wanted nothing to do with it, nothing. I hated that place. I didn't know this at the time, but apparently one of the officers that I rode with quite a bit worked out a deal with one of the dispatchers that the next time we got a call to the adult bookstore, they would not call for a backing unit so that I would be forced to walk into the store. Sure enough, the way the story goes, it was a pretty violent situation. Uh there really wasn't a unit to be available at that time, even though I did not know that they had planned to make it that way, but there really wasn't at that moment.

And I had to walk into the bookstore. And when I walked out of the bookstore, they all made fun of me. They said, we've never seen a guy walking anywhere with his head looking at the ground. You don't even want to look up. Yeah. And I wasn't even one to to struggle with things like pornography and all that kind of stuff. Why? Why do you do that, dude? Come on. You don't have to pretend to be somebody you're not. I'm not. That's the kind of filth I don't want around. You want to know why? Because it takes away from my ability to be able to discern and see things clearly.

And being out here with you guys, you need a few people around you that are able to discern. You need to be able to understand what is about to happen before it happens. You need to be filled with the spirit of God and know what you're about to face. And there were a series of times as a police chaplain where an officer said, I have no idea how you saw that, but you saved my life. My statement to them was, I'm not an expert observer. I just know when the spirit of God is warning me.

And that's why I warned you. Well, the day after that call or the few hours after that call, everybody's drinking coffee and they're making fun of me and they're teasing me and so on and so forth. And the Lord just spoke to me very clearly. And I looked up at all of them. And I said, I know all of you guys really well, except you, the trainee that was off in the corner. I didn't really know him well, you're rookie. Said, every time I have worked with you guys, when you have gone to that bookstore, did you ever notice that you have always gotten into a really ugly fight where it generated a complaint, you got in trouble, or you got into a really ugly close call?

Was there ever a time where you went to that bookstore and did not see that happen? And they start talking back and forth. They go, well, no. It just it's always been that way. So you want to know why? When you allow yourself as a representative of God, whether or not you're a Christian, to be exposed to the core of everything that is evil, it takes away from everything that makes you sharp. You don't pay attention. You're not seeing things. You're making errors. You're making mistakes. Why? Because the access of evil that you allow yourself to be exposed to takes away from your ability to be able to discern the things around you.

And yes, in some cases because your line of work, it can cost you your life. There's a reason why the Bible tells us to lay apart filthiness and the superfluity of naughtiness. The access of evil is what it's saying. All of those things remove it. But remember, I've said this before. The Bible doesn't just tell us to stop something, right? What makes a thief no longer a thief is not when they stop stealing. It's when they stop stealing and they start giving, right? When a person makes a decision to not allow themselves to be exposed to evil, the only thing that they have after they make that decision, the only viable recourse is to expose themselves to the word of God.

I used to deal with this all the time with Christian officers. They come to me and they say, well, James, I've been staying away from all of that stuff. I'm not drinking anymore. I'm not going to the nudity bars. I 'm not doing all the stuff you told me to do, but nothing still works. I still don't have clarity of mind. When was the last time you opened your Bible, dude? When was the last time you allowed the word of God to open up your heart and your mind? When was the last time you studied what the Bible wants to tell you?

When was the last time you allowed activity to take place that opened up activity or the the the mind and the heart of the spirit of God in your life? It's not just simply saying I'm going to stop doing these things. It's all about saying I'm going to replace all of that access of evil and I 'm going to bring the word of God into the picture, right? You allow yourself to be exposed to evil. You stick with it. You stay with it. Guys, do you understand how it is that somebody can be angry with somebody else?

And if that anger is not dealt with immediately by getting into the word and allowing the word of God to change their hearts, that that anger will fester and it will turn into bitterness. And that bitterness will take away completely from your sobriety. Believe me when I say this. I am speaking from personal experience. I am speaking solely about myself. So when I have allowed my anger and my emotion to overwhelm me over a period of time and have not allowed the word of God to clean that filth out of my mind, it becomes bitterness.

And that bitterness takes away from my ability to be able to see clearly. It affects my ability to teach the Bible. It affects my communication. It affects my ability to discern and to speak clearly concerning things. People have told me in counseling situations, you have this gift of being able to clearly communicate with people. You can identify things and just call them on it. You know where that comes from? It comes from me saying I am going to walk away from the things that overwhelm my heart that are evil and I 'm going to endow my heart, my mind with the word of God.

It is only that second action that opens up the kind of clarity that's necessary to be able to make the decisions that I make on a day-to-day basis. So some of you might be halfway to the finish line. Some of you might be saying, well, James, yeah, I made a commitment. I 'm not watching that stuff anymore. I 'm not doing that stuff, but it just feels like I 'm stagnant. Well, what have you replaced it with? What if you allowed yourself to to to be exposed to? And it's not just oh, well, I read the Bible this morning and you know, I skipped a few days.

No, no, no, no, no. It's all about exposing yourself to it on a regular basis. I 've been telling you guys this. It's kind of a funny thing. Leave it to me to be the guy that lectures anybody on this, but it really is a true fact. And I never thought I would say this. It sounds like I'm I'm actually nuts. If I saw myself saying this 6 months ago, I would call myself crazy, literally. But this last week, I've not been able to read to ride my bike since Friday. Friday was the last day I rode my bike.

I've been riding my bike every day, okay? That's just been the case because I'm working to get healthy and so on and so forth. And so I miss Saturday. I miss Sunday. I missed Monday and Tuesday because of the nature of the way the days were. I had a conference on on on Tuesday. I may have rode Monday. I don't remember, but for the most part, I missed a whole bunch of days. By the time I got to today, I was feeling terrible. I felt like I walked 10 steps. I feel like I 'm out of breath.

I just feel sluggish and tired and there was a thought that I had in my mind that said, well, it's just because I'm tired. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep. And and that could be a part of it. But I recognize something. I have been feeling a lot better lately because I have made it a consistent practice to do something that continues to develop my body to function better. When I don't know This is the part where I think I 'm crazy. When I don't allow myself to exercise like I should be every single day, that lack of consistency puts me in a place that's detrimental to my health.

You know what? I feel it. I feel it. Here's where I'm going to really sound crazy. I rode today and I knew I was going to go for a long time because I needed to. I rode for a whole hour. I rode 11 miles. I finished and I felt great. I felt like man, this feels good. Why? It's never about doing it once. It's never about oh, I'm just going to do it today because I want to suffice the emotional requirement I've created for myself to appease the guilt that I have for not doing something right.

It's all about doing it every day. Do you have a healthy diet of that which is going to exercise your soul? Are you regularly exposing yourself to the word of God? Are you regularly allowing yourself to be corrected by the truth found in the word of God? Are you studying? Are you allowing yourself to be given to it just like the detrimental effects of not exercising every day? It's far worse spiritually if you are not doing the things you need to be doing every day. You will lose consciousness of righteousness because of the seared attributes of your conscience that you have allowed to settle in because of your failure to refill the gap that you emptied out, right?

And it's got to be refilled with the word of God. You have to know the word of God. That's what it's talking about. Look what it says. Receive with what? Meekness, the engrafted word which is able to save your souls. Engrafted word is a pretty amazing picture. The idea behind the engrafted word simply means that God has integrated into our lives the very things that were only promised to a select few. God has given to us. He's made available to us his children the privileges and rights of being his children. And we have his very word to restore us back to health.

So when we commit ourselves to the word of God and we're given to the word of God, it corrects the very issues that are often times the destructive part. Okay. That was the foundation. Okay. I'm just going to tell you, everything you just heard is the underlying issue. Okay. Sounds like, wow, James, that could be a sermon in and of itself. The real issue is about to be read to you. You get rid of that anger. You remove the filth from your life. You replace it with the word of God. That is a constant pattern that we should be seeing in our lives every day.

It 's a given. It's an underlying issue. If you don't have that, you don't have anything. It's like trying to float a boat with no water, right? This is the water. This is what keeps it all floating. You've got to do these things. It's the basic. It's the basics.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to the weekend edition of Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis and part of our study in the book of James. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Again, that's lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James's teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at oneplace.com. Listen to us wherever you get your podcasts too. We'd love to hear from you. It's encouraging to hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord. There's a place to contact us at the website lightonthehillradio.com. If this is a ministry you would like to support, there is a place to make a secure donation at lightonthehillradio.com or you can give through the Light on the Hill app.

Throughout the week, you can watch our live shows and short videos, many of which relate to Bible prophecy and help you to see current events through a biblical worldview. Look for those at jameskaddis.com. We left off a moment ago in James chapter 1 at verse 22.

James Kaddis: Verse 22. But be you doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straightway forgetteth what manner man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. Woo. What does he mean when he says that?

First of all, you don't get to second base without getting the first. First base is be quick to listen, slow to speak. Don't allow the the anger to overwhelm you. Remove the filth from your life. Allow it to be filled with the word of God. And when you have done that, put the very word of God that you hear into action. Now, this is where it's going to be controversial to some. And I know it won't be controversial to you because you go to this church. But it is amazing to me how many people in the name of what they called preaching the gospel, which is a lie.

How many people in the name of being spiritual or Christ-like or Christian will continue to be hearers of the word but not doers? What do they tell you? You have no business being in politics, Pastor. I heard that. I hear it I hear it every day. Give no business being in politics. Okay. Answer this question. What other part of my life do you want me to compartmentalize from the Lord? I'm not allowed to bring the Lord into politics. What else am I not allowed to bring the Lord into? Am I not allowed to bring the Lord into schools so that we can let the the drag queens teach our children?

Am I not allowed to bring the Lord into anything? Maybe I should leave the Lord out of my wallet too. No, seriously. Maybe I should leave the Lord out of my wallet and spend my money in places that continue to hate our God. Let's go buy season tickets to the Dodgers, right? We're not we're not allowing ourselves to uh you know, be influenced by that because there's certain places where we have no business talking. You understand that's a lie from the pit of hell? You understand that? You understand that's a lie from the pit of hell when a pastor tells you all I want to do is preach the gospel and they do that under the auspice of actually saying that they don't get in politics because all they want to do is preach the gospel.

There is no bigger lie than to hear that statement because the reality of it is they have fundamentally demonstrated to you that they do not understand the gospel because the gospel involves bringing the good news of Christ in every sphere of influence. And no, I'm not a dominionist. But what I am saying is there is no area in our life that we should void ourselves from being doers of the word. We bring it into the political arena. We bring it into the private life. We bring it into the public life. We bring it into everywhere we go.

If I'm going to take God into the inner and most deepest part of my thought life, how much more should I be taking God everywhere else? He's saying a person that hears the word and doesn't do it is like the guy who walks in front of the mirror, sees all kinds of detailed pictures of what they look like. And 5 minutes later, forget what their image of them looks like. They spend hours in front of a mirror. They get a picture handed to them. Oh, who's the guy in that picture? Bro, that's you. They don't know.

Why? Because they've allowed themselves to be so hard-hearted that they will not take a moment to examine what is real. Hearing the word is not just the issue. It's practicing it.

Guest (Male): Let's be doers of the word and not just hearers. That's a good reminder as we close out another Light on the Hill. We'll talk more about this next weekend as Pastor James Kaddis returns to James chapter 1. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

Guest (Male): I have found that peace only comes from you. I have found that joy only comes from you. Cuz all I need is you.