Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): With the importance of faith in our daily walk with the Lord, here is Pastor James.

James Kaddis: If you are not willing to put your faith and trust in God for whatever it is you feel desperate for God to do, you can't be upset for God not doing it because you are the one that prevented God from interacting. You're the one that prevented God from doing what God said he could and would do. It starts with a mindset change. It starts with an ability and an understanding to know that God can indeed do what he says he can do and trusting that he'll do it.

Guest (Male): Today on Light on the Hill, hear the story of a blind man who actually had much clearer vision than most of us. He was able to see beyond the physical to the spiritual. That is a place we need to get to if we're to live successful and God-honoring lives. Turn to Mark chapter 10 as Pastor James Kaddis begins.

James Kaddis: Look at what happens. This gets even more interesting and insightful, by the way, about the spiritual realm. In case you haven't gotten it yet before I read this passage, let me just explain something to you. This man was completely blind. He was functionally blind. He could not see anything, not one bit. Yet, he has clearer vision than many of us, much clearer vision.

Let's go on. And many charged him that he should hold his peace, but he cried the more a great deal, "Thou Son of David, have mercy on me." First of all, he doesn't just recognize the fact that he needs help. He identifies the only person that can help him. Not only does he identify the only person that can help him, he cries out in desperation, but he also does something else that most people won't pick up on.

He refers to him as the true and living God. Understand, nobody is going to say "Ibn Daoud," nobody is going to say "the Son of David," unless they view that person as the Messiah, as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Understand this, folks, to give a person the title "Thou Son of David" would mean that you are acknowledging the fact that he is God.

Now, the people are telling him, "Shut up." That's truly the translation. They're telling him, "Shut your mouth." There's two reasons why the average person in this context will say shut your mouth to the desperate individual who's crying out. The first reason is conviction. That person calling out is a reminder of the condition in which they are in and choose to ignore.

The second reason, and perhaps the most consequential, is the fact that they were uncomfortable with the willful intent expressed by the blind man to declare Jesus Christ as God. They didn't want to acknowledge it. Why? Because it was a very uncomfortable thing. That's a very spiritual thing. The enemy does not want that to happen.

By the way, there's the third and perhaps more superficial reason, and I don't even categorize it as a reason, but I'll still express it because I think it has a worthy mention, and that is the fact a man crying in the middle of a road who's desperate and disabled, asking for help and being desperate about asking for that help, is a very uncomfortable thing to experience.

So these men, for whatever reason, are saying, "Shut your mouth." By the way, I find myself in this position on a regular basis where people are bothered by the things that I say. Maybe they're a little uncomfortable with my representations. Maybe they're a little bothered by my aggressive nature. Maybe they don't like the fact that I double down in my positions when I make certain assertions.

Your discomfort is not the tool that constitutes my signal to stop being desperate for the God that I need. You can be uncomfortable over it, but I know the only way it gets fixed is by me doing what I'm doing. This was a difficult issue for my wife to deal with when we first started walking together as husband and wife. My wife is not like me in any stretch of the imagination with respect to the way she represents herself to people.

She's quiet. She's very unassuming. She's not aggressive. We were out some place public, I don't remember where it was, but it was a very redeeming moment for me. I felt very vindicated. My oldest daughter was acting up a little bit. Male leadership is going to be very different from female leadership. So I call to my daughter and I go, "Hey, you were asked to do something. Do it now."

And there was a guy who's staring at me doing this, and my wife very subtly whispers in a way that only I can hear it. She says, "Honey, I think he might be bothered by what you're saying." And I kind of ignore it. I'm a man. I'm going to be a male leader. I understand my wife's soft mindset and her soft touch. That's the way God made her.

About five seconds later, as I continue to not pay attention other than to my daughter, this guy made me look like a mild little boy. This father sounds off to his daughter, "Wipe that smile off your face!" because she was misbehaving. And I just felt so vindicated. I just looked and said, "Oh, that's so..."

But let me explain how that works. The dynamic is different. My children need soft mom. They need someone like her just as much as they need someone like me. We were in the Middle East the first time we went to the Middle East together. This was also a perhaps more significantly enjoyable moment for me, very memorable.

We go to the Arab section, and in the Arab section, negotiations are hairy if you do it right. It's just the way it goes. I'm with my wife and I'm with my mother-in-law, and we enter into negotiation for something they want. "Well, what do you want?" And I'm not going to get into all the details of how things started going, but within moments of the time they identify what they want, we are yelling and screaming at each other.

Not my wife and I. Me and the store owners. We are yelling in Arabic, and it looks like it is a nasty back and forth, so much so that my wife and mother-in-law are so uncomfortable by it, so bothered by it, that they just walk away. I don't blame them. I get it. They come back five minutes later. I get a great price for whatever they want, and they see me sitting down having a cup of tea with the store owner.

Why? Because the store owner would not give me one ounce of respect if I did not respond that way. There are things that have to happen sometimes that have to be done. I think, men, you can relate to this where sometimes we have to do things that are uncomfortable to our wives, but we have to ignore the noise around us and do what we have to do in order for them to be able to have the safe environment and the covering that God calls us to give them.

This guy is inspiring to me because this guy is getting yelled at and told, "Shut your mouth," and you know what he does? He gets louder. He doesn't care what you say. "Be quiet!" He goes louder. I love it. How many of us feel so desperate to find help and direction from the Lord that we're willing to yell over the noise? How many of us?

I would venture to say that an overwhelming majority of us are not willing to do that because of the discomfort that it brings. Funny thing about the discomfort issue is this man was so affected by his condition that the discomfort of his condition spoke much louder than the discomfort of crying out for help in the midst of that position.

Makes sense? How many of us are willing to ignore that? How many of us are willing to understand and recognize the responsibility? So they told him to be quiet. And look at this verse 49. This is so remarkable. And Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, "Be of good comfort, rise, he calleth thee."

In other words, Jesus' response to this man actually changes the attitude of the crowd. The crowd's like, "Hey, it's going to be okay. Jesus just called for you." They go from telling him, "Hey, shut up and bug off," to now, "Hey, the Lord is responding to you." You know what I've learned about this dynamic, and it's one that's very difficult for people to understand?

When you give credence to the spiritual so much so that you're willing to ignore the physical, when the spiritual result comes your way, it will have a leading effect on those that do not understand it. The attitude of the crowd was initially shut your mouth, and then it turned to, "Hey, everything's going to be okay, Jesus is calling you."

It's amazing how many times I've made decisions that have made absolutely no sense to anybody to the point where they've been received with a certain level of anger and despondency, and God has made it very clear to me that the obligation for resiliency within the context of ignoring and putting off those voices is heavy in that. If I did not give myself to that, I would not be able to be an effective leader in changing the attitude of the people who resented me in the first place.

In other words, people will respond to the leadership decisions that are made in giving heed to the invisible. Then the visible begins to line up. So look at what happens. Verse 50. And he, casting away his garment, rose and came to Jesus. He didn't care. Casting away his garment, let me explain what that means.

That means he demonstrated aptly where his real priorities were. The garment that he was wearing was the garment that was supposed to keep him warm. He left it where it was because he saw it as a hindrance. He's blind. If he takes his garment with him, he's going to trip over the garment. It would be what we would oftentimes refer to as a poncho-type of a piece of gear.

He throws it off so that he could go to the place he needed to go. I think sometimes we are not willing to throw off the very things that we oftentimes refer to as our security because we do not value what we're going to, if it's the Lord, more than what we have in our possession. I think sometimes we have to be willing to say, "I am going to disregard what I hold at high value in the physical for what I know is a much greater value in the spiritual."

By the way, you’ve got to understand this. What you value more in the spiritual always brings a greater result in the physical. Physical is the secondary effect of what you say in the spiritual, what you do in the spiritual. Look at what it goes on to say. And Jesus answered and said unto him, "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?"

Jesus knows the answer to that question, but I believe the imposition of that question by Jesus was done demonstrably to create an understanding of the fact that God has a way of responding to us on a consistent basis in a way that helps us to articulate the need, thus receiving what that need is and being grateful for it when it happens.

Watch this. Jesus says, "What is it you need?" and look at the man, he knows it. The blind man said unto him, "Lord, that I might receive my sight." If I'm the blind man and I have somebody say, "What is it that you need?" I could be irritated, I could be bothered, I could be frustrated and I could say, "Isn't it obvious? I can't see! I'm the blind guy on the road! Why would you ask me that question? You know what I need."

I would view that as a sarcastic question. But if I stop for one moment to examine the spiritual element that is oftentimes missed because of the irritation, because of the botheredness, because of the frustration, then I would completely blow over perhaps what might be the most consequential lesson thus far.

And that's this. The question is not whether or not God can solve the problem. The question is, do you understand what the problem is in a way where you fully recognize the need for only one person to solve it and to give it to that person rather than what you perceive as being the secondary option?

It's God putting him in a position to basically go to him and to say, "This is what I need," even though it's obvious, even though it's apparent, because I want to continue to lean in on what I know I need when you ask. In other words, here's the thing. An overwhelming majority of the time, we have not because we ask not.

The question never was could God do it? The question never was is God capable? We all know the answer to that. The question is, did we ever take the time to ask? Did that ever happen? I got into a little bit of an engagement once. We kind of went there in like a missionary type of a capacity. We went to one of these gatherings where all these radio-control helicopter pilots get together and we go fly for a few days.

It was kind of a thing where we cooked for all these people and we did this thing, and had a bunch of people that were on the team here at the church who went. It was a lot of fun. It was great ministry opportunity. Minister to all kinds of people, people with suicidal ideation. It was a really great time.

Well, when we were there, I met a guy who was probably one of the more prominent guys in our hobby that owns a massive company, big huge company where he sells what you guys might perceive as being black-box units basically that you put in these helicopters. They hold data. They regulate things like PID loops and all that kind of stuff.

And I had a crash that was pretty bad, and we think that it was related to some failure in my equipment. So at that point I said, "You know what? I'm just going to switch over to new equipment." So I go to the guy and I say, "Hey, what if I were to just get rid of all this equipment that I have right here and just buy all new equipment? Could you give me like a really, really good deal because I can't really afford to buy it at full price?"

And the guy looks at me, he says, "Are you kidding me? I'd be happy to give you that deal." And he practically gives them all to me. Like, literally, he practically just gives them to me. A few days later, one of my buddies who's back here in this area who's in the hobby just starts going on a tirade, cursing me out.

Really, not cursing at me, but cursing at the guy who gave me the discount, saying, "I buy all kinds of stuff from that guy. He doesn't ever give me a discount!" And I was a little frustrated, a little irritable, hadn't gotten much sleep, and I just looked at him and I said, "Forgive me for saying this, but you're a moron."

Probably not a nice thing to tell someone, right? "Who are you talking about?" I said, "Look, he didn't give me any kind of special consideration because I'm somebody special. He gave me the special consideration because I asked him to. Did you ever ask that guy for a discount?" "Well, you don't do that, man. You just can't just ask somebody like that." I said, "That's your problem."

And that's why you'll pay full price for the rest of your life, because you don't want to engage in that kind of conversation. Why? You don't want them to think you're poor? You don't want them to think you can't afford something? You don't want them to think any less of you because you're not willing to pay full price? Well, maybe.

Well, then who's the one you should be angry at? You should be chewing yourself out. You should be cursing at yourself. My guess is if you asked him, he would have done the same thing for you that he did for me. And I think we spend a lot of time complaining that God doesn't do enough for us.

We spend a lot of time saying, "Well, God can do it for so many other people, but he just won't do it for me." And I go back to the same line of questioning. Do you ask him? And when you ask him, do you ask him with that same sense of desperation that this man did? In other words, are you looking at it through spiritual eyes?

Look at what Jesus says. This is so cool. Jesus said unto him, "Go thy way." Now, that's kind of cool. Go, meaning it's going to be taken care of, but look at what he says which is even more spectacular. "Thy faith hath made thee whole." And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus in the way.

Two main things I want everybody to see. First of all, he said that this faith saved him. Your faith has saved you. That's basically what he's saying. It took you from a place of being broken and it fixed you. He said your faith did it. He didn't say my power. He didn't say my miraculous hand, even though it was his power and it was his miraculous hand.

He said your faith. Now, what do we learn from that? If you are not willing to put your faith and trust in God for whatever it is you feel desperate for God to do, you can't be upset for God not doing it because you are the one that prevented God from interacting. You're the one that prevented God from doing what God said he could and would do.

It starts with a mindset change. It starts with an ability and an understanding to know that God can indeed do what he says he can do and trusting that he'll do it. Remember that old story, I think it was maybe Spurgeon. It's an old story where they didn't have any rain for years and years.

And then finally, the church said, "We're going to gather together and we are going to pray for God to bring rain and we're going to believe that God will bring rain when we start praying." So he has a prayer meeting. My understanding from the story is he's got a thousand people under the tent that showed up. It was very unusual.

He asked everybody in the tent. He said, "Does anybody in this room know why we're not going to have rain?" "How could you say that? You told us to come over and pray!" He says, "How many people in the room have an umbrella?" One person, and it was the pastor who was running it.

I mean, think about it. If you wake up in the morning and you believe the weather report that says it's going to rain, are you going to prepare for that? You're going to bring an umbrella, aren't you? You're going to bring a rain jacket. You're going to do something to prepare for that moment, aren't you?

Here's the thing. You cannot expect God to move miraculously if you do not expect him to move when you ask him because the only requirement in order to put into effect what God wants to do for you is for you to allow him to do it. You can't allow him to do it if you don't trust him.

You can't allow him to do it if you don't recognize that he's capable of doing it and letting him do it. It's a big deal. And here's the other thing that I really love. This is the part that is more dynamic than any of the other sections of this passage that we've read. This is by far the most dynamic part of the whole story.

And that's this. Look at the last phrase here. He immediately received his sight, but then notice, and followed Jesus in the way. I would argue that his physical sight was a secondary effect of the spiritual vision that God had given him. Before he ever received his sight, he was saying, "Son of David, have mercy on me."

Before he ever found the physical help for his body, he was crying out to God to heal him. And then when God healed him, he didn't do what kids are doing today. You know what kids are doing today, and adults for that matter? They just ignore the fact that God's given them an immense resource and they don't do anything with what they have.

This man was given his sight back where he could move and walk, and you know what he did? He immediately took that sight that was given to him and he used it to follow Jesus. God's given us a lot, hasn't he? He's done a lot for us. Some of you might be in a position where you are in that place where you're saying, "Son of David, have mercy on me."

You may even be in that section where he says, "What is it that you would have?" and you answer that question. And what you might not realize is you may very well be on the cusp of receiving whatever it is God intended for you to receive. But the question is, will you waste it when it's been given to you or will you act on it?

See, that man could have used his eyes to do a lot of things. He could have used his eyes to go back to family members and say hello. He could have used his eyes to maybe go catch up on all the money he was never able to make. He could use his eyes to maybe go walk around the Judean wilderness and view the beauty that he'd never been able to see.

Instead, what did he do? He used his eyes to lock in on the one who gave him his sight, and then he followed him. Here's a question that I would ask you right now and in this moment. What are you doing with what God has given you? Are you maximizing it? Are you using it to follow him?

Are you using it to move forward in the place that God intended for you to move, or are you just simply ignoring it? See, I would say this, that this man had greater vision and the ability to see more clearly than an overwhelming majority of Christians in the church today, and he was blind.

And the challenge that I would give you tonight is, where is your attention? Where's your vision? Are you looking at the things that are intangible, or at least perceived to be intangible, or are you focusing on what is in essence vain, what is secondary? I would encourage you and challenge you to see using the type of sight that very few have, and watch God do great things. Amen.

Guest (Male): This is Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis, and we're currently going through the Gospel of Mark. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James' teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at oneplace.com. You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts as well.

Pastor James, the challenge before us today is to look beyond the physical to the spiritual unseen world. Do you believe prayer plays an important part in this? In other words, should we be asking God to help us see the spiritual?

James Kaddis: Well, this is the way that I like everybody to understand this. I think the Bible teaches us this, and that is you can't discern anything in the spiritual. You can't see what's in the spiritual. It's the invisible world. And so the only way you can navigate through the spiritual is by placing an emphasis on the relationship with the only one who can see it and can see it clearly and well.

So the closer you are to the Lord and the more you walk in obedience to him and the more you communicate with him, you are actively engaging in a realm that you literally have no control over. God will guide you in that realm, he will provide for you in that realm, and he'll give you victory. And so the best way to engage in the spiritual warfare is by reading the word and by praying because that's how we converse with the only person that can teach us and show us and help us navigate through it all.

Guest (Male): Thanks, Pastor James. When you have a moment sometime today, send us an email. We'd love it. It's encouraging to hear what the Lord is doing in our listeners' lives, and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what he's doing. There's a place to contact us at our website, lightonthehillradio.com.

We've been blessed by the feedback we've received thus far regarding Pastor James' new book, "The Last Book." If you haven't ordered a copy yet, we'd encourage you to do so. This guide to Revelation covers the first half of the book, giving you what you need to know about the Rapture and the end times in a clear and concise manner. Request your copy today at lightonthehillradio.com or through Amazon.

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