Demon-Possessed Kid Tries to Steal God’s Glory, But Then...

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:14–16).

In Matthew, we were instructed to put the lamp on a lampstand.

We aren’t to worship or crave the lampstand. No, we are to crave the light. We need the light. We can get so caught up in the lampstand, which is simply the thing that showcases the light, that we start worshiping the lampstand. The problem with making the lampstand the big thing is that it brings no light to the house. Your talent and your platform are just the stand that the light goes on. What people need is not one more performance, one more song, one more sermon, or one more book. What they need is for the light to be placed back on the stand to bring light to the entire house.

I learned this firsthand. My lampstand was the gift of creativity. I had done everything and then some. I tried every creative idea that my young mind could think of, yet all had failed. What I saw with my heart, and what I saw with my eyes were two different things. The journey of a pioneer, while it sounds romantic, is daunting. It’s full of upsets and frustrations as you trek on the road less traveled, or maybe even the one never traveled. If you can relate, hang in there. Keep moving forward. You’re not alone. I have hit many walls along this journey, and I’m sure I will hit many more. I have now found that it’s who you listen to at the wall that determines if you settle there or press on.

I hit a wall. It wasn’t the first time in ministry, but this time was different. I’ll never forget walking out to speak that night. I was ready to close worship, and as I looked at the crowd, I was disheartened. The room was filled with empty seats. and although a few leaders at the front of the stage were giving all their praise to God, the rest of the crowd looked uninterested, bored, or focused on something outside the room. I walked right back off the stage and went into my office. I burst into tears, full of anger and frustration. I had done everything I could imagine, yet I couldn’t grow this ministry. I longed to set it on fire like I’d seen in my dreams. Maybe I just wasn’t the guy. Maybe God got mixed up. I fell to my knees in my office and heard the drums beating through my wall. It felt as though I was beating on God’s chest. It took a minute, and then I heard God say as clear as day, “Are you done yet?” I cried out, “God, I am so done! I have nothing left. I can’t do this.” Then God said, “Good, this was the place I wanted you. Are you sure you’re done with all your big ideas, all your catchy phrases, all your clever sermons, all the ways it will work for you?” I screamed out, “God, I’m so done!” “Good,” He said. “Now I can begin. The first thing I want you to do is rip up your sermon. It’s not yours anyways.” He was right. I had gotten it online from one of my favorite preachers. I ripped up my sermon, and then God said, “When you go out to the mic, I’ll tell you what to say.” Well, this should be interesting, I thought.

I walked back onto the stage with nothing in my mind to say. Sure enough when I grabbed the mic, words began to come out. The first thing God had me do was ask everyone who was sick in the room to come to the stage. After I said it, I thought, No big deal. This is youth ministry. There won’t be a bunch of sick kids. Boy, was I wrong. The whole stage was packed with kids I’d never seen before—one guy in a wheelchair, three with crutches, others just holding up a part that was in pain. I thought, Oh great. I didn’t know God was going to put me on the spot like this. However, the tables were turned, and He was challenging my faith to put Him on the spot. With my shallow faith, I turned to the first person. Good thing all it takes is a mustard seed to move mountains. With that, I began to pray. Never before and never since have I experienced something so supernatural. One by one, the teenagers began to get healed. As I prayed, the first guy just began yelling that his leg was hot. Instantly, I realized it was working. Sure enough, the miracle power of God was in the room. Every student on that stage was healed that night except for one, who I still pray for to this day.

Over 30 visible miracles took place that night. The whole room was on the edge of their seats. This was no longer business as usual. The Lord was doing miracles in our midst. The Bible came alive that night, and this one-dimensional Jesus became 3D. At the end of the night, I finished with a salvation call. There was no one in the room who didn’t want Jesus. That night we had church like the first church, full of life and celebration because the students had met a real Jesus.

As I walked off the stage, I heard God speak to me again. “Did you like that?” “Did I like that? That was incredible. I feel alive again.” “Good. I’m now in charge of your youth ministry. This week, instead of working, I want you to pray. You’re a workaholic so that should be a lot.” I thought, Are you kidding me, God? The bad news was He heard my thoughts and responded with “No, I’m not kidding. For 8 hours a day, some days 10, I want you to come into your office, shut the door, and cry out to Me.” I said, “God, how will I do that? They pay me to be the youth pastor here. What if someone finds out?” “You mean you’ll get in trouble spending time with Me?” “That’s not what I mean, God. What if someone wants a meeting with me? What if there’s a student leader or parent that needs counseling?” Then God said, “If anyone needs a meeting, ask them before the meeting, ‘Will you pray with me for an hour? If God answers your prayer during that time, then let’s cancel the meeting.’” Funny thing was that this did happen. However, every time, within thirty minutes the person would walk out of the room. Either they got their need met or they were tired of praying. Either way, it was much better. I don’t really like meetings anyway.

So, the next morning I walked into my office, turned on some music, and did exactly as God said. I’m not sure I had ever prayed that long in my life. About two hours in, I ran out of songs and requests, but that’s when the Holy Spirit began to minister to me in ways I cannot describe. It was almost as if He was doing delicate surgery on my heart. He began to heal every hurt, every fear, and every offense. I found myself repenting, forgiving, and being forgiven. One hour I was bawling my eyes out, the next I was rejoicing. Sometimes I just sat in silence. For the first time in my life, I was okay with silence. Typically, in the silence my mind would wander to all the things I had to do, but in these moments, God was giving me a new rest. The next day I did the same thing. No one asked about it, so I didn’t tell anyone. The day after, I did the same thing. By the time Wednesday of the next week rolled around, I didn’t have a sermon. That was okay with me, though, because the week before I didn’t seem to need one. I couldn’t wait for service to start. There was a new excitement in the air. The room was a little fuller than the week before. People were actually inviting their friends! It became a place where we expected God to show up and do miracles. It’s funny how that works. It’s so much better than flyers and social media campaigns.

I didn’t study to give a message that night, but as I opened my Bible, the words came alive. When it was time to close the message. everyone had their heads bowed and eyes closed. Abruptly, a young man got up from the middle of the crowd and started making his way toward the front of the stage. I thought, This is interesting. People are answering the altar call before I give it. He was not answering any kind of call from my message or the Jesus I preached. As the young man got closer, he looked up at me, and no joke, out of his face jumped the most demonic face I’d ever seen. It was like something out of a scary dream or a horror movie. Then the young man turned from me with an evil smirk and went back into the crowd. On his way out, he walked halfway down the aisle and grabbed a young lady out of her seat. He then violently attempted to drag her out of the room. You could tell by her face that she had no clue who this guy was or why he was pulling her out of the room. As she screamed hysterically, everyone in the room was frozen. No one tried to stop him. I closed my eyes and began to pray in the Spirit, and within seconds the young man let go of the girl and was at my feet. I was not sure how he got there so fast, but I didn’t care. He begged me to “stop praying like that.” You better believe I kept praying like that! In fact, I started praying louder, and this time, into the mic. The young man began to scream, and I put my hand on his forehead. What happened next was something out of a science-fiction movie. He was on his knees and dramatically flipped and slammed onto his back. I’m not kidding. He began to squirm around on the floor like a snake.

The whole room was silent as this battle between the preacher and demon-possessed student took place. No one moved. All eyes were focused on the young man and what I would do next. Then I heard a voice as clear as day say, “The enemy is trying to rob Me of My glory. He’s pulling the attention off of what I was about to do, to his agenda, fear. Don’t cast out this demon here. Send the boy to the back room.” I was relieved. I grabbed the first leader I could find. You should’ve seen his eyes when I told him, “Alright, you’re up. Take him to the back room and cast this devil out of him.” As soon as the young man was dragged out by a few leaders, the room remained in a stunned hush. I then shared with the students what God had just told me and that He wanted to bring breakthrough to their lives. I reminded them that the battle between light and darkness is real and that the enemy did not want them to be free. I continued by telling them that the power of God is greater than any enemy that would walk into the room. That night, everyone got saved all over again. We ended on a high, and by the time we were done, the kid who had been squirming all over the floor was sitting upright in my office, not knowing what had happened. We led him in some further prayer for deliverance from alcohol and drugs, and then we led him in the sinner’s prayer. That night his life changed forever. Then I heard God say, “Did you like that?” I said, “No I didn’t, but I did like that You were with me.” Then God said, “I want you to pray another week.”

The next day, I came in and began to pray; about two hours in, I noticed it was darker outside my office than usual. I looked out of my window through my blinds, and I saw the lights in my secretary’s office were off as well, and I heard music coming from her cubicle. I peeked out of my door to find that my secretary was praying as well. I guess I couldn’t get mad at her for not working, so I left her alone. About midday, two more leaders had gathered with her, and by the end of the day, there were 10 people in the room crying out to God. The next day it happened again. Leaders just began to show up on their lunch breaks and after school. The offices that were once dead and boring, used for discussing budgets, problematic youth, and spreadsheets, were now being used to fill the halls of heaven with praise. When I first started this journey, I had no clue that this would go beyond me, but on the Wednesday night right before service, the group had built up to 100 students and leaders crying out to God in our offices.

Something shifted that week, and it impacted me and our youth ministry forever. There was a new life, a new joy, a new fire that none of us had ever felt before. Our youth ministry began to explode, without flyers or another cool event. Students just began to invite their friends. Within a week’s time, we were turning people away because we didn’t have room in the building. We started a second service, and that filled up as well. Then God put on my heart to ask our senior pastor if we could move to the main sanctuary, which held 2,500. It was the largest seated auditorium in all of Modesto, California, and God said, “I want to fill it.” I asked my senior pastor, and to my surprise there was a resounding yes. Then God put on my heart to prepare for 40 days for what He wanted to do. In response, we opened our first-ever youth prayer room in an abandoned classroom on campus, which we called “The Round Room.” For 40 days and 40 nights, leaders signed up to take hours on end to cry out for a generation to know Jesus. I’ll never forget the walls of that prayer room. There wasn’t an inch left without a name of an uncle or aunt, brother or sister, mom or dad. Both prayer requests and praise reports to God were etched into those walls. After 40 days and 40 nights, something started inside of us that was much bigger than any of us could imagine.

When we moved into the main sanctuary, we renamed our youth ministry “The Stadium.” The name had two meanings for us. First, it was in honor of the early Church believers, who were brought into stadiums in Rome to die for their faith. We would be brought into this stadium to die to ourselves and live for Christ. Secondly, we had a vision of stadiums being full of people worshipping God, and this was the beginning. The first night we opened The Stadium, around 700 students came; 300 of them were new. Many gave their lives to Jesus for the first time that night. From then on, the supernatural continued to take place weekly. We saw radical salvations and miracles. Students turned in tons of stuff after the services: gang rags, drugs, knives, you name it. One night we brought out a giant trash can and wrote “The Devil’s Trash Can” on it. Every week, teenagers and young adults threw things in there that they no longer needed in their new life with Jesus. This was it. This was what we had believed for. This was what we saw in our wildest dreams. The funny thing was that this was available to us the whole time. All we had to do was open the door. It felt as if we had unlocked something that could not be shut. We had found an important key in the Kingdom—prayer. God says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:18). If prayer changes things, then prayerlessness keeps things the way they are. Many are still waiting on God, but I tell you today God is waiting on you. He has given you the keys; it’s time we start using them.