“What do you mean, ‘Kiss the demons’?”

Steve Brown:
“What do you mean, ‘Kiss the demons?'” The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions, so here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with answers to the Bible that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. Yeah, this is going to be fun.

Steve Brown:
I’m going to, you’re going to answer it.

Pete Alwinson:
Good to see you, man.

Steve Brown:
That’s why I bring him in. I do it because I love him because he’s wise, but because I need somebody else to get the critical letters besides me.

Pete Alwinson:
I’ll take them, I’ll take them.

Steve Brown:
Hey, that’s Pete Alwinson and the ministry is Forge and the ministry is powerful. You want to find out, go to ForgeTruth.com and you’ll be blown away with a good stuff there, especially if you’re a guy. Forge is basically a men’s ministry that makes a difference in men’s lives. And Pete, as you know, comes in and asks for years and we answer questions on the Friday broadcast. You can ask your question by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, or you can write to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
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or you can send your question to [email protected] and listen, if you can help us financially, please do. We’ll be faithful with your gift and we’ll squeeze it for the glory of God. If you can’t, by the way, you can charge it on your credit card or include it in your envelope and we’ll use it in people’s lives. If you can’t, we understand. We would very much appreciate a prayer for this broadcast and this ministry. And speaking of prayer, Pete, pray for us. We’ll turn to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Yes, let’s pray. Father, we do come into your presence right now. We thank you so much that it’s so easy to do so, so on this Friday, we stop for just a minute and we thank you for being the God that you are and revealing yourself to us. You are holy and righteous and just and good. You’re our Creator, you’re our Sustainer, you are our Savior, you are the one that molds us and makes us every day. And so, we run to you. And Lord, we thank you that you have a plan, that even though your creation fell, you had a plan immediately to restore it and that it has been fulfilled in Jesus and will one day be fulfilled when he comes again. And so, Lord, we ask that you would enable us to know how to live now between the first coming and the second coming of Jesus, to live trusting you, looking to help advance your kingdom, not afraid by the, of the kingdoms of men, but trusting in your kingdom and trusting in your power. Fill us, help us to have great hope for your coming again Jesus. And may even this Sunday we celebrate that, the second coming as we worship, remember all that you have done for us and all that you will do for your glory and our good. And so, we pray for our pastors, teachers, priests and leaders, worship directors. Lord, thank you for them and use them to honor your name and lead us. And now we commit this time of Q&A to you, as we pray in your Holy Name, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s first go to our phone lines.

Pete Alwinson:
Would kissing the lips of a demon make me vulnerable?

Steve Brown:
What was that question?

Pete Alwinson:
Was, if I kiss the lips of a demon, does it make me vulnerable?

Steve Brown:
You know, you’ve got, at first, let us say, that Satan is real.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Brown:
And demons are real. And we’re seeing a lot of things in our culture that simply can’t be explained, except in terms of the demonic.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm-hmm.

Steve Brown:
It comes from the dark side.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm-hmm.

Steve Brown:
And I don’t want to get into specifics, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. You see it everywhere. You see it in so many places and in ways that I haven’t seen before.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm-hmm.

Steve Brown:
Where you sense legitimate, personalized, evil involved in what’s going on.

Pete Alwinson:
Yep, undoubtedly.

Steve Brown:
Now, when I say things like kiss the demons, I’m using a metaphor, I’m not, you’d be surprised how often I get asked about that, but it simply means face your stuff.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And if you face your stuff, it loses its power. And when I’m using demons, that’s a metaphor for bad stuff.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
So, don’t run from it.

Pete Alwinson:
So, like what would be something that we tend to run from?

Steve Brown:
Well, we do it from our issues, family issues for instance. I’m the adult child of an alcholic.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm-hmm.

Steve Brown:
And I’ve hidden that most of my life. I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to go there, but if I quote, ‘kiss the demons’, I’ll look at that.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm-hmm.

Steve Brown:
And say, how has that affected me?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And it loses its power.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. So maybe abuse that happened to you in the past

Steve Brown:
oh sure

Pete Alwinson:
or failure.

Steve Brown:
exactly

Pete Alwinson:
A marriage that, you know, that blew up on you and you don’t want to talk about it, but maybe you haven’t learned from it. And on those things that we have, we suppress those where Satan can come in and tempt us, convict us,

Steve Brown:
He really can.

Pete Alwinson:
guilt us, shame us.

Steve Brown:
You don’t have to be there.

Pete Alwinson:
And we don’t

Steve Brown:
All you’ve got to do is face it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And how can we face it because of grace.

Steve Brown:
Exactly. Larry Crabb used to say that our tendency is to run from the dark.

Pete Alwinson:
Yep.

Steve Brown:
And we need to run to the dark

Pete Alwinson:
mm-hmm.

Steve Brown:
because that’s where Jesus meets his people.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And I think there’s real truth to that.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man. So much. And with the men’s ministry that we have, you know, men don’t want to talk about their earthly father experience or even sometimes their mom experience cause

Steve Brown:
Oh, I know.

Pete Alwinson:
it’s so painful. But they need to go there,

Steve Brown:
Really do.

Pete Alwinson:
to get free. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And sometimes you do that with a Christian counselor.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But sometimes you do it with a brother that you trust.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That you trust with your soul.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s it.

Steve Brown:
And you’ll be, you’re thinking, I ain’t doing that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
But listen, let me tell you, if you do it, those things lose their power.

Pete Alwinson:
They lose their power. And that’s what you mean. Kiss the demon on the lips. Face it. They will lose their power. And here’s the deal, once you start dealing with that, you find yourself becoming more of an open book

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
on other things.

Steve Brown:
And you don’t have things to hide. It’s wonderful.

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
It’s a good freedom.

Pete Alwinson:
So, thank you for saying that. It’s a low predictable, a low predictable statement, so it has high communicative value.

Steve Brown:
It really does.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s why you do it cause you’re a communicator. It gets our attention.

Steve Brown:
But I’m going to be more careful to explain it from now on. Listen, this is a good question, an e-mail. How can you talk to someone about your faith who doesn’t even believe in sin and the one true God?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
You can’t.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
What did Jesus say? He said, shake the dust off your feet.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I mean, if they won’t talk to you, if they just, if they poo poo you, they just write you off. How can you talk about it?

Steve Brown:
I think we, I think one of the principles that I’ve had in evangelism is that you get permission for what you say.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm.

Steve Brown:
Would you be interested in what I think about that?

Pete Alwinson:
Mm-hmm.

Steve Brown:
Or if you are really hurting, I’ve got some answers that would make a difference to you. Or if you’re trying to deal with your alcoholism or your addiction, there’s some things you’re missing. And if you’d like to listen, I’d be glad to tell you. If you don’t want to, tell me to mind my own business, and that’s fine too, we’ll go get a milkshake. But those kinds of things are really important, I think. And you know, I remember the crusade guy that was the first one in New England, went to Harvard and he was on everybody to talk about Jesus. And one kid said, I don’t want you to talk to me about Jesus anymore. He said, okay, let’s pray. And he put his hand on his shoulder and said, Lord, I got a young man here that never wants to hear from you again. And the kid pulled his shirt and said, I wouldn’t go that far.

Pete Alwinson:
I like it. I like it.

Steve Brown:
So, you might. So, sometimes you just can’t.

Pete Alwinson:
And then sometimes, you know, when you don’t know, they say, well, what do you get, what do you Christians believe? And get, cut it to them as easy and straightforward. Hey, we believe there’s a great God, and he’s holy and we’ve sinned and we need help and we can’t help ourselves. Jesus is the answer.

Steve Brown:
And we really are here for them. And we need to remember that. But I’ll tell you, there are a lot of them and if some of them don’t want to hear, some of them do, so spend your time with those who really do want to hear.

Pete Alwinson:
Totally, totally. Go with the goers and don’t be dissuaded from them. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
As an adult, this is an e-mail, where does the command to honor one parents end.

Pete Alwinson:
As an adult, where does one, yeah. I think

Steve Brown:
That’s a good question.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s a very good, you know, I think as we move off the family payroll and out underneath that structure, whether it’s through marriage or work or both, I think we don’t have to obey them anymore, but we should always try to honor them the best we can.

Steve Brown:
I agree.

Pete Alwinson:
And if you interpret honoring as obeying, then that leads to a problem.

Steve Brown:
There was a seminar a few years ago called Basic Youth Conflict.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I went to it.

Steve Brown:
I studied all the manuals from it before I let people in my church go do it. There’s some good stuff in it.

Pete Alwinson:
There was.

Steve Brown:
But one of the things that was not good, was that you are bound to obey parents until the day you die or they die. And Jesus didn’t do that.

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
You know, his mother wanted him not to go to Jerusalem, wanted some other things from him and his brothers the same way, his family, and he did just the opposite.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. You’re so right, even when he was young, right?

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Load up the caravan’s going back. Nope, I’m staying in the temple.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true. So, yeah, I think honor your parents, but as you become an adult, you become free.

Pete Alwinson:
And I think that we, even as adults, going back to a further, earlier question, there are times we have to unpack our earthly parent story and how that impacted us. And it’s not dishonoring to them per se to do that. I think

Steve Brown:
I agree.

Pete Alwinson:
we have to think of the environment, in which we can do that. That’s not breaking a commandment to say, Hey, I was physically abused or verbally abused by my parents, or sexually abused. We have to deal with that

Steve Brown:
I agree.

Pete Alwinson:
In the right place, right time.

Steve Brown:
Is it okay to pray for everything, including the really small stuff?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
That’s an e-mail.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s great. And what was Dr. Barnhouse statement about that?

Steve Brown:
He said, Madam, can you think of anything that isn’t small stuff to the God of the Universe?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. Everything is equally easy to omnipotence and we ought to be bringing all of our life, all of our stuff to him. What a joy it is to be able to do that.

Steve Brown:
Oh yeah. They’d say that Billy Graham, when he was in New York and getting ready to go to the major crusade. The last thing he prayed is the Lord, I can’t find my hat. Would you find it? We’ve got to go. We very much appreciate your being a part of this. And do remember that Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.