Setting the enemy straight!

“Resist the Devil and he will flee.” This excerpt from James 4 seems to say that our words have power.

I never really thought about it much, but in recent days, with all of the clearly God-less things that are happening all around us; I began to ponder why we, the Church – the Body of Christ, seems impotent to deal with evil. Not that we ARE impotent, NO! we are not – but we do seem to be.

Resist the Devil and he will flee is not a call for us to tell the Devil to sit down and shut up in our own authority, yet I fear this is exactly what we tend to do.  

Our King – Jesus, who is the Christ – has all authority, and we walk in that authority.  

We’ve gotta be careful not to fool ourselves into the false truth … that it is we who have the authority. The authority; The One who sets the standards; The One one who establishes the rules; The One who wields real power – is God. Power and Authority are His! As we attempt to stand against our enemy Satan – we have to remember always that we must ask the Lord Himself to come against the enemy; we must ask God Himself to stand in against the enemy. We have to ask the Lord Himself to work within us the resistance that will make the enemy flee. Much like the disciples who could not cast out the demons on their on – we will stand powerless if we try to do it on our own!

When we experience the enemy’s attacks in our own lives or when we see his movement in the world around us it is our role to speak to the evil one in the name of our Almighty and Faithful God saying ‘Satan, stand down for our Lord will thwart your evil plans‘. It is ours to remind the enemy of who is in charge: ‘Satan, you have no authority here for the Lord Himself will judge you‘. However, be aware that in order to speak to the enemy in God’s power – we have to be connected to Him. We have to know Him, know His word, and be yielded to His will.

Reflect on your own life — are you connected to the power source?  If not, you can be assured that there is no way you can stand against the enemy.

With all of these hurtful, hate filled, sinful, wicked, arrogant, haughty things going all around us we’ve got to remember to live for Him daily – continually yielding to God’s will in our lives.  He will grant us the wisdom to call upon Him!  The witness of the lives of believers in Christ have got to illuminate the earth with the truth of the Gospel and dim the light of the enemy.  His strength that never fails!!  If Michael, the most powerful of the angels, knew that he should not take the enemy to task in his own name or in his own power – surely we understand that we too must be careful to recognize where the power lies.