Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners;
and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep!
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.
and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep!
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.
James 4:7-10 (NKJV)
Although God and the Devil are at war, we don't have to wait until the end to see who will win. God has already defeated Satan (Revelation 12:10-12), and when Christ returns, the Devil and all he stands for will be eliminated forever (Revelation 20:10-15). Satan is here now, however, and he is trying to win us over to his evil cause. With the Holy Spirit's power, we can resist the Devil, and he will flee from us.
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Can you imagine Michael Jordan coming back to the bench talking about, “I could score a whole lot easier if I didn't have that other guy putting his hands up in my face all the time”?
Michael's coach would tell him, “Michael, if there were no opponent, it would be easy to score. We're paying you millions to score with that guy in your face.”
As Christians, we have an opponent in our face too. Whenever you decide to do something significant for God, Satan will show up, usually in the person of people like Sanballat and Tobiah (reference Nehemiah 2). Not everyone wants their culture transformed by the influence of godly people. It displeased these men that Nehemiah had come to seek the welfare of Israel. They took it upon themselves to stop him. See, Satan's job is to keep God's people from carrying out God's will.
By the way, this isn't just true for the big projects such as rebuilding a community. Satan's job is to destroy you and your family because he knows Christian families populated by committed Christians are the foundation to transforming society. So he spends day and night plotting your demise. Just like we have angels assigned to us, Satan has demons with our names and addresses on their “to do” lists.
That is why the Bible says, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12). Do we need to fear Satan and his demons? No, not at all. We need to resist and overcome them in the power of Christ.
Nehemiah wasn't afraid of his adversaries, but neither did he take them lightly. For the rest of his rebuilding project and well beyond it, he kept a close eye on those characters.
But too many of us are like puppets on a string to Satan. All he has to do is yank our string a little, and we go where he tells us to go and get mad when he tells us to get mad. Once you understand what Satan is up to, you will get down on your knees and say, “Not today, Satan. Not me, not my marriage, not my family, not my community - because we are submitting ourselves to God.”
Stand firm for God and against Satan, and the Sanballats and Tobiahs of this world will melt like snowmen in summer.
Excerpts from: "Life Application Study Bible" by Tyndale House Publishers and "Time to Get Serious" by Tony Evans