I John 4:4 Reminds Us Who Has the Power

“Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.” - I John 4:4

Greater is God, who dwells in us. God is greatest. God is most powerful. All believers pretty much agree on this.

WHYthen don’t more of us really believe this and put it into our daily attitudes and practices? Maybe it’s because we think the devil is scarier or maybe we think he’s more willing to mess with us than God is to intervene on our behalf.

You might be shaking your head and saying, “No way, I don’t believe that”. Great. Are you acting that way? Are you letting the devil scare or manipulate you because you’re afraid of him? So many people fear the world, the people in it, and the monsters that roam in the dark.

Matthew 10:28 makes the whole situation very plain. “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” This is not the only place in the Bible where we are advised to fear God.

That concept has always been an odd one to me. I have never feared God’s wrath. I know that many do. I know that our ancestors and certainly all those in the Old Testament did. But this concept also comes up in the New Testament as we have seen.

A closer look at the word fear in Matthew 10:28 proves illuminating. There are, of course, the usual definitions for fear, but the final concept of the word is key. To fear someone is to treat them with reverence and to be obedient to them. In that respect, I fear God most of the time. It also shows us that we need have no fear (terror) or fear (reverential obedience) to demons, spirits, and dark things of this world which might threaten us.

And why don’t we have to have terror or revere these creatures because of what they could do to us? Because greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. See? It all comes back around. God has overcome evil. What we are seeing are evil’s desperate attempts to take as many people with it as possible. But we are not subject to evil. Rather, evil must flee from us when we resist it and command it to leave.

God gave us authority to cast out demons.

God is more powerful than the demons. So are we. Therefore, we should not fear and we should rejoice in the fact that God and we have overcome.

#Bible #exploration