James 4:7 and the Power of Resisting

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” – James 4:7

I love that word “flee”. The word as presented here is defined by Strong’s Dictionary of the Bible as: to run away (literally or figuratively); to shun; by analogy, to vanish:—escape, flee.

Now, imagine this, if you will…

You’re in a dark house.

You’re alone, isolated.

There are creepy noises in the night and you can’t tell if they are coming from inside or outside your house.

You feel a presence in the room with you, something bad, something evil…

You turn around, praise God for His protection, and tell Satan that you command him to get out of there by the authority given you by Christ who shed His blood for your salvation. Then… Satan runs away screaming.

Not exactly how you pictured that story ending? It should have been. So, the question is, why does Satan run away? We resisted. We chose God over him.

Satan hates the sound of us worshiping and praising God. It hurts him. Why would he stick around for that if there’s no good reason to do so?

Satan is only willing to put so much effort into any given attack. If you stand up, resist him, tell him to get out of there, he knows it’s a losing battle. He’s got so many other places he could be, so why stay and waste energy? After all, maybe he’ll try you again another time when you’re not expecting him.

We have the authority over him. That’s right. Jesus gave us authority to cast out demons. We just need to claim it. It’s not God’s job to kick the devil’s butt out of that house. It’s yours. Stand up and claim your rightful power as one of God’s children. Remind the devil that the blood of Christ saved you and defeated him.

It takes only a moment to tell the devil “no”. It takes only seconds to cast him out of a room, house, car, etc.. Do it. Watch him run. Maybe pray for the next person he’s going to visit that they’ll have the strength to resist, too. Then get back to enjoying that quiet night of solitude in peace.

#lifesjourney #righteousness