James 4:7 – 7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Do you have sin in your life that you want to get rid of and it’s just hard?
The fact that most of us fail to realize or take seriously is that there is a major spiritual war going on that we can’t physically see.
Satan is still the Prince of this world. Jesus has gained victory over sin and death, but Satan still has plenty of power on this planet. Any victory you can have over Satan comes from Jesus and His victory.
That is why we must SUBMIT ourselves to God. We have no power without Him. With Him however, we have all the power we need to defeat evil, sin, and Satan in our lives.
Now onto the title portion of our post. Imagine if you have a bunch of macho football watching guys all hanging out. In your house you have the greatest setup to watch football. A high definition big screen with sound that puts you right into the action. Also let’s pretend that these football watching fanatics have no ability to watch it unless they travel to somebody’s house to see it and they can go and watch it wherever they want.
Are they going to be at your house?
You bet they are, as many as the place will fit and as long as they can have a decent seat.
How long will they stay? As long as you have the games playing. The better the games the more they enjoy them.
This analogy I wanted to play out for you works the same way in a sinful problem. You see there are demons by the millions are over this earth and they work for Satan. Each one of them is an evil disembodied spirit that has its own sins. They are feeding off of you!
If you are feeding them in your sin (whatever it may be), they are going to be there in full force.
Luke 11:24-26 – 24“When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ 25When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”
So we see here that a spirit wants to find rest and until he finds a sinful habitat, he doesn’t have rest. So in this case it went out and found seven sprits more wicked than it was. Where did they go? Back into the same man. What was the result? The man is now worse off than before he cleaned up his life and gave the wicked spirit the boot in the first place.
You’re already a fallen sinful human being that is fighting the flesh already. This certainly doesn’t help the battle. So what are we supposed to do?
We have to make the decision to die to ourselves and that sinful nature. We have to let Jesus work in us and through us to get this victory.
Here’s another thing about that evil spirit or spirits. If you aren’t feeding it, not only does it get bored with you, but as we read it gets restless. It leaves because it needs to feed. Don’t let it feed off of your sin any longer. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.
I remember thinking to myself, how can I say that I would die if someone put a gun to my head and asked me if I was a Christian, if I can’t even die to the stupid sins that I allow to affect my life.
That’s when 2+2 came together for me, along with reading the life changing book from Chuck and Nancy Missler (The Kingdom, Power & Glory, the overcomers handbook). I needed to:
- Die to myself
- Allow the spirit of God and Christ to work through me
- Resist the Devil so he would flee from me
I’m telling you it has set me free on many things I couldn’t beat on my own. If you want the mindset to beat a sin you have to take it on with all three of these.