We submit to God by resisting the devil. This daily devotional looks at how we can resist Satan by drawing near to God.
Nuggets
- We resist the devil when we obey God’s laws and commandments.
- We can only resist the devil through God’s power.
- We are told God never leaves us, but we are to turn to Him.
Devotions in the Approach to Knowing God series
The last thing we talked about in the last devotion was why isn’t it easier to submit to God? We said it comes down to a choice.
Spurgeon felt that, when we look at the big picture, the choice is obvious. He wrote, “Knowing as we do that all these things work together for our good, and that we never endure a [challenge] more than our heavenly Father knows to be needful, we are bound to submit ourselves cheerfully to all that He appoints.”
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But how do we put words into action? James went on to tell us how to do that.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Godliness, equated with the Old Testament term fear of the Lord, is an attitude of reverence that is promoted by walking in His Spirit and obeying God’s laws and commandments and produces a moral likeness of God.
Let's Put It into Context #2
Nuggets from the previous devotions in the series:
• Knowing God is more than just thinking there is some Power Who created this universe.
• We are to understand; but knowing God does not mean we will be able to understand everything.
• We begin to know God when we diligently pursue knowing Him and doing His Will.
• It is our duty to surrender our will to God by submitting to Him.
• Some think that God requiring our obedience is a string to the gift, but it isn’t.
• If submitting to God is required, why isn’t it easier to accomplish?
Let's Put It into Context #3
Who is Satan? We know Satan and the demons that followed him when he rebelled were cast out of heaven (Jude 1: 6).
Satan does have some power. He can “inflame the evil desires of the soul.” We do now he is devious in his dealings with us.
One thing about Satan is he doesn’t give up. He is a persistent devil, trying to get us to defy God.
Griffin believed that Satan is jealous of mankind. He envies our happiness.
I’m not totally convinced of that. I think he envies God more than is.
We do know that Satan knows us well. He has had lots of practice in getting us to deny God.
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Person of Interest
We Submit to God by Resisting the Devil
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas. 4: 7 ESV)
We resist the devil when we obey God’s laws and commandments.
Satan is very good at trying to get us to disobey God’s laws and commandments. He is very crafty at devising challenges — that may or may not look like a challenge — to get us to not submit to God’s Will.
We have to understand what God is asking us to do by reading His Word and listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Then, we have to make the choice to do what He is telling us.
What makes it a challenge Satan can use against us is when we expect the “… all things God works for the good of those who love him …” (Rom. 8: 28 NIV) to only be good things. Couple that with “… he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able …” (I Cor. 10: 13 CSB), we expect smooth sailing to be the norm.
But are we really submitting to God’s Will if it isn’t challenging us with something that isn’t our will?
Something Turnbull said got me thinking. He wrote, “Wherein we are taught whither all our strivings must tend, even to the withstanding of Satan, with whom we have continual war, and therefore ought we wholly to bend ourselves with all might against him.”
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How many times does it cross our minds that we are in continual war with Satan? Some say God isn’t around because we can’t see Him. The same holds true for Satan.
Think of it this way. We make many choices during the course of the day. Every time we make a choice that is counter to God’s Will, we haven’t resisted the devil.
No, we may not feel Satan fighting for us to choose his option. But he is. “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6: 12 NLT).
To read devotions in the Armor of God series, click the appropriate button below.
To me, it goes back to the concept that salvation isn’t a one-time shot. Salvation is deliverance from evil and the consequences of sins to replace them with good and eternal life.
Yes, upon conversion, we are changed from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive. Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
But then we have to work out our salvation on the Sanctification Road. We have to go from being milk babies to steak adults. We have to be perfected.
Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration, gradually changes our nature through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness. Regeneration is the change in us that God brings about when we go from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
Glossary
One way Satan gets us to not submit to God is to make us content with sin. Spurgeon said that we are to “… resist the secret spirit of evil as well as its outward acts.”
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It isn’t just what we do. It is what we think.
I don’t know about you, but lately Satan has been throwing a lot of challenging thoughts into my mind. I don’t know how many times I’ve stopped myself and said, “God, I choose to submit to You. Get these thoughts out of my head, please.”
Bottom line is we can’t be passive in our salvation. We have to fight to stay in God’s Will.
No, it isn’t going to be easy. Satan is all around us in our souls and in society. That means inside and outside are under attack. We have to strap on God’s armor and fight.
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Can We Really Resist the Devil?
We can only resist the devil through God’s power.
Let’s go at this from another way. There was a study done that said people — even disciples of Christ — do not believe that Satan is real.
How can we say Satan is not real when James point blank tells us to “… resist the devil …” (Jas. 4: 7 ESV)?
We believe that God does not lie.
- In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began” (Ti. 1: 2 ESV).
- God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Num. 23: 19 ESV).
God supervised the writing of Scriptures. “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness” (II Tim. 3: 16 CSB).
The New Living Translation expands on that to show us what is meant. “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right” (II Tim. 3: 16 NLT).
So, if we know God cannot lie and we know that God inspired the Scriptures, that means we can believe it when we say we can resist the devil.
There is another reason why we can resist the devil. Murray wrote, “No one is compelled to sin.” We are not forced to do wrong.
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It is our choice to submit to God or not resist the devil. Murray said that this leads to “… the hopefulness of morality.” Morality is the principles that inform the behavior — the virtue.
That leads into our discussion for the next devotion.
We Submit to God by Drawing Near to Him
“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you …” (Jas. 4: 8 ESV)
We are told God never leaves us, but we are to turn to Him.
Okay, how are we supposed to draw near to Someone Who isn’t really here? God is a spirit, not a physical being.
Spurgeon said one of the ways of drawing near to God is to be obedient. It means we have to be actively seeking Him.
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Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
Drawing near to God means we don’t bombard Him with questions so that we understand everything completely. It is putting all circumstances into God’s hands and going with the flow.
We do this by opening our hearts to God.
Making the Connections
Shape warned us about playing around with sin. We can’t find ways to say that God condones it. We can’t assert that we will only try it out once.
We need to shut sin and the devil down the first time. We can’t toy with sin, thinking we can decide when and how often we sin — and how we can turn it off.
We have to realize we are always susceptible to Satan’s temptations. That is why we need God’s power to help us resist the devil.
How Do We Apply This?
So, how to we submit to God? We need to:
- Grow in faith and knowledge (II Pet. 3: 18).
- Increase our prayer life.
- Study God’s Word to find God’s character through virtues and godliness.
- Follow God’s laws and commandments, not try to rewrite them.
- Follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
- Strap on the armor and fight as He directs.
- Find like-minded believers to encourage us in our trials.
- Have a sober disposition
- Always be watching
- Remember and utilize past experiences to prepare and encourage us for current trials.
- Fight Satan — or we will die.
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We have to always remember that Satan has already lost the war. There still may be pitched battles, but God will be victorious in the end.
We need to submit to the Winner.
Father God. We submit to You. Strengthen us so that we can resist the devil. We pray that we choose You every time. Forgive us when we don’t. Amen.
What do you think?
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