March 10, 2016

Resist The Devil

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. -- James 4:7-10

Who controls your life? You? God? Satan? Whoa! Wait a minute, you’re saying about now. Satan isn’t in control. I am. Or at least God is. Not Satan. I’m a Christian!

Okay. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t allowing Satan to push your buttons, disrupt your mind and your thoughts, and cause disruptions in your life. Satan causes havoc and ruins so many things.

I just watched the movie War Room -- again. I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen it. I love its message because the power of prayer is something we so often overlook. We pray when we are desperate rather than praying before we reach that point.

In one scene, she is praying and repeating “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Then she gets up and basically calls the devil out and tells him to leave her house because Jesus is in charge now. How powerful! Why don’t we all do that?

Because we don’t recognize what Satan is doing. We blame others. In this same move, she blames her husband for everything but wise Mrs. Clara tells her to pray for her husband and blame the devil. Amazing things start to happen when she truly does pray for her husband. She stops trying to fix him and turns him over to God. Truly.

Ah, there we are back to that control issue. We really don’t want to give that up. How much grief do we cause ourselves and others by trying to control what we can’t control? We can’t control the actions of others. We can’t control events around us. We can’t control much of anything beyond ourselves.

The good part is that we’re not supposed to control those things anyway. We aren’t called to fix anyone or anything beyond ourselves. We’re to pray for people, resist the devil, and focus on God.

So stand up and fight -- with prayer. True, heartfelt prayer. That’s where you fight for those you love. That’s where you fight when you’ve been wronged. In prayer. Trust God to handle it all and He will. Always. He will.