RESISTING THE ENEMY

James 4:7

Morning Meditation 2/5/2013

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

The first thing in successfully resisting the devil is to submit ourselves to God. God is the supreme authority. God is so accurate in His judgments that it is a complete waste of time to argue with His Word. God knows when we start our wandering from Him. He is grieved when one of His children begins to travel to the hog pen. James says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God.” We are under the control of the Holy Spirit the moment we become Christians. A decision must be made. Am I going to be a mediocre Christian? Or, am I in a battle where the weapons have not been tried. Satan is our real enemy. He is going to try to knock us out of the ring. When we are down for the count, we can be saved.

When I was a boy and got into trouble that I could not handle, I always ran to my grandmother. I would hit her long skirt going about 90 miles per hour. She handled my enemies. I managed to keep her between us. I would then, to further provoke my adversary, stick my tongue out at him. I would have been dead if I had not had my grandmother to help me.

We have, in our fight against Satan, and his demonic forces, the Word of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

People play games with the devil and do not take him seriously. Those people either belong to the devil (having never been saved), or they do not realize the power he has and can exercise it against us at any time.

Satan is doomed before he starts if he attempts to fight against God. We know where the fight started, we know that it affected the world in which we live, and we know that Jesus defeated Him when He died on the cross. John 12:31 says, “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” He was speaking here of the cross. This is the reason Paul said in Galatians 6:14, "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."

There is a very little resistance of the devil today. Laodicea stands as a serious warning to us for the last 2,000 years.

There are at least three things where we let our guard down, and when we do, we become a casualty.

The first enemy we must face is unbelief. I find myself in a weakened state at times because I have not trusted the Lord concerning some matter. We are living in a society who either do not believe in God, or, they throw in the towel and say the battle is too hard. Unbelief is an insult against God. This is brought out in Psalms 14:1, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good."

When I go to the Word of God it does not have to make sense. I believe it whether I understand it or not.

We reason from doubt and impose our views on the Scriptures and wind up along the Kings Highway as casualties. Remember this. There is no enemy that you will ever face as believers in Christ that has not already come to bow at His feet. They know Him and know their doom. The Christian can't possibly lose a battle that has already been won! The cults that intend to destroy the faith have perverted minds and they are doomed to the lake of fire with no chance of repentance.

Another enemy of the faith is complacency. The Scripture says, “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion.” The contented Christian is not in danger of attack, he has already been attacked. He is sick and doesn't know it.

Then there is self-righteousness. The temptation to feel morally pleased with ourselves will become greater as we improve morally. The only way to combat this is to discipline our thinking about ourselves and not allow Satan to puff us up.

Finally, the fear of man brings a snare. It is written in Revelation 21:8, "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." You will notice that “fear” stands first in the list of those who will in the final day be tried and sentenced to and cast into the Lake of Fire.

May the Lord bless these words to our hearts.

In Christ

Bro. White