Resisting the Devil – Part 1 – Five Minutes With Fran
People lose far too many fights simply because they aren’t resisting the devil. The reality is if you don’t put up any resistance at all when you are in a fight, you will lose by default. Nobody won a fight just standing there.
Revelation #1: We have to realize we are actually in a spiritual fight and who the real enemy is.
I don’t know about you but even though I know this, many times I will put up with a situation far too long before it even clicks in my mind that I need to resist an attack. The thing going on behind the scenes is actually spiritual, but we think we are dealing with something in the natural so we don’t address it spiritually, and then we don’t see the best possible outcome or resolution.
You may not think that there are such things as spiritual attacks, maybe you don’t “believe in all that”, but the scripture says in 1 Peter 5:8:
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:”
You have an enemy, and not only is he against you, he wants to devour you. We are clearly being warned to discern this carefully and stay on guard. That being said, is that fight with that person really with that person? Or what about this one – is the tormenting struggle in your own mind really you? Are those thoughts really even your thoughts? The scripture says in Ephesians 6:12:
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
So for those that think that’s taboo, the devil isn’t real, and there’s no such thing as this “spiritual warfare”, no one else can do the believing for you but the Bible clearly points to this reality. So, for whatever is going on in your life right now, are you recognizing if there is a spiritual attack you need to address?
Revelation #2: We have to realize that God doesn’t resist the devil for us.
I’m going to crush some false doctrine here for some people, so here we go…
For this issue, you don’t pray and ask God under the new covenant to get rid of the devil. Jesus told us to resist the devil, God doesn’t do the resisting. So if you don’t resist the devil, guess what, he isn’t going anywhere but stepping all over you. In Luke 10:19 Jesus said:
“Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”
In the verse directly following this it notes that the demons are subject to us. There is absolutely no point in Jesus giving us the power over all the power of the enemy and making demons subject to us if we are not the ones that are supposed to be dealing with the devil. Jesus gave us this power and authority because we need it. Here is another scripture that backs this up. With this one we really can’t miss it. In James 4:7 it says:
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
It doesn’t say God will resist the devil. It says when we resist him, then he will flee from us. If we don’t catch this revelation, then we will stay stuck being run over by the devil at every turn because God isn’t going to change his way of operating and what he said for individual people when they refuse to believe and act on what he said.
Okay, so we know we are supposed to be the ones doing the “doing” part, now what?
Revelation #3: We have to know how to resist the devil.
What does that actually look like? If we realize we need to do something, but we don’t operate in that correctly, we aren’t going to be impactful. There are a lot of weird beliefs out there on this that are just way off.
This isn’t a fight like many may imagine, we don’t wrestle with the devil as though he is really powerful and tough to beat. In the previous scriptures we already saw that we were given the power (this word actually means authority) over all of his power and that demons are subject to us, so really in the simplest terms, this means we just boss them around. That is what it is supposed to like, that should be the mental image we have and our faith should be there for that. As in, we should have confidence they are doing exactly what we tell them to do in Jesus’s name, because we boss them around because the word says they are subject to us.
We are not supposed be in fear as though demons even have any resistance to us. The scripture saying when we resist him he will flee from us doesn’t say, sometimes we would flee and sometimes he would flee, depending on the fight. No, it says when we resist, he flees, and that’s it.
So how did Jesus deal with demons, how did he “resist” them? He spoke to them and commanded them – basically like I said, he bossed them around and told them what they were going to do. In Matthew 18:16 it says that many demon possessed people came to him and he “cast out the spirits with his word”.
The scripture also tells us that we are to bind demonic powers from operating, that is noted in Mark 3:27.
I’m keeping this really simple because it is. To deal with demonic hindrances you simply speak to them and bind them from operating, command them to stop in their schemes against you, speak and decree failure over all their plans and attempts, and command them to leave in Jesus’s name.
Here’s a quick but important side note: We don’t clear houses or get rid of demons by ritualistic cleansings, burning sage, or using some sort of crystal. We also don’t do it by throwing holy water on them, that is contrary to scripture. We don’t need all that foolishness. In all the examples in the Bible we just tell them what to do (we command them) in Jesus name. We cast them out with a word just like Jesus did. The scripture didn’t say, “they are subject to us when we burn some sage”. It said, they are subject to us in Jesus’s name. That brings me to my final point.
Revelation #4: Christians are the only people who can truly deal with a demon or cast them out.
These are facts folks. Christians are the only ones who the actual authority of Jesus’s name was given to. Someone who uses Jesus’s name but has not accepted him as Lord can’t do it. It is the authority that is given with his name to believers that gives this kind of power. Otherwise it is just a bunch of hocus pocus, superficial stuff. There is no power like this for anyone outside of Christ.
Acts 19 gives a clear account of this when some men who were not followers of Jesus tried to cast a demonic spirit out of another man in the name of Jesus and the spirit said to him, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?” And then it says the spirit came out of the man and jumped on the “exorcists” that were trying to cast it out and the spirit overcame and prevailed against them and sent them running out of the house naked and wounded.
My questions to you in closing is this:
What is the most recent “issue” you dealt with or are dealing with right now and what steps did you take to resist the devil?
Has it even dawned on you that there is a spiritual thing going on right now?
If not, I encourage you to refocus. Be vigilant in your discernment as the scripture said and then act on it by resisting the enemy in that situation and make him flee!
