Three Specific Ways to Resist the Devil

04 May Three Specific Ways to Resist the Devil

 Blog Series:

Renew Your Mind ~ Transform Your Life

Two weeks ago, we looked at three categories of spiritual warfare:

1. Dirty Tricks
2. Mind Games
3. Hand-to-hand combat

Last week, we looked at three defenses in spiritual warfare:

1. Be Alert
2. Put on Armor
3. Resist

This week we will look at three specific ways to resist:

1. Champion Truth
2. Reject Pride
3. Govern Your Mind

Let’s unpack these.

Three Specific Ways to Resist the Devil

1. Champion Truth

Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32). To the degree that we do not know the truth, we are vulnerable to ignorance and deception. So, we must be responsible in the pursuit of truth and our readiness to believe it… and believing it, obey it.

That’s where all the information we looked at earlier about an eternal perspective comes in. We must believe, we must embrace, we must own the essentials of an eternal perspective, or Satan will use our ignorance to deceive and defeat us.

We must refuse to quit on God.

We must refuse to believe the enemy’s lies about Him.

We must refuse to succumb to a temporal perspective.

We must embrace the first part of an eternal perspective that we looked at in the first ten blog posts in this series…

• We must believe God exists, in spite of the absence of proof, because in the heat of spiritual battle, there can be times we will be tempted to believe that God doesn’t exist.
• We must believe God is good, in spite of rampant evil in the world, because in the heat of spiritual battle, there can be times we will be tempted to believe that He is not all good.
• We must believe that God loves us, in spite of the trouble in our life, because in the heat of spiritual battle, there can be times we will be tempted to believe that He does not love us.

Then… embrace the second part of an eternal perspective that we looked at in the next four blogs in this series…

• We must choose God over happiness, because in the heat of spiritual battle, there will be times we can be tempted to believe that we must choose self over God to be happy.
• We must choose others over self, because in the heat of spiritual battle, there will be times we can be tempted to believe that we must choose self over others to be happy.
• We must choose the eventual over the immediate, because in the heat of spiritual battle, there can be times we will be tempted to believe that we have to have something now to be happy.

2. Reject Pride

Pride is the fundamental flaw of Satan. He wanted to be his own authority, his own boss, the god of his own life. He wanted to be like God (Isaiah 14:7)!

And pride is the fundamental strategy he uses against us – to tempt us to become our own authority, our own boss, the god of our own lives.

So, “Pride,” as C. S. Lewis is reported to have said, “is the mother hen under which all other sins are hatched.”

We see how Satan uses pride to devastating and destructive ends in two passages of Scripture. James 3:14-16 tells us that if we operate out of “selfish ambition (pride),” it will produce wisdom that is “earthly, natural and demonic.”  Demonic?!?  Yes, pride makes a person susceptible to demonic influence, producing “wisdom” that creates “disorder and every evil thing.”

We see an example of this in 2 Timothy 2:25-26, which tells us that we should deal gently with those who oppose the truth “if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”

Working this passage backwards, it tells us that Christians can be held captive by the devil to do his will, because they have not come to a knowledge of the truth, because they have not repented.

It doesn’t tell us what they have not repented of, but it would include pride, which we already saw is the underlying sin of all sins. So, if a person is self-willed (James 3:16), and does not repent, it will keep him from coming to a knowledge of the truth, which makes him susceptible to being held captive by the devil to do his will. That person can exercise wisdom that is earthly, natural and demonic, resulting in disorder and every evil thing.

Pride is a devastating and self-destructive characteristic that we must be alert to in our own lives, as well as the lives of others – particularly spiritual leaders.

3. Govern your mind

Finally, we must govern our mind so that it leads us to right thinking and right acting. This includes these four steps:

• We must repent of sin. In addition to the 2 Timothy passage above, Ephesians 4:26-27 says, “Be angry, yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.” This passage tells us that when we do not resolve sin in our lives, it gives the devil an advantage, creating a spiritual vulnerability.
• We must control our thought life. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 tells us that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are divinely powerful, and that we are to destroy speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
• We must memorize and meditate on Scripture. In Matthew 4, when Jesus was tempted by Satan to sin, he rebuffed the temptation each time by quoting Scripture. Having “Scriptures at the ready” in our minds can be a powerful source of strength in spiritual warfare
• We must pray. In the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was praying before His arrest, He urged His disciples to “pray that you may not come into temptation.” (Luke 22:40)

Conclusion

As we follow these principles for doing spiritual battle, the Lord will bless us and give us victory. 1 John 4:4 says “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” God will give us power over the evil schemes and flaming arrows of the enemy and lead us to victory in the spiritual war.

Next week we will begin looking at who we truly are as a Christian and rising to our true spiritual nature.

In case you’re new here

This blog post is part of a series titled “Renew Your Mind, Transform Your Life”, introduced on January 5, 2021. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.

If you know anyone who you think might enjoy joining us in this study, please forward this blog to them and encourage them to go to my web site (www.maxanders.com) and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blogs on this subject.

In addition, I am creating a new online membership site, The Change Zone, that will provide information, strategies and resources to help motivated Christians renew their mind and transform their lives. If you would like to learn more about this and get updates to know when The Change Zone will be available, click here.

I look forward to going through this life-changing journey with you.

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