Resist The Devil

28th January, 2022

James 4:4-10
“You adulterous people,[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us ?
6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
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 starts by addressing us as adulterous people. This does not refer to people who have extra marital affairs, but about people who leave God and love the world. This makes us enemies of God when we love the things of the world more than we love our creator.
The Holy Spirit that God has given to us is very much treasured by God and when we pain the Holy Spirit it pains the Father. However, God has poured out grace upon us. He shows favour to us when we are humble. When we are arrogant and proud, God will oppose us. However, when we are humbled, God gives us more grace as he favours us. How do we do this?
The Word tells us to first submit ourselves to God. This is something we must consciously do on our own. We must listen to the Word, believe, write it on the tablets of our heart and obey it.
Then, we must resist the devil. We should never give him a way in our lives. When we stand firm against him, the devil will flee from us! Wherever we feel that the devil has been at work in our lives and destroying our peace of mind, we must submit completely to the lordship of Jesus. We must confess that He is our Lord/ Master/ Saviour/ King etc with our mouths and we must believe it in our hearts. We must also resist the devil. If we own anything that the devil likes, like idols, he uses that as a stronghold to grip onto our lives. We must get rid of all these idols from our homes and from our hearts.
When Nehemiah of the Old Testament was a close and personal staff of the King Artaxerxes, he wanted to rebuild the broken wall of Jerusalem. Two people,Sanballat and Tobiah,  however, teased him and tried to discourage Nehemiah. He resisted these people and their comments. They then kept their idols inside the temple of God and Nehemaiah saw that and threw them out. This was how he resisted the works of the devil.
If we have anything that God detests in our homes and in our hearts, we must get rid of them! Some of us try to make a compromise or an adjustment with the devil, but we must completely end ties like this and resist him. A passion must rise up inside us and like Jesus say, “I don't have any connection with the ruler of darkness”. Resist the laziness that the devil brings in us not to read the Word. This has to be done by us and not God.
So submitting to God, we must wilfully hate and angrily resist all that the devil tries to do to take you away from God and then he will definitely flee from you. We must be able to tell the devil to get out and get lost.
Next, we must come near to God and He will come near to us.
James then tells us to wash our hands and purify our hearts. We must leave our sinful life and worldly ways.We must serve God single mindedly.  If we have sinned, we must truly repent with mourning and wailing.
Lastly, we must humble ourselves in God’s presence. When we do this, God will lift us up. As we fall down at His feet, He lifts us up to heights we have never seen before.

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