How to Resist the Devil - F. J. Perryman

Part I—Surveying the Field of Operations

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the [‘your’RV] faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.”* (I Peter 5:8-9)

If I do not resist the devil, things very soon go wrong with me. I know that he is my adversary, and if I become unwatchful and unguarded, he surely, though slowly, gains on me, and God’s work is hindered. If you’re a true child of God, you are no exception to the rule. Satan will oppose you and challenge you, but remember that in Christ you may always triumph.

Satan is a powerful foe. No human being can hope to cope with him. The believer cannot take the offensive against him, but he can resist him. The word resist means “to withstand, to be firm against someone else’s onset.”

The word resist also indicates that we are not to flee from this enemy. Courage is called for in this fight, and courage God will give His child. Satan and his forces have to flee when the Christian stands his ground in the might of the Lord. Our standing, or maintaining our ground, is the goal in this battle (Ephesians 6:13).

The book of Ephesians gives ample proof that God will provide His child with the needed strength for the conflict. In chapter 1, verse 19, we read of the “exceeding greatness of his [the Father’s] power to usward who believe.”* (Ephesians 1:19) In the sixth chapter, the armor for the conflict points to Christ. In verse 18 of the same chapter the Holy Spirit’s contribution to our help in the warfare is emphatically expressed. It is through prayer, controlled and directed by the Holy Spirit, that we put on the armor, which is Christ, and find ourselves empowered by the Father. Each member of the Trinity has a part in the believer’s victory over the evil one. We must always remember that our help lies in God and not ourselves. Humble yourself under God’s hand, and He will exalt you (I Peter 5:6).

Let it be added here that there is only one devil, but there are a myriad of subordinate spirits operating under Satan unseen. Usually our personal combat is with these, but I have almost exclusively adopted the word “devil” as a general and all-embracing term.

Tempted and Tried by the Devil

I thank God that comparatively early in my life He opened my eyes to what the devil could do; then He showed me my responsibility and what I could do as a “new creature” in Christ Jesus by resisting him. I feel that I owe my life to the use of this truth. I have been sorely tempted, terribly harassed, and driven to despair, feeling helpless, hopeless, and abandoned of God; but by His grace I have risen again and again in the name of the Lord, resisted the devil, and triumphed. Oh, the patience and love of God!

Many Christians have had painful experiences which can be understood only in the light of I Peter 5:8-9. From this passage it is clear that Satan and his confederate hosts ceaselessly, tirelessly, maliciously, and deliberately seek the life of the real believer in Christ. All sorts of objections may be voiced against this conclusion, but when the last argument is ended, God’s Word still says, “Your adversary the devil… walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist steadfast in the faith.”* (I Peter 5:8-9)

Indeed the warning is given because of the peril we face. To be “sober” means to be “sane,” to be “mentally self-controlled.” The words “be vigilant” carry the thought of “be awake and watchful.” God alerts us in this passage to the presence in this world of our adversary, and to the fact of his wild, beast-like character.

To “Resist” Is As Important As to Be “Filled”

The subject may be one from which you have recoiled, owing to the unwholesome stress laid upon it by some, but that does not alter the truth, unmistakably revealed, that it is as much a command of God to “resist the devil” as it is to “be filled with the Spirit” and to “love one another.” Every believer who knows anything about the filling of the Spirit must eventually be faced with a situation which involves the necessity of resisting the devil. The surge of God’s life through us cannot continue its course unhindered without at some point bringing us definitely into contact and combat with the satanic forces that control the darkness of this world (Ephesians 6:12; II Corinthians 11:14).

The devil is your adversary. He will never be your friend, though he will pose as such. He will never be off duty, though there may be times when his active opposition may not be as apparent as at other times.

Satan As a Chameleon

Peter’s admonition is directly applicable to us today. The devil’s character has in no way been altered since Peter, under inspiration, wrote the epistles which bear his name. Satan is still a liar, a murderer, a divider, and a counterfeiter, and he assumes any other role that suits his purpose for the moment.

He goes about “as a roaring lion.”* (I Peter 5:8) He is on the move. If he appears as “an angel of light,”* (II Corinthians 11:14) then the danger is the greater to us. Here also is an added reason for enlightened eyes, released wills, courageous hearts, and endued spirits to rally to the need of our day. By submitting ourselves to God, we will put into force those infallible weapons of victory which have been forged and sealed in the cross of Him who, at Calvary, cast out “the prince of this world,”* (John 12:31) completely stripped off the (evil) principalities and powers, and “made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”* (Colossians 2:15)

Stand Up, Resist, Overcome!

I meet many Christian people who will do anything to evade this question about the devil. They believe that he exists. They admit that he is busy. But when I suggest that they withstand him, saying something like this, “I now resist the devil and his attempt to get me to do this or that,” they object.

“Oh, no,” they reply, “I just leave it to the Lord, I am too weak and frail to tackle the devil. He is too strong for me.”

But it is God who tells us to resist Satan, though not in our own strength. He says, “Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might”* (Ephesians 6:10); “Stand up, draw the sword, resist, withstand, overcome!”

Read where you like in the record of Scripture, and you will always find the endued man of God as the instrument of challenge to the devil—registering the victory of the cross over him.

This is no isolated work reserved for certain outstanding characters only. It is to be the common lot of every believer born from above. Each one of God’s children lives his earthly span in a world where at every step he is challenged and opposed by wicked spirits under Satan’s leadership.

The Early Christians Fought This War

God declared war on the devil from the moment he deceived our first parents, and it is clear from Genesis 3:15 that nothing but enmity is to exist between those born of God and the adversary. Such enmity is in the divine nature. Let it out.

The twelve apostles encountered this warfare (Matthew 10:1); the seventy were specially commissioned in it and proved the name which is above every name (Luke 10:17-20). Even so, those apostles and prophets who were called and commissioned, after the Lord ascended up on high (Ephesians 4:8,11), had the unseen world unveiled to them and knew that their battle was not with mere flesh and blood (II Corinthians 10:3-4).

With all the intensity possible I want to say that there is more in this than most Christians are willing to admit. Both revelation and experience have compelled me to face it, or go under. I was not born from above to go under; I was born to triumph, and if I choose to triumph, I may. But if I close my eyes to these things, I shall not triumph. I can afford to be ignorant of nothing. Neglect any part of God’s revelation that His Spirit has unveiled and you place yourself in peril (II Timothy 3:16). Next to being saved through the merits of the precious blood of Christ and being empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit, I believe that there is no truth so vital to healthy, vigorous, fruitful Christian service as to know of the devil and to stand up to him in the name and power of our living Lord.

The Devil Makes Us Lazy

Do not let this counsel go unheeded. Gird yourself for the fray. Be “made powerful in the Lord.” Dare to settle it and say, “Whatever it means to resist the devil and overcome, I will do it.”

I had some of the most outstanding experiences of my early Christian life in this realm when I was in business. I often found myself laboring under a peculiar lethargy that made work difficult. Though I fought it first as laziness, and then as heaviness, due perhaps to unsuitable diet, still I did not get the relief that I thought I should. It was a puzzle and a burden to myself, for when I most needed to be awake, I was often sleepy; and when I needed rest and tried to get it, the activity of my brain was abnormal. At other times I was neither tired nor spiritless, but there would come upon me a sense of awful pressure—a stifling atmospherical something that depressed me, confused me, and slowed up activity. “Ah! the weather!” Yes, the weather is blamed for a lot that the devil does (Ephesians 2:2; Mark 4:39). I hoped that the morrow would bring relief, but if it did, it was only temporary. Slowly but surely the oppression would come, and the heaviness would gather over me. I knew a certain amount of truth about the devil, but it never occurred to me that he had touched me without my knowing it.

Think of it! I could generally see where he had someone else in his toils, gaining on them and deceiving them; but as for me, I was safe enough, for did I not often mention him in my prayer? One day, however, after a spell of this sluggishness and oppression, I read somewhere about a spirit of sloth and slumber. “Then,” said I to myself, “there are spirits that lull us to sleep, that dull our senses, arrest our activities, and oppose the normal operations of life!” I jumped to my feet as one awakened from a half-dazed state and cried, “I am having no more of this! This is of the devil, and in the name of the Lord Jesus, Who conquered him at Calvary, I resist these spirits and their power over me.” The effect was most striking. Immediately I was different. The deception had been unveiled, the needed resistance had been given me from the Lord, and through Him, through faith in His name, the spell of wicked spirits upon me was broken.

I remember how wonderfully clear my mind became. I did better work and in less time, so that my foreman commented on it. Hundreds of times since then I have done the same thing in meeting new assaults. I have also witnessed striking deliverances in the lives of some of God’s people who have been subjected to the most desperate and distressing cases of Christian conflict imaginable.

Satan Seeks to Kill

Do you think I can bury such experiences under the debris of mistaken ideas? Never! The devil has been too real to me to mistake him. I have encountered his spirits too often to want to ignore them. Let those who will shelve the issue and evade the battle. I have to stand by the revealed Word and recognize that the devil is still my adversary, that he is still actively opposed to me and you. He still walks about and diligently searches to see if he may find some of us sufficiently off our guard. When he finds such, he tries to draw them into his meshes and devour their life, silence their witness, stop them from praying, or involve them in a fatal accident. Ah, the devil is still a murderer! Analyze the coroner’s inquests and the daily chapter of fatalities in the air, on land, on the sea, and tell me the percentage that is of God’s ordering.

This brings me to a phase of satanic activity that seems to have grown considerably in recent years. I refer to the number of Christian people who have lost their mental balance and have had to be placed under protective treatment. Now, it is far from me to say that all these cases are the result of direct satanic oppression, but some are. The souls who have been delivered by an application of the truth which I have already pointed out are ample proof of it.

Satan Wrecks Minds

The mind has always been a citadel for which the devil has striven. We read that “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.”* (II Corinthians 4:4) The devil is tireless in his efforts to get a wrong thought, impression, or idea lodged in the mind of people. This he attempts usually through the agency of evil spirits, and they, in turn, through mixing a certain amount of truth with error. Volumes could be filled with the record of the almost inconceivable number of methods by which children of God have been deceived by Satan. That they were children of God did not save them; nor in many cases was it because they were ungrounded in the fundamentals of the Christian faith. I can recall the cases of men whose names, in their day, were household words in Christian circles, but who, nevertheless, were ensnared. My point is this: allowing for all that is embraced in the mysteries of suffering and divine providence, there are still cases which can be understood only in these words: “your adversary the devil… walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith.”* (I Peter 5:8-9)

The highway of the church is strewn with a sufficient number of mental and physical wrecks to make us seriously wonder if there is not some truth with reference to Calvary which these folks missed or ignored. I believe there is. One’s spirit sometimes groans because of the cry of their bound souls, but it is not sufficient to groan and pity; we must act. Calvary has bequeathed both a charter of freedom and a weapon of emancipation which we must use for their deliverance. We cannot say that there is no immediate or progressive release other than that of death for them until we have done our part to liberate them from the satanic powers that deceive and blind them.

We cannot merely cast the responsibility on the Lord and supplicate for His will to be done, and leave it there. It may be precisely and definitely His will to resist the devil, and for us to do it, not someone else. Test it, and see what happens. Get the enemy exposed and then claim Christ’s victory over him. In some cases it may be necessary to gain the cooperation of the afflicted person before complete deliverance can be effected.

Use God’s Armor

I know of cases where no change for the better occurred in the condition until the work of the devil was exposed and he was withstood in the name of the Lord. To me the Christian life is nothing unless it is a battlefield. It is not all battlefield, but the spoil is wrested from the enemy on the battlefield of faith. Armor, shield, sword—for what are these if there is no battle? Are we to use a sword on our friends? Alas! it seems that some souls will do that rather than resist the devil. They will resist the Lord’s witness and oppose anything that interferes with their own purposes and plans, but as for obeying the divine command that will save them from the devil’s snares and make them, through the power of God, deliverers of others, that is either heresy or for someone else.

I would not write in this vein if I had not seen the terrible havoc wrought by this awful neglect. Some are awakening to the reality of the situation through the crucible of painful experiences in their home, or circle, or church; but let us not wait until the devil is deeply entrenched before we begin to resist him.

There is nothing to fear. Fear of this kind belongs to the pit and is one of the devil’s favorite weapons. “In nothing terrified by your adversaries,”* (Philippians 1:28) says the apostle. “Be strong [be made powerful] in the Lord, and in the power of his might”* (Ephesians 6:10) —that is sufficient. “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world,”* (I John 4:4) declared John. Remember that God wants to do this through you.

The Devil Has Years of Experience

What use is it to argue that because you are “in Christ,” the devil cannot touch you, when many who believe that are falling on every hand? It is true that if we are really in Christ, we are “hid with Christ in God.”* (Colossians 3:3) But of what does that speak—our position before God in heaven, or our state, or walk, on the earth? It is our position. Here on earth, if you make “provision for the flesh,”* (Romans 13:14) you will sin. If you “give place to the devil,”* (Ephesians 4:27) you are open to defeat, no matter what your position is. Besides, there is no point in the Apostle Paul’s saying, “Neither give place to the devil,” if he cannot touch you. The devil can touch you if you let him.

To plead ignorance here is no defense. The Holy Spirit of God is willing to teach us all we need to know, but if we reject His instructions, we will be responsible for our ignorance of the devil’s devices and will fall an easy prey to his wiles. The process of deception may be slow. It usually is. Few people fall into his hands suddenly. Something in the nature of a creeping paralysis is what the devil seeks to inflict. His assaults are usually hidden behind something natural or physical. Watch them, and be ready to resist. If the devil cannot catch you on the plains of the flesh, the heights of spiritual attainment will not escape his keen attention. He is clever and has had at least 6,000 years of experience in setting traps for the saints.

I was startled one day to discover that Satan has laid skillfully devised and well-organized plans against the believer and the Church. These he daily seeks to bring to fruition. The Holy Scriptures speak of these plans under the highly descriptive terms of wiles, stratagems, and devices. It is by their use that the forces of Satan try to thwart, or hold up the purposes of the Lord through His children. I do not mean by this that the Sovereignty of God is at stake. Eventually, devil or no devil, the purpose of God in redemption will be thoroughly wrought out.

But Satan can and does hinder and obstruct. Not every believer who has died has a well-fought battle and a finished course to his credit. But he could have had. It is delightful to know that he who was once hindered of the devil (I Thessalonians 2:18), eventually overcame (II Timothy 4:7).

Babies Cannot Fight

What a relief to know that though I may know nothing in actual detail about the devil’s plans against me, yet in and through Christ I can defeat him on every count if my attitude is right! So I would urge the great importance of maintaining, as a principle, this attitude, that you are against the devil and against the materializing of his plans.

Of course, if you are a babe and cannot face the open battle, the Lord, will protect you, and He will answer the door to the assaults from hell; but some are babes who should not be (Hebrews 5:12). If you move on into maturity and working partnership with Christ, you will assuredly discover yourself to be upon a battlefield. Then you will understand the meaning of these terms: “Be sober, be vigilant; because…”* (I Peter 5:8); “Watch and pray, that…”* (Matthew 26:41); “though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh”* (II Corinthians 10:3); we wrestle… stand… withstand… overcome.

We Conquer Through Christ

You will not doubt the existence of the devil then. Moreover, if you put on Christ (Romans 13:14), and take “the shield of faith…. and the sword of the Spirit,”* (Ephesians 6:16-17) you will thrive in the fight (I Timothy 6:12). “Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”* (II Timothy 2:3)

The Lord of life and victory can make you able for this; and just as you can bear it, He will lead you on and be with you, in you in the battle. If that were not so, you might well despair, but “greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.”* (I John 4:4) He can, with your unbroken consent, display His supremacy and demonstrate the triumph of His life. Ask Him to teach you, count on Him to be with you, and dare to believe that all your foes must give way before the almighty weapons of His cross, His blood, and His Word (Revelation 12:11). God in you, triumphing. What a gospel!

Satan was conquered by Christ at Calvary. That is the ground of all our activity. But there is something more—Satan can be conquered by Christ in you. You resist him and prove it! If you are born of God, you were born to conquer (I John 5:4).

“How shall I resist him?” someone asks. The standard example is that of the Lord Jesus Himself in His representative temptation as the Head of a new race. He used the Sword. The Sword is the Word. It is not merely two-edged, but it is all edge. Christ quoted the Word. He did not cry to the Father only, but He turned on the devil with the authoritative words of Holy Writ. There was nothing complicated about it, He just drew the Sword and used it. Then the devil left Him, first for a season, then fully, till the final scene on Calvary, when all the forces of hell massed to the scene and were beaten (Colossians 2:15).

The Power of the Word

Christ did not summon angels, or display that power which was His right as God the Son. He just did what we all need to do—He used the Word. To Him it was final and sufficient, the very breath of God. He was handling the weapon of omnipotence and divine authority. He knew the Word. He counted it sufficient. He used it, but He used it against the devil.

He did not quote it to His Father or recall it merely to refresh His own soul. The devil had said, “It is written,”* (Matthew 4:6) but the Lord said more than that: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written….”* (Matthew 4:10) Note that. He spoke to the devil and told him to go. And you may need to do the same someday. Do not speak lightly about these things. The Holy Spirit has anticipated the tendency to lightness on this subject with a warning, “Be sober.”* (I Peter 5:8)

All frivolous talk on the subject is just so much fuel to the devil’s fire. It is not too much to add that while some people are mechanically saying, “Alleluia!” the devil is planning to steal a march on them. So be deliberate, reverent, and solemn in your use of the Word. It will do all it says.

Down through the ages Satan has striven to rob the man of God of his Sword. You can never use with assurance what you doubt. If you doubt the divine inspiration of Scripture, or if you put the inspiration of the Scriptures on the same level of music, you will fail when you meet the devil. The Scriptures are the oracles of the Most High, subject to none of the imperfections and limitations of humanity. Therefore, they will do all they say, and to believe less is to doubt the veracity of the Almighty. A myriad have staked their lives upon God’s Word and proved it to be true. Theological views and brain-spinning are of no use in this battle. You must come to the Book, to “it is written.” Unless you are there, or get there, the forces of evil will surely hem you in and take their toll. Watch, then, that you do not lose your Sword. Immerse yourself in the Word.

Sometimes people say, “But I am saved; therefore, I must be secure.” That is only one aspect of your salvation. Upon many of the Lord’s people a storm from the pit has been allowed to break. Why? No tree is proved to be deeply rooted unless it encounters the gale. No ship is shown to be seaworthy that has never been through turbulent waters. Peter’s faith was tested in the devil’s sieve, and yours may be, too.

How to Resist the Devil

At such a time it is not an uncommon thing to be told by the devil that you are lost; and you may have become so confused that you half believe it. You try to recover yourself, but your thoughts have become like chaff in the wind. Everything seems to have gone. You may not even remember the Scriptures—at least those you want to. If you do, they seem to mock you (Jeremiah 20:1,8). Hell appears to be moved from beneath against you, but it is then that you are ready to discover whether salvation is by works or by grace. What can you do?

I know what I did. I remember taking hold of the Book, holding it aloft, and saying, “I believe in the God of this Book (Hebrews 11:6), and all that this Book means to me, as a redeemed soul, I take, and stand upon, though I feel nothing. I refuse all the devil’s lies about me. I believe what this Book says: ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.’* (II Corinthians 5:17) I am in Christ, not because I deserve it, or feel it, but because He took me in when I came. I do not remember the date, but I know I came, and I am in.” (You may not remember your birthday, but you can surely know that you are alive—I John 5:13).

It is marvelous what a start like that will do. It is like removing the plug from an artesian well. The waters are released and flow forth (John 4:14). The real life stream from God is set in motion. That is how you resist the devil.

But look at this matter further. One day you may take a nasty tumble. You prided yourself that you could never fall in that manner. But unknown to you, the devil undermined your citadel, perhaps by subtle inroads upon your feelings and affections. Gradually you cooled down in prayer and lost the keen edge of witnessing. Your Christian life became mechanical and powerless, though you would not admit it to others. Or maybe you made too much of your experience and too little of Christ. Anyway, you fell, and then the cloud gathered and you were enveloped.

“What about your salvation now?” the evil one asks. “What about your security in Christ now? What about your experience and testimony now? It is all a lie, you are a ‘castaway.’ You have committed the unpardonable sin. There is a curse upon you. You are a downright hypocrite.”

Such are the whispered taunts of the devil, and you believe them, because there is an element of truth in some of them. Try as you will, it seems that you cannot succeed in warding them off.

Then the thought comes: “I will confess it.” Happy soul, if sin is the only trouble. Confession to God in that case is the way out (I John 1:9). But such confession may not always sweep the decks as clean as you thought it would. Forgiveness is sure, but Satan is still on deck, causing more trouble.

I have known souls to spend hours upon their face before God, seeking deliverance. I have known them to confess their faults to others and solicit their prayer help. But though assured of the unmatched, immeasurable, absolute forgiveness of God for past, present, and future, these troubled souls could get no settled peace. I knew one man who spent something like sixteen years in that state, and I believe that he was as saved as I am. But the devil succeeded in obsessing this man’s mind with one incident in which he said he “disobeyed the light.” A saved man, but silenced because he would not face this question about the devil!

Are you silenced? The forgiveness of sins is not merely according to your confession, but “according to the riches of his grace.”* (Ephesians 1:7) That is the message of the Ascended Lord.

Let me add this: when recourse to confession and the blood of Christ does not give you peace (as ordinarily it should do); and when the great truth that you are “in Christ… a new creature”* (II Corinthians 5:17) does not release you, remember that the devil is an accuser. Through the spirits of evil that invade this dark world Satan is working against you and will succeed in keeping peace from your heart until you resist him. The Lord silenced the demons. He suffered them not to speak (Mark 1:34). I have known many believers who have dared to do this in the name of the Lord and have become gloriously free.

A Missionary Delivered

I think of the case of a missionary who had to leave the foreign field because of broken health that had followed a tirade of devilish accusations made against him. Poor man, he was almost out of his mind and lived in despair! One thing was constantly being brought to his mind to accuse him and torment him.

From time to time, as I talked with him, I assured him that there is forgiveness. “You have owned up, as you must do, and now you must rest upon the fact that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses you from all sin—not some sins, but all,” I said. He would go on well for a time; but when the assault recurred, he would act like one in a frenzy.

“My brother,” I finally said, “You will never break this thing until you, in the name of the Lord, turn on the devil.”

Turn on the Devil

“Am I not presumptuous? Will it not do if I pray to the Lord?” he asked.

“But you have prayed,” I reminded him, “and you get no better. The need in this case is to resist the devil. Tell him that he is a liar, that God has cursed him from the beginning (Gen. 3:14), that Christ has conquered him on Calvary, and that you say ‘amen’ to all that this means against him. Then ignore him, or tell him to stand back—a conquered foe—and you go straight on, assured that God will be with you.”

In his agony that man fell upon his knees. He acted—he resisted. He said, “The devil is cursed, and I say ‘amen’ to it; he was conquered at Calvary, and upon that I stand; and he has no right to any part of me. I am redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, and I claim my freedom.” That man became one of the busiest Christian workers I know because he dared to use the Sword in that way.

These things are real. Their parallel in the Church could be multiplied a thousand-fold. Where do you stand? What are you doing to swell the ranks of those who “labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily”* (Colossians 1:29)? Do you know anything about the might of the risen Christ operating through you? Are you filled with Christ in His power and supremacy as well as in His meekness and humility? Do not live a one-sided life. Meekness and gentleness are rare and precious qualities; but “the Lamb”* (Revelation 5:6) is also a “Lion.”* (Revelation 5:5) On the cross He was crucified in weakness (II Corinthians 13:4). But now in you He is your strength (Philippians 4:13).

The Weak Made Strong

One day I casually dropped in to see a friend and found him in bed.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Then he told me the story of his repeated setbacks. “And it is generally when I am going to do something for the Lord,” he added.

“Well, friend,” I ventured, “it seems to me that what you need is to use the Sword of the Spirit more (Ephesians 6:17). The Holy Spirit always anticipates your need by giving you some word or germ truth with which to battle, and He intends you to use it.”

Later he told me this:

I did not relish what you said to me about the Sword that day. “It is all very well for him,” I thought, “but he hasn’t got my thorn in the flesh.”

“The Sword—use the Sword more!” Let me see, what word did the Lord give me this morning? I paused, and then slowly it came back: “Out of weakness… made strong.”* (Hebrews 11:34) That’s it! Well, how striking—I had forgotten that.

“Yes,” the Lord seemed to say, “which will you have—My strength, or your weakness?” I had never thought of it like that, and I found myself changing my attitude, for, of course, I wanted His strength.

I rang the bell. My wife came. “Give me my clothes, dear. I am going to see ——,” I said.

“No, you are not,” she objected. “You are not well enough.”

By this time I was more assured than ever that I had to act (Mark 3:5). So I dressed myself, saying, “ ‘Out of weakness… made strong.’* (Hebrews 11:34) Your strength, Lord, for my weakness.” I walked to the streetcar, repeating the verse over and over, and definitely looking to the Lord Himself to make it true if I were to go on. I went. I did the bit of service I had intended to do. I came back. But the marvelous thing to me is this, that I walked home. “Out of weakness… made strong.”* (Hebrews 11:34) Praise God!

Well he might praise God, for he had taken the Holy Spirit’s clue and resisted the devil’s covert attempt to keep him on his back, when by a deliberate, daring appropriation of the strength of Another he could be enabled to do the “impossible.”

Display the Triumphant Life

Are there not others like that? You know there are. There are some who are perpetual or periodical invalids for want of a changed attitude and a bit of resistance to the devil.

Please do not quote to me the names of the noble army of the bedridden whose saintly character and sacrificial service are in some cases known the world over. I am not thinking of them, but of those Christians whose infirmities, weaknesses, and disabilities never seem to become, in any appreciable way, a platform upon which to display the grace of God (II Corinthians 12:9). Such take a passive attitude toward life, fold their arms, and say, “The will of the Lord be done.”

Just suppose that had been Paul’s attitude when he was pestered by the spirit of divination in the woman at Philippi (Acts 16:12-18). It was not, however. The Apostle knew his prerogative in Christ, and he used it. The Scriptures do not record that he cried to the Father, but this is what we are told: “Paul, being sore troubled, turned to the [evil] spirit and said, I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And [the demon] came out of her that very hour” (Acts 16:18, RV).

I contend for a continual renewal and display of the triumphant life of Christ in those who are united to Him, and a constant looking to the Holy Spirit to guide in each case or circumstance. We paralyze ourselves in this realm if we believe that such resistance to Satan is not necessary. And such a viewpoint is tragic both in the light of Scripture, and of the abundant evidence around us of souls sinking in a satanic quagmire. The evil one will do anything to silence them or make them helpless. God helping us, let us do what we can to get such persons on solid ground again. Let me repeat it: this is God’s work, but it is God in us, in the Person of the Triumphant Christ, who seeks to use us through whom to manifest His authority.

Don’t Give Place to the Devil

Are you given to moods? I suppose that all are to some extent. The devil has a large practice in that realm. Let me refer again to a bit of personal testimony. It was during the dark days of the first World war. Nothing was easy except “going under.” We were hewing our way trough the conflict. The weeks of prayer stretched into months, but very little ease of spirit resulted. It was easy in the atmosphere which then prevailed for depression of heart and mind to set in. I confess that for a brief while I succumbed. I recall sitting in front of a cottage fire with my head in my hands, doubtful about many things, perplexed over others.

My daughter, who was six years old at the time, came up to me. Touching my arm, she asked, “Daddy, what’s the matter?”

“I can’t say, dear,” I replied.

“Oh, Daddy,” she rejoined quite seriously, “that’s the devil. I shouldn’t take it on.” I was too depressed in spirit to be amused, but her words came to me like a shaft of light from heaven. “It’s of the devil. Don’t take it on.”

“And neither will I,” said I to myself, as deliberately I rose to my feet and in doing so became as free in spirit as I have perhaps ever been.

Does that touch your need? It may some day. Then you will know that you need that diagnosis of your trouble and that you must resist the devil, who will no doubt be making use of legitimate circumstances (Matthew 4:2-3) to draw you into a conflict and to plunge your spirit into darkness. When the conflict begins to spiritually paralyze you and make you feel helpless, suspect it as being the devil’s doings, and resist him.

God may burden you, but the devil will try to overburden you. In the former you are “enabled in the Lord” (I Timothy 1:12) to triumph; in the latter you may become a misery to yourself and everyone around you. Do not mistake what I mean. You will not always be able to smile, but you will always be able to triumph in Christ (II Corinthians 2:14). Triumph presupposes conflict, and conflict you will have; sometime, somehow, somewhere.

To be continued