Resist the Devil and He Will Flee

“Courage is fear that has said its prayers and decided to go forward anyway.”
― Joyce Meyer

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I’ll see you soon if you pull this out and that out and this out and you stick it all together, you can pretty much make the words say anything you want to.
What it actually says is submit yourself to God, resist the devil and he will flee.
So our power to resist is in our willingness to submit.
I’m gonna say that again, our power to resist is in our willingness to submit here.
I think one more time wouldn’t hurt our power to resist is in our willingness to submit.
Now, much of what happens in our lives is based on our level of obedience.
Now, I’m not saying that every time you have a problem in your life or I have a problem in my life that I’ve been disobedient in some way and it’s open the door for the enemy.
It’s it’s not even worth going down those rabbit tracks because all you do is get yourself confused and messed up.
If I am having trouble in my life, I will often ask God if there is something I’ve done.
Or if I’ve opened the door, please show me.
But if he doesn’t show me anything, I don’t go on a digging expedition trying to find something that I’ve done wrong.
Let’s open the door. Believe me.
If God wants to say something to you, he will make himself heard one way or the other.
God can make himself hurt.
But I think that we’d all, if we read the Bible would have to agree that there is some connection between obedience and levels of blessing, right?
It’s so obvious in just reading Proverbs that only a fool will not receive correction.
And that discipline is something we need to love, not something that we need to resist and hate.
And that the wise man always ends up with a blessed life and the fool always ends up in trouble and the fool is the morally deficient.
In other words, they’re not making the right choices that they should make.
Wisdom is the proper use of knowledge. Doesn’t do any good to know what the Bible says.
If we’re not going to apply it when we need to apply it in the areas that we need to apply it in.
I don’t think we have any lack of knowledge available to us today.
It’s everywhere, but we do have a problem with willingness to apply it and I’m gonna add to apply it promptly.
Some of you maybe God can’t get you to do anything.
He wants you to at all. Some of you maybe will eventually do it.
But God’s gotta stay after you for a long time. I know because I used to be the same way.
Some of you have finally figured out that God’s not going to change his mind and that he either will get his way in the end or you will be miserable.
Come on, get smart today. Let me repeat myself.
God will not change his mind. He will get his way in the end.
And if He doesn’t, you will be miserable.
And so the final stage of obedience we want to move into is prompt, extreme obedience.
Like those words, prompt extreme obedience.
The Bible says that Jesus was obedient even to the extreme of death on the cross.
He humbled himself and God hath highly exalted him.
So see, when we’re willing to humble ourselves to be obedient, to do whatever God asks us to do, whether we understand it or not, whether we want to or not, then always will come.
The exaltation, you humble yourself, humble your flesh.
Yes, Lord in due time.
And that’s when God knows the time is right, not when you think it’s right or I think it’s right.
But when He knows it’s right.
And I think this learning how to obey God and to obey Him, prompting extremely.
I think it is a journey, I believe when we start out, we don’t really know all that much about it.
We start out probably trying to get God to give us our way and get us out of trouble.
But eventually God wants us to come to a crossroads.
A turning point where we no longer are running to God, constantly trying to get Him to give us what we want.
But we go to Him and say, what can I do for you? What do you want?
Come on, what do you want? Your will be done, not mine.
And there are people here that are at all different places in that journey and that’s fine.
It’s meant to be a journey.
And you have to just enjoy the part of the journey that you’re in and know that if you just keep taking steps of faith that you’ll get to where God wants you to be now, who in their right mind would not want power.
I mean, I love the word power. I’d like to just say that word power.
There’s power in the name of Jesus. Behold.
I have given you power and authority over all the power the enemy possesses and nothing shall by any means harm you.
There’s power in prayer.
And I want to have that when I pray, I want things to happen.
We all want God to do something in our lives. But there’s another side to that.
Maybe there’s something God wants us to do. Well, I’m just waiting on God.
Well, maybe God’s just waiting on you did you ever think of that?
I wonder how many things if we could just write them all down, put them in a box.
I wonder how big the box would have to be.
If I would say, how many things are you aware of that?
You know, God has told you to do or not to do that. You still haven’t obeyed him.
See, that’s kind of like how many need to forgive somebody?
Oh God has shown us what to do to have a great life.
Not a problem, free life, but like Paul said, we can know the resurrection of his power that lifts us out from among the dead, even while we’re still in the body.
So even while we’re still here and we still be having problems in our circumstances some way, somehow were lifted above it and we can live a life that just seems like how can you do that?
Even though you’re still not having everything perfect in your circumstances, I’m not gonna promise you no trouble.
I’m not gonna promise you that.
Matter of fact, if you made a firm decision today, I am gonna really start.
I mean, I’m gonna jump it up in my obedience level to God. I’m tired of messing around.
I mean, I’m not gonna tell you that the devil might not say, well, we’ll see.
Yeah, whenever you decide to serve God, he doesn’t just roll out a red carpet and say, oh goody.
And what does the Bible say?
It talks about the word being sown into different ground and it’s really talking about different kinds of conditions of the heart of the listeners.
And it says some are good.
The seed is sown in the soil and everything is coming along good until they have a problem or until persecution comes on account of the word and then they fall by the wayside.
Well, you know, there’s a lot of people that are willing to follow Jesus until they find out that it’s not always gonna be convenient and it’s not always gonna be easy.
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