How to Resist the Devil

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.’* (2 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 day of birth, but you can surely know that you are alive—1 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 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 (1 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, 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”* (2 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.