I’M SAVED, NOW WHAT? (part-37)

I’M SAVED, NOW WHAT?

CONFRONTING THE DEVIL
So how can we increase our fellowship and dependence on God so
that we can receive more of His grace? A starting point is to identify
and eliminate the things in our life that inhibit our humility and
our desire to seek God’s help.

Our desires for fellowshipping with God and for developing humility
are in a continual battle with Satan’s desire to distract or discourage
us. Since he is more powerful than we are, what can we do? We call
for help from the One who is more powerful than our opponent.

According to the scriptures, God’s counterattack begins when
we submit ourselves to His will. We can see how James links
submission to God and resisting the devil.
    Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the
    devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

A question we should ask ourselves is,
    “Is my faith based on addition or submission?”
In other words have we just added Jesus to our life, or have we submitted
ourselves to Him? When we do not submit to His will, then we are
submitting to our own will. Over time this can lead to submitting to the
will of Satan.

Satan is in the world to tempt us, to cause us to sin, and to destroy our
relationship with our Father God who loves us. Whenever we fail to
submit to God’s will, Satan will keep hanging around and we will
continue having problems with no rest in sight.

According to this verse (James 4:7), we have hope. When we submit to
God’s will, we increase our ability to resist the devil (to the point where
he will leave us alone). Does that mean he will leave us alone forever?
Of course not! He looks for suitable times to attack us in our moments
of weakness. This was his approach when tempting Jesus, so it should
be no surprise that he will use the same tactic on us.
    When the devil had finished all this tempting,
    he left him until an opportune time. (Luke 4:13)

As an adult in human form, Jesus had just been tempted by Satan in the
wilderness. Jesus responded to each temptation by quoting scriptures.
When Satan heard scriptures being quoted by Jesus, it was more than
he could handle at the time, so he left Jesus…..‘until an opportune time’.

If Satan was bold enough to tempt Jesus, then certainly he will tempt
believers as well. If he chose to look for another time of weakness in
Jesus, then he will look for opportunities to tempt us when we are weak.
Another tactic of Satan is to try to convince us that our temptations are
from God.
    When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.”
    For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt
    anyone; but each person is tempted when they are
    dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then,
    after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin,
    when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. (James 1:13-15)

EVIL DESIRES
By ‘evil desire’, James is probably referring to the thoughts that Satan
has created in our minds. When those thoughts invade our mind, we
have the option of pushing them away, or holding on to them. When
we hold on to them, we give Satan an opportunity to add additional
thoughts as part of his strategy.

The struggles we have with his relentless attacks can seem overwhelming,
but the more we submit to God’s will and depend on His help and strength,
the easier it will be for us to resist Satan when he bombards us with
temptations. Although we would love to be able to resist temptations in our
own strength, we are just not strong enough without the Lord. Too often we
may have decided that we don’t want to bother God so we in essence say to
Him, “God, I’ve got this!”
When we do that, we find out that Satan is saying, “No, I’ve got this!”

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