How To Submit To God And Resist The Devil

James 4:7

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

We’ve all heard that scripture before, but what does it actually mean to submit?

Submit:

hupotasso¯

hoop-ot-as'-so

From G5259 and G5021; to subordinate; reflexively to obey: - be under obedience (obedient), put under, subdue unto, (be, make) subject (to, unto), be (put) in subjection (to, under), submit self unto.

G5259: under

G5021: put in order

Submit (subordinate, OBEY, make subject to) yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil (false accuser, slanderer), and he will flee (shun, vanish) from you.

Submitting means doing things God’s way when you’d rather do them your way, which is the proper order of things.

Submitting means staying put when you’d rather leave.

Not moving when you’d rather be anywhere than where you are, simply because you know that’s where God wants you.

Staying silent when you’d rather let someone have it.

Holding back when your flesh wants to go all out.

There is no blessing in giving into our fleshly wants and desires, but every blessing when we don’t.

When we walk in His ways, things begin to go right for us.

The enemy finds less opportunity with us.

You know why? Because walking in right ways is a form of spiritual warfare in itself.

Walking in love when we are feeling like acting any way but loving towards someone who is acting badly towards us, is spiritual warfare.

It’s not opening the door to the enemy to bring strife and division, to sow hurtful words into the life of another.

That other may be a coworker, your belligerent teenager, your spouse or just some rude person on the street, but we are supposed to walk in love regardless.

Let me tell you, once you open the door and let strife in, it’s really hard to get it closed again.

So many demons come in with that one, you can be months trying to get the house all cleaned out.

James 3:16

For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

Y’all know where envy comes from? Jealousy and envy are caused by being dissatisfied with something about your own life or yourself. That’s what makes us envious of someone else or covetous of what they have.

Confusion comes in with idolatry.

Isaiah 45:16

They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them: they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols.

If we want something so much we’re almost lusting after it, then we’re making an idol of it, and that brings a spirit of confusion.

The reason is because any idol in your life replaces God on the throne of your heart. Obviously, that’s total confusion. No one else can BE God but Him.

Means to trust in Him, not ourselves, and let Him have His way in our lives. It means to obey by doing what we know is right in spite of our flesh sometimes wanting to do what is wrong.

We need to trust that what we have is what we need, or God would be bringing us something else.

We need to just trust Him enough to stay in submission to whatever His plan is right now.

We need to walk in His ways and trust Him to meet all our needs, not run to something or someone in the world to meet them.

He will lead us in what we need to do next if we will only trust and obey.

Psalm 32:8: I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.

Psalm 23:1: The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He IS the good shepherd. If you let Him lead you, you truly won’t be in want.

It’s when we don’t, or when we stop trusting that we get into trouble.

Okay, let’s talk about how to submit to God with our spirits. We know our spirits are willing, it’s our flesh that causes all the trouble.

Spirit –

To resist the devil with our spirits, we need to be continually renewing our minds in the Word of God – keep it going in your eyes and ears as often as possible.

The Word washes anything not like God out of our thoughts and keeps our spirits pure and our atmosphere light.

Our goal should be to have the word going in at least several times a day, whether that’s from television, on the radio in our vehicles or reading it in our study time.

Let me tell you something. Reading a devotional a day and going to church for an hour on Sunday is not going to be enough Word to get you through what’s coming, can I just say that? You are going to need far more of God for what’s coming, far more wisdom of how He thinks and operates, far more revelation, to survive these end times. Even though we see evil increasing almost daily, it hasn’t even begun to get bad here in America yet, y’all. What’s coming is worse than anything our minds can even comprehend. We need to be as ready as possible so that we can glorify Him in the midst of it all, so we can be beacons to the lost in this time, when everything around us will turn so dark and become so evil and so terrible that the lost will flock to the Christians looking for Jesus. Hopefully they can tell by our lives we ARE Christians so that we can be used in that time. Some people don’t want to be known as Christians because they don’t feel saying Jesus is socially acceptable, so if you’re like that, you won’t have to worry about anyone coming to you because they won’t even know you’re one of us. And what did Jesus tell us about that in the Word?