SPIRITUAL FOOD OF THE WEEK: RESIST THE DEVIL

 “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee.”-James 4:7

 

 Good morning everyone!

Today I want to talk to you about temptation. It’s something that we ALL will endure at some point in our lives. No person is immune to temptation being presented to them. Remember Christ was sent into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to purposely be tempted by the devil! On purpose! Now think about that….I’ll wait! 

“Then Jesus, being full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil for 40 days. Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry.”-Luke 4: 1-2

This morning as I was meditating on the Word, the Spirit of God (He is just so awesome), began to help me to understand the proper tactic (remember our weapons are not carnal..but mighty THROUGH GOD 2Cor10:4) in which to handle all types of temptations that we may face. See this weapon I’m about to share with you, is one that is mighty THROUGH God, for the tearing down of strongholds, to destroy FALSE arguments (for example I read an article stating that sex before marriage is not fornication, rather that was spoken in the bible days because women were looked at as property, and in order for the women to be valuable she needed to be a virgin..hahaha..okay back to business), and to destroy every obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. 

The weapon is….YOUR MOUTH! Read me out now…lol. When we read James 4:7, the Holy Spirit (who tells us all things spoken by the Father, Son) shows us the correct way to handle temptation. He says to humble ourselves before God. What does that mean? I’ll explain it this way: when you stand in the presence of greatness you understand that you can learn something from it, you understand that GREATNESS knows more than you know, that it’s in your best interest to PAY ATTENTION. So once we humble ourselves before Greatness(GOD). He then says RESIST the devil (or another name for him is TEMPTER). Resist (Withstand the action or effect of), and the devil (tempter) will flee! 

See when we read how Jesus effectively withstood the actions of the tempter, he had no choice but to leave him. Temptation generally comes when you are “hungry” or have not “eaten” in a while. That’s when it seems it’s almost unbearable to conquer. But like I told ya’ll in last week…YOU ARE MORE THAN A CONQUEROR. See it doesn’t matter what form the devil comes to tempt you in…Sex, Money, Drugs, Death, Lying, WHATEVER…he is no match for your mouth, IF THE RIGHT WORDS are coming forth from it. Jesus simply spoke THE WORD. You know it’s what His SPIRIT had eaten (prayer, meditation on the word of God, purpose, etc) that’s what made Him effective.

I believe to this day..if in the garden, when the devil approached Eve and said: “Did God really say that you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”(Geneis 3:1) she should have responded: ” We may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden EXCEPT the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2:16-17) Simple and to the point, and then “GET THEE AWAY FROM ME SATAN.”

So the moral of this story is…RESIST (Speak the word) to any temptation that comes your way..and watch it flee! It has NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER. You must fill your WELL with the depth of the word…IT’S YOUR WEAPON! It’s not what goes into your mouth that makes you unclean, but what comes out!

LOVE MARGO