Bride of Christ devotional
Theme: Making satan run away from you
Text: 1 Peter 5:8-9 (NKJV) 8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9 Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.
Message:
Satan is a spirit (a fallen angel) but he can be defeated. You (a genuine child of God) are not an ordinary person, you have the Spirit of God in you, and you have the backings of God and Jesus Christ, and YOU CAN MAKE SATAN RUN AWAY FROM YOU.
Whether you agree or not, that particular people are attended to by particular evil spirits, we know that Satan and all his angels are continually warring against us, and watching over every human being. They are ever watching to see whose outward or inward circumstances, whose prosperity or adversity, whose health or sickness, whose friends or enemies, whose youth or age, whose knowledge or ignorance, whose blindness or idleness, whose joy or sorrow, may lay them open to temptation. And they are perpetually ready to make the utmost advantage of every circumstance.
These skillful, strategic, and dangerous wrestlers spy the smallest slip we make, and avail themselves of it immediately; as they also are “about our bed, and about our path, and spy out all our ways.” Indeed each of them “walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,” or whom he may “beguile through his subtlety, as the serpent beguiled Eve.” In fact, in order to do this more effectually, they transform themselves into angels of light.
It is by these instruments chiefly that the “foolish hearts” of those that know not God “are darkened:” They frequently darken, in a measure, the hearts of them that do know God. The “god of this world” knows how to blind our hearts, to spread a cloud over our understanding, and to obscure the light of those truths which, at other times, shine as bright as the noonday sun. By this
means he assaults our faith, our evidence of things unseen. He endeavors to weaken that hope full of immortality to which God had begotten us; and thereby to lessen, if he cannot destroy, our joy in God our Saviour. Above all, he strives to damp our love of God, as he knows this is the spring of all our religion, and that, as this rises or falls, the work of God flourishes or decays in the soul.
To make satan run away from you, you must do the following: Be sober, be vigilant; resist him, be steadfast in the faith, and submit to God in all things and at all time
Prayer:
Dear heavenly father, help me to be vigilant and sober. I receive the grace to yield to God at all times and in all things, and I receive the power to resist satan.
