“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)
Resist – to stand against, to oppose.
Many times, I feel like we get it backwards. We resist God and submit to the devil.
Subconsciously, we do this. Our flesh will always gravitate toward wrong, our desires will always be centered on self, our lusts will always be worldly….unless we consciously submit to God and consciously resist the devil.
The battle on the inside of each one of us always wants to give in to temptation, to satisfy the desires of the flesh. We want to enjoy the pleasures of the world, the devil makes it easy…or so it seems. We have to stand against, oppose the devil and everything he tries to do in our life to get us to stumble and fall.
We have to resist him, we have to fight, we have to go to battle. That’s why God gives us the armor we need to fight the spiritual battle in Ephesians 6. He is doing everything He can to help us win, but we have to do our part and resist.
When we resist the devil, we are submitting to God in that moment. These two actions go hand in hand, but first you have to submit to God before you resist the devil.
You can try to resist the devil on your own without submitting to God, but I promise you that you will not last long in that battle. The devil is too good , that’s why we have to have God’s help!
Do you want to win that battle within?
Submit to God.
Resist the devil.
Counted Faithful 