Vital signs- Wednesday, September 30th, 2020

Submitting to the Lord is our first line of defense when fear rears its ugly head. And guess who loves it when we live in fear? Our spiritual enemy. Fear is his playground.

Thankfully, we have a plan of attack. God has given us a spiritual dress code in Ephesians 6:10-18. We must be fully equipped with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit and a prayerful heart. Once we’re appropriately clothed, we can heed the words of James, the half-brother of Jesus:

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7 NIV

Before we start rebuking or resisting the devil, we must ask ourselves if we’ve fully surrendered and submitted to God. Submitting to God means fully abandoning our lives to Him. With our spiritual armor fully in place and prayer in our hearts, we’re yielding to the One who has the ultimate authority. We’re given the strength to resist the devil when we surrender our entire lives to God. And then guess what happens? The devil flees.

Yet, what we often try to do instead is first resist the devil or rebuke him, when we have yet to really submit to God. Resisting the devil is hard when we haven’t submitted our will, our ways, and our wants to God. Submitting to God is not only the first step, but our submission to God is actually us resisting Satan at the same time. (In other words you can’t hyper focus on God and satan at the same time.)

We have the tools at hand. Let’s take steps toward fully giving our lives to God, for when we do, the devil has no power over us.