Beloved: grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. I welcome you to the last week of the month of August 2020 and pray that you will be kept safe from every evil scheme of the devil all through the week and throughout the remaining part of the year, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now while it is good and appropriate for me to pray for you in the manner I did, it is also important that you too do not give the devil any opportunity to work in your life and defeat you. Paul, writing to the Ephesian brethren, says, “Don’t give the devil any opportunity to work.” (Eph 4:27GW) Why does he say this? He says this because of his awareness of the devil’s character. And what is his character? According to the bible, he is a liar, thief, killer, destroyer and devourer (John 8:44 &10:10; 1Pet 5:8).
Therefore, if you make the mistake of giving him any opportunity or space to work wherever you are, you can be sure that deception, miseries, losses, pains and destruction will start happening. And if you are slow or sluggish to take advantage of the power and wisdom of God to drive him out, you may end up losing everything good and perfect you have received from God. Look at the case of Adam and Eve, for example. How much space did they give Satan to work? Just a little space! It was just some moment of entertaining his lies about God and His instructions that opened the door of Eve’s life for him to work. And before they knew it, they had been robbed of every good thing God had given them and sent out of His Eden. (Cf. Gen 3)
Also, consider the case of Judas Iscariot. How did he lose his place as an apostle of the Lord and his inheritance in God’s eternal kingdom? It was by giving Satan some space to work in his life. It all started when he allowed him to convince him that stealing from the Lord was okay. So, he started helping himself to the money that was kept with him (John 12:6). And before he knew it, he totally lost his faith in the Lord and in His ministry and felt it would be better for him to sell Him to His enemies and save himself than for him to perish with Him and His apostolic band. But by the time Satan was through working in him and through him, he realized that he had been deceived and destroyed on the inside. All he could, then, think of doing was to just take his own life, which he eventually did. (Cf. Matt 26:14-16 & 37:3-5; John 13:2&27)
Now if Satan could worm his way into that beautiful and perfect garden, Eden, and steal the joy and inheritance of the first two representatives of humanity, where else do you think he cannot enter and destroy things? And if he could find his way into the first church Jesus personally pastored, a church of just twelve people, and corrupt one of its members, do you think it he won’t be able to worm his way into your home or church, if you permit him? You will be joking to think so.
See, Satan is not someone we can afford to accommodate for any reason. Otherwise we may end up regretting it throughout eternity. And the only way for us not to give him any space to work in our lives or through our lives at all is to take the word of God very seriously. As long as we take His word very seriously and live by it, Satan will never be able to outsmart us. But if, for any reason, we minimize the relevance of His word in any area of our lives, that area will be the door through which this evil enemy of ours will come in and work and mess things up for us.
If you, then, want to always be able to shut Satan out of your affairs, learn to take the word of God very seriously in everything. And my prayer is that your heart will continually be strengthened to give God’s word the right place in your life and affairs, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Have a great week.
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By: J.O. Lawal | Date: August 23, 2020 | Series: From Pastor’s Desk | Number: Vol. 9, No. 16