When you yield yourself to sin, you’re serving Satan, who is the author of that sin. But when you yield yourself to obedience, you serve God, who is the author of that righteousness.
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
ROMANS 6:16
In this spiritual battle, your actions are very important.
Most people recognize that actions are important in the physical realm. You know that there are consequences for what you do. If you’re speeding while driving, you could get a ticket or cause a wreck. The ticket could cost money and put points on your license. The wreck could damage cars or even cost someone their life. When we talk negatively about someone, we can hurt their feelings or even loose demonic powers against them.
There’s much more to life than just this physical, natural, surface level. Spiritual dynamics are constantly taking place. Whether or not the person you’re speaking evil about ever knows it, you’ll be affected. Venting anger, frustration, resentment, or unforgiveness affects you whether it affects anyone else or not. I’ve actually ridden with people who are very vocal in traffic when someone cuts them off. They’ve told me, “That person doesn’t know what I said. They didn’t hear me.”It doesn’t matter whether they ever hear you or not. If you get angry and bitter, you’ve just yielded yourself to Satan. Whether you recognize it or not, the devil is the one who influences us to respond in the wrong way.
The Wrath of Man
James 1:20 says, “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”In other words, giving place to anger and bitterness doesn’t accomplish the righteousness of God. You aren’t going to accomplish God’s purposes by getting in the flesh, giving in to anger, and losing your temper. That’s not the way God’s kingdom works. So whether anyone else ever hears you or not—what you say is having an effect on you.
A fellow I led to the Lord some time ago was genuinely converted and had come quite a ways in his discipleship. He upholstered cars and was trying to restore a certain old one. One day, I went over to his house and knocked on the door but there was no answer. I knew he was home, so I walked around to the backyard. As I came around the corner of his house, I heard this awful profanity, screaming, and yelling. This brother had a fence post and was beating the fire out of that car!
He was cussing this car up and down as I—his pastor—came around the corner. When he saw me, he stopped for a moment (conviction, I presume) and said, “Well, it’s just a car. It’s doesn’t matter what I say to it. I didn’t hurt anybody.”I had to explain to him that it didn’t matter what it was. When you give place to anger and vent like that, Satan jumps on it like a chicken on a June bug. The enemy will take full advantage of an open door like that to come and steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10.)
Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
JAMES 3:16
Notice how this didn’t say, “some” evil works. It didn’t say envying and strife “could” allow the devil to come against “certain types of people.”No, when you get into envy and strife, you’re flinging the door wide open and saying, “Come on in Satan and do your worst in my life.”You’re drawing a great big target on your back and saying, “Shoot your best shot!”When you give in to envy and strife, you make yourself a target for the devil.
Are You Spiritually Stinky?
We are unto God a sweet savour [smell] of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish.
2 CORINTHIANS 2:15
What is your spiritual scent? Are you giving off the sweet aroma of Christ, or are you spiritually stinky? Just like flies and rats, demons are attracted to open wounds and garbage in your life. Your rotten attitude—getting mad in traffic, being bitter over whatever, and criticizing everything and everyone—is putting out an aroma that’s drawing every demon in the county to your house. And you wonder, Why am I having these problems? Why does nothing go right for me? That’s just ignorance gone to seed. You need to recognize that we’re in a spiritual battle. Your thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions are either releasing the power of God in your life, or they’re releasing the power of the devil.
You might think, Fate is against me. I have bad luck. You may even put it off on the Lord, saying, “God, why have You allowed these things to happen to me?”It’s not like that at all. God is good and He’s doing everything He can to save, bless, heal, and prosper you. However, we do have an enemy who is going around looking for anyone he may destroy.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
1 PETER 5:8
Notice that it’s “whom he may devour.”Satan cannot devour (or destroy) you without your cooperation. One way he gains that cooperation is through ignorance. You may think that it doesn’t matter if you get mad at the car you’re working on, or the driver who just cut you off in traffic. You might think that nobody’s harmed when you gossip about someone who isn’t there, saying, “They won’t hear this.” But the truth is, once you start venting these things, Satan takes advantage of it.
For some reason or another, we feel like politicians are just fair game. We think we’re free to say anything we want about them because the freedom of speech our country enjoys encourages us to voice our disagreement. However, there is a right and wrong way to do it. I’ve heard Christians rail on a presidential candidate or some other public officer in ways that aren’t healthy. You can disagree without putting a person to shame with the words you say. It doesn’t matter whether they ever hear you or not. You could be opening up a door to the devil through your words. (Rom.6:16.)
Spiritual Dynamics
You need to set a watch before your mouth (Ps.141:3) and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. (2 Cor.10:5.) You need to control your actions (Gal.5:22–24) and recognize that the demonic realm is trying to take a shot at you every day of your life. If you allow a door to be opened to them, they’ll come in for no other purpose than to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10.) Remember, Satan is looking for whom he may devour.
You need to learn to recognize the spiritual dynamics happening in your life. God wants you to yield to Him so that His power and blessings can be released in you. Satan wants you to yield to him so that destruction and death can be released in you. In order to gain an inroad, the enemy is constantly trying to snare you with bitterness, unforgiveness, and ungodliness of all kinds. Therefore, no matter what you do, you’re either obeying God or obeying Satan. You’re either submitting to God and His influence or to Satan and his influence. Every time you act, you are releasing spiritual power— either God’s or the devil’s—into your life. Since most people are ignorant of this truth, they allow all kinds of things in their life. Yet, if they were to recognize the results they’re going to reap, they would never allow these things.
At one time the wife of one of our Bible college students was suffering from severe depression. When I began to tell her how she could be delivered from this, she explained that she had battled depression since she was a little girl. She’d go through a period of one or two months each year where she would be severely depressed and have to treat it with medication.
When I told her, “You don’t want to live that way anymore; you need to get over this,” she answered, “This is just the way that I am. It’s not hurting anything. I get over it. Everything’s okay in a month or so.”She had totally accepted and embraced this depression, thinking it was only a passing thing that had no lasting impact. But every time we submit to doing things Satan’s way, we are having spiritual relations with him, which conceives evil. It isn’t just benign.
Sin’s Conception
Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
JAMES 1:14, 15
Sin is conceived in your emotions. Every time you have a negative emotion—whether it be sadness, anger, fear, strife, or one of many others—you conceive something. Many people are conceiving things that they don’t want to birth. They don’t want depression, strife, suicide, or their marriage to fall apart. Yet they allow these negative emotions to flow through them without recognizing that we’re in a spiritual battle. When you give in to your flesh and start saying and doing these things, you are releasing spiritual forces. There is a battle raging and the enemy is looking for an opportunity to come against you.
The devil’s will is to devour everyone he can. (1 Pet.5:8.) He desires to steal, kill, and destroy every person everywhere.(John 10:10.) If Satan got what he wanted, then the whole earth would be devastated, and there would be no good anywhere.
However, God has a will too. Jesus said:
I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
JOHN 10:10
Jesus is trying to release life into you. Satan is trying to steal, kill, and destroy anything good that you have. Both are willing and able to move and manifest those things in your life, but the determining factor is you. You need to recognize this battle that’s raging and the fact that everything you say and do is either empowering God or the devil. The Lord wants to release His life into you. Satan wants to steal that life and kill and destroy you. It’s not fate or luck. Your thoughts, choices, and actions make a huge difference in your life.
“Get Out of My Life!”
I visited a church once that had previously believed God could heal, but that it wasn’t His will to heal every single time. What I didn’t know was that less than six months before I came, they had changed their mind to come into agreement with the Word, saying, “It’s God’s will for every person to be well. He heals all the time.” This was a brand-new step of faith for them. The congregation was beginning to hear the Word and starting to believe God for specific manifestations of healing.
Two days before I arrived, that church had a funeral for a seven- teen-year-old boy who had died after being in a coma for six weeks. The entire church had fasted and prayed, trying to implement the truths from God’s Word that they were being taught. Although they knew it was God’s will to heal this boy, he died anyway. The outcome caused a tremendous amount of conflict, turmoil, and questions in that church.
After the morning meetings, I went out to eat with the parents of the boy every day for three days trying to figure out exactly what had transpired. Since everyone had given it their best shot—doing every-thing they knew to do—many people in the church were beginning to back off the Word, saying, “Maybe it’s not God’s will to heal every time.”When I told them that wasn’t true—that God had already provided healing and it’s His will to heal every single time—they responded, “Well then, what’s the problem?”
As I talked with the boy’s parents those three days, I discovered that they had been in so much strife that they were about to get a divorce. They’d already made the plans and had talked about it with the children. So there was much strife, hurt, and negative emotion in that home.
On the morning of the tragedy, the mother had an argument with this boy and told him, “I hate you. Get out of my house and never come back again!”She probably didn’t mean what she said. She was just saying it out of the heat of emotion. I know that kids can some- times get on your nerves. I’ve raised some myself. Raising kids is harder than raising the dead—and I’ve had to do both in my family! I’m not trying to condemn this lady, but before this boy left, she said, “Get out of my life and never come back again.”
Every Evil Work
Because the boy had been hurt by his mom, he violated school policy that day, left the school grounds, and went over to another kid’s house to eat lunch. While there, they got out a gun, were playing with it, and the boy accidentally shot himself in the head. That’s the reason he had been in a coma for six weeks.
The parents just didn’t understand how this could have happened. The Word reveals that “Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work”(James 3:16).
Many people say, “I agree that strife isn’t the best. Nobody likes it, but it’s just a normal part of life. Families fight, and then they get over it.”Without realizing that we’re in a spiritual battle, they just tolerate different levels of strife in their life. The Word says that envying and strife bring confusion.
God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.
1 CORINTHIANS 14:33
If God isn’t the author of confusion, guess who is? That’s right— Satan. The devil is the one who—wherever envying and strife are— brings confusion and every evil work.
When you fling a door open like that to the devil, don’t be surprised if you see different forms of sickness, tragedy, poverty, and death manifest. Satan jumps on opportunities like that and uses them as inroads into your life. As a roaring lion, he’s constantly seeking whom he may devour.
