December 17, 2024

James 4.7, 8 (NIV)

Submit yourselves, then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.

When a soul sets out to seek God, God sets out to meet that soul.*

Notice the action words in this passage: submit, resist, come. The tense of these verbs in Greek indicates that they are things to be done and over with. You should submit and stay that way. Resist and never give in. Come and never go away.

Satan has an action word, too: flee. We underestimate Satan’s power and overestimate our ability to resist him. We’ve seen too many movies that have led us to believe that the powers of darkness are only special effects. But, if we submit and resist, Satan doesn’t just back-off - he runs away. Picture that! “Strong as . . . [Satan] is, God never permits him to conquer the man who continues to resist him.”*

And then there’s God’s action word: come. If we submit, resist, and come, God will come near to us. Do you realize how powerful our actions are if they can summon God to us, and send Satan on the run? 

We fight when we should run, we run when we should stand, we debate when we should look away, and we wonder why we suffer defeat.*