Without A Handhold

"We are standing in peace, at rest in Him, and that leaves Satan without a handhold."

GOD DID NOT like the rules He made. He wanted grace. Grace is that place of favor conferred by a higher authority on someone who doesn’t deserve it. God wanted Israel to seek Him and ask of Him what they need to do and to involve Him in their lives one hundred percent. He wanted to love them, and for His love to bring them to Him for all their needs. But because of Egypt, He gave them rules. He knew they wouldn’t obey. He knew how far they’d fall. And spelling out all that they would do in the future and the consequences of it, despite His desire for grace, He made the rules to protect them. The people didn’t ask why so many rules. They didn’t plead with Him to be more gentle. They didn’t ask for a Redeemer.

Well, Job did. Job asked for a daysmen (Job 9:33), someone to come between him and God and plead on his behalf. He looked ahead to Jesus Christ, speaking at that moment to God who would become Him. But Job was not Israel.

In Deuteronomy, on repeat, God says, “WHEN” you do these things, not “IF” but “WHEN,” there will be consequences. For instance, He tells them they would ask for a king. The king shouldn’t rely on Egypt for strength and resources. In fact, they should never go back there. He shouldn’t marry many wives. They will stop him from thinking about the Lord. He must not store up gold and silver for himself. And he should read the words of the Law every day, keeping them by his side (Deuteronomy 17). Here is a picture of King Saul, King David, and King Solomon years before they would live. It goes on to predict Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem and God’s temple. It describes the horrible losses, sicknesses, and death. It speaks of blessings, knowing they would fall out from under them, and nowhere, does Israel ask God for a reprieve from so many rules or how to walk upright and not see such quality of sin. In fact, in opposite, we know they pleaded with Moses to never see God as He’d appeared to them in thunderous clouds, fire, and lightning.

You just speak to God and relate it to us.

This isn’t what God wanted. He didn’t want them at an arm’s reach. And He didn’t want there to be just now-and-then a man who would actually love Him and be His friend, as Abraham, David, and looking at Deuteronomy’s stories, Moses. He wanted them to be different from the other nations, for those nations to ask why, and for the Presence of God among them to prepare the earth and the world’s systems for the Messiah, Jesus Christ. What happened was far different. They couldn’t get rid of Egypt. They wanted to worship like Egypt, marry like Egypt, prophesy like Egypt. Yet say they belonged to Jehovah.

But there is no walking in darkness and pretending to be the light.

Widening our angle, consider Satan. He was created in beauty, walked in authority, and did wonders in God’s power. Then He said, “I will exalt my throne above God’s,” being filled with jealousy over mankind’s likeness to God, and he lost everything. But he’d thought he’d use all God had made him to be to stand in the place of God. He’d thought there he’d be powerful and lovely and evil at the same time. Absent of God’s goodness, there is nothing left of it to work with. When Satan exalted himself and did the first sin, death entered him and all of God left except for the essence of his being. He had no more form or substance, no authority, no voice. No goodness of God. In the place, absent of God, there is only strife and violence, confusion and lies. Not just FROM you but WITHIN you.

This same picture can be drawn of those angels which chose to do as he did. How did they become murderous? They left the light. They abandoned the wisdom which had created them, and lost in a sea of emotions and situations they didn’t know how to deal with, they used the lies to convince themselves what they did was right. We can look at human behavior in this and see it as devilish. A man lost in sin, surrounded by sin, his mind consumed with anger and hatred goes to great lengths, not caring whoever he must destroy in the process, in order to give himself a selfish form of peace. But that is a house of cards, blown down by the next wind.

Selfish control is not peace. The devil and devils thought it was. Think it is. It isn’t.

Peace comes only through humility, through surrender to God, who knows all things and through whom the impossible comes to pass. Our arrogance shouldn’t be fun. Ego is a balloon filled with what will evaporate one day and not exist. One man is perfect, Jesus Christ, and though He knows who He is and He walks (carries Himself) as King, He has no ego. He exudes peace.

Unclean spirits or devils, as I choose to only call them, are weaker than us, not stronger. Not wiser. We are told they are crafty, but they are not craftier than the Spirit of God, who knows them all by name. No being exists that was not originally God’s, devils included. No thought they’ve had has ever escaped past Him. Another unanswerable question inserts itself here. I spoke of these in a previous devotional. It is pointless to ask why they (devils) are allowed to exist. We should know instead that all of death has been swallowed up in victory. We are not fighting a war nor battles between light and darkness, death and life. We are not fighting to win anything. Jesus did that already. We are standing in peace, at rest in Him, and that leaves Satan without a handhold.

He throws darts he forms from our words. He is not even able to read men’s thoughts if they refuse him the right. We speak of “the devil in my ear” when the truth is, it wasn’t actually him. What he caused is on the earth. But in a behavioral sense, he hears what we say and sees how we act and he knows, in part, human nature. Men build themselves up when fear is chewing at their soul. It is better to believe a lie. Fear alters our vision. It breeds desperation and sometimes extremism. In some as depression or suicide, viewed as a way out. In others, violence and acts of control. These are our human reactions, and I condemn no one for how they have fought against fear. But these are also the way unclean spirits cope. Without God’s peace, there is only fear. Without God’s love, there is only hate. Without God’s life, all actions lead toward death, and they are continually at the will of it, consumed by it.

What is my purpose in this blog? Not to make you sympathetic. All the care of how the devil got where he is and how his cohorts behave is best left with the Holy Spirit. No man needs to carry it. But this knowledge highlights our fighting against Satan. What feels like warfare in our mind, is warfare in a way, but God bids us to rest and to worship. Because the devil wants a battle. He wants us to forever feel like fiery darts are coming our way. He wants us seeking control by our own actions and strengths. But the purpose of the shield is to quench them, to put them out. And God is our only strength in time of trouble. Nothing we do saves us. For we are given GRACE. God doing through His Son what only God could do through His Son. Our part is to relinquish the battles and seek Him. Our part is to say, “Not today, Satan,” and rejoice.

LISTEN TO Creflo Dollar speak “Be glad. Rejoice.”

“Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the LORD will do great things.” (Joel 2:21 KJV)

Image by MJ Jin from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com