Our Strength

"We must keep God stronger than the devil at all times."

JESUS DID NOT redeem us from the devil. He redeemed us from sin. He wanted to prove that humanity, as He’d created us, was stronger than all the power of darkness. Not because we don’t feel pain but because we do. Our strength as human bodies with healthy minds and emotions isn’t in avoiding the problems we face but in handling them. This was so important to God that He sent His only Son as human to prove it.

“ … and our Savior Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” (Titus 2:14)

We are made in the likeness of God, in His image, and He was made, foreordained before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20), to be in ours. The devil is a created being who sinned and lost all that God had made him to be. Fallen man owed the devil nothing – not one red cent. God was not paying for sin to take us out of his control. If so, then Abraham would not have been able to be found righteous outside of salvation (James 2:23). Moses would not have been called faithful (Hebrews 3:5). God worked godly things through humans continually from the day Adam breathed his first breath in the garden. He found Noah righteous and saved him and his family, eight souls (Hebrews 11:7).

We must keep God stronger than the devil at all times. He is always God, always all-powerful, always omnipresent. What ruled mankind after Adam and Eve sinned was sin itself. Sin rules the devil, for that matter. Only he hasn’t been redeemed. Mankind was rescued from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13). Fallen angels, now devils, were not.

We focus on the suffering of men and wonder why God allows it. God has shown man to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He has nothing else to prove. Instead, what He is continually working in us, is for us to see how great we truly are when we are IN HIM. Men who choose to live without God will sink below where we are meant to stand. Man with God can walk on water, raise the dead, be recreated in God’s image. God is Spirit (John 4:24). We worship Him in spirit because we are spirit. Sin killed the spirit of men. God, through Jesus, brought it back to life. John 3:16.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

But it takes our decision. There is life set before us, with Jesus’ human life as our example of human strength, and there is death, painted to look like freedom at first glance, but with an end that we are not meant to have. Understand I’m talking of spiritual things, spiritual life verses spiritual death. There will come a day when all death, including physical death and sickness leading to physical death, will be gone. Wiped away. But these words today are of spiritual things.

The devil is not stronger than we are. Only through deception has he held men captive. He lied, and they believed the lie. When the truth is, comparing what he’s done in the Word of God, where his name is directly referenced, to what unclean spirits or devils have done as well, we see there isn’t anything different between them. He is not stronger, nor higher, nor of more power. He is just as defeated, just as deceived. Both the devil and a devil think they are in control, and what drives them is darkness, is sin and the suffering of sin – fear, hatred, and violence, confusion, shame, and strife. They have no redemption, no buy back from it. We do.

“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,” (1 Peter 1:18-20)

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