Active Resistance
“Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers (and sisters) throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”
- 1 Peter 5:9
Since we do not have the power on our own to defeat Satan and his demons, we have to understand what resources we have available to us to fight him and we have to develop a strategy that will give us the best chance of defeating his power in our lives. In other words it is not good enough for us to sit back and just see what happens and then go from there. Passivity in our fight against Satan will never work. We must be active in developing our strengths and using them to our best advantage. We must also be mindful of Satan’s weaknesses and use them to our advantage as well.
Submission to God and faith are at the heart of our ability to put up an active resistance to the attacks of Satan in our lives. At this stage of the sermon series, we need to take a serious look at how we can develop and implement submission and faith to our advantage when we are in battle with the enemy.
Submission to God is basically saying to God, “I can’t, but you can.” When we submit to God through a relationship with Jesus Christ we are putting aside our false self-reliance and throwing all of our hope in God’s direction and presence in our lives. Submission is growing closer to God and living with the reality that we are severely limited in what we can accomplish in anything, let alone our battles with Satan. Then through submission to Jesus we begin to live the reality that through him we can accomplish anything as long as it is in his will.
