The Devil Cannot Totally Defeat A Believer
“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might”. (Ephesians 6:10).
The devil can never totally defeat a believer in Christ. Those who are genuinely in the Lord, who have come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, have been delivered from total defeat. The devil can never get you back into the position of unconscious control he once exercised over you, as he does over the rest of the world. But the devil can demoralize believers. He can frighten you and make you miserable. He can blunt your effectiveness and make you feel weak and unfruitful for God. As a believer, you can at times feel more miserable than you ever have in the past, even though you are ultimately victorious through Christ. The devil has a special reason for wanting to discourage believers in Christ to feel defeated because a demoralized believer is a Christian whose effectiveness has been diminished. Satan is greatly disturbed by the presence of every believer in Christ in the world. The reason is? Every Christian or believer poses a threat to the devil’s kingdom, to his rule over mankind. This is why the devil focuses special attention on you and seeks to hinder and discourage you.
When a believer lives in obedience to the will of God, he threatens Satan’s rule on earth. Every effective believer is a potential door of escape, helping worldlings to move out of the devil’s realm of darkness and into God’s realm of eternal light. Every believer in Christ who lives a life that is yielding to God and resistant to the schemes of the devil is a corridor of liberty. The world around him is illuminated by his light, dispelling one more patch of darkness and ignorance. The devil cannot allow people to escape his dominion, so he is especially vicious and persistent in his attacks upon believers. He marshals all his forces against you in order to discourage and dishearten you, so that you will not be effective and useful to God.
Sometimes the devil attacks you as “a roaring lion,” (1 Peter 5:8) clawing at you through catastrophic circumstances in order to knock you off your feet and keep you from standing for God. At other times he comes as “an angel of light,” (2 Corinthians 11:14) a seductive and alluring temptation, offering us some attractive lure that seems so right yet which has a deadly, poisonous trap hidden within. Sometimes the devil assails you through “the world” (James 4:4) with its intimidating pressure to conform, to not be different, to comply with the flow lest you be ostracized and thought of as “fanatics” or “religious extremists.”
But most often the devil comes in disguise, through the channel of “the flesh” (Galatians 5:19–21) to infiltrate our inner selves with silken, subtle, suggestive schemes. That is the avenue of Satanic attack that the apostle Paul warns you most strenuously about the subtle schemes of the devil. You should not be ignorant of Satan’s scheme. “Lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices”. (2 Corinthians 2:11). You can’t be totally defeated by the devil because 1 John 4:4 says, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world”. You are strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. You have overcome the devil. And greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. You are fortified from within. You are more than a conqueror through Christ, who loved you (Romans 8:37).
Contributor
By Gilbert Magomere Ayieko
Minister
