The Devil Didn't Invent Spirits Possessing People. God Did: His Holy Spirit Fills Believers.
Spiritual Warfare Made Simple, Chapter 12, Part 8
Remember the three main principles of spiritual warfare from the first few chapters:
God is sovereign, always in control.
You have dominion over your life and over this world. The devil lacks this.
The devil lies. It’s all he knows how to do.
Once you learn these three key truths, you can see them everywhere.
“God abides in him”
John, the disciple who was Jesus’ closest friend, wrote a profound letter to the churches that discusses spiritual warfare matters in brilliant simplicity. One of the key truths He wrote here:
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. (1 John 4:15 ESV)
If you confess that Jesus is the Son of God, a Spirit possesses you. A good Spirit. The Spirit of God. When you confess Jesus, the Holy Spirit possesses you in a perfectly life-giving and freedom-boosting way.
Do you want to be protected against demonic possession? Then confess Jesus as your God. As soon as you do, His Spirit fills you, and no demon wants to be anywhere near the Holy Spirit of God.
Notice also how all the devil can do is mimic God. God’s own Spirit fills believers. The devil tries to counterfeit this by filling non-believers with demonic spirits.
But Satan is only ever a counterfeit. As soon as a possessed person turns to God, the demon flees, and the life-giving Spirit of God fills them.
God is sovereign. Satan can’t match Him. As soon as you invite God in, the devil flees.
“Satan with all power and false signs and wonders”
In one of his letters to the church in Thessaloniki, Paul discusses the end of this age. It involves a great deal of spiritual warfare:
The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 ESV).
Look at these verses! Satan has signs and wonders! He has power!
But what does it all do? What’s the whole point of it?
Deception.
The devil is still lying. At the end of human history, which these verses address, Satan will be allowed to use a few flashier means to spread deception. But that’s all it is: deception.
Now ask: Why do these deceptions work?
Dominion. It’s always dominion.
In their own dominion, these humans made a choice: to refuse to love the truth and so be saved. Salvation was available to them. God is sovereign, and Jesus’ death on the Cross opened the door to Heaven for everyone. Many accept Jesus.
But some don’t. Some refused to love the truth, which would have saved them.
These people received the devil’s lies, delighting in his false signs and wonders. These false signs lined up with what these people already wanted to believe. They refused God and His truth. They loved anything that seemed to justify that decision.
False signs full of power seemed to justify their decision to reject God.
This is when deception is easiest. It’s always easy to deceive someone who wants to reject the truth.
This post comprises the seventh part of Chapter 12 of my book Spiritual Warfare Made Simple. Grab your copy of the ebook or paperback here!
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I see the enemy infiltrating today's churches, deconstructing the fundamentals of the Christian faith and adding ideas like social justice. There are those who want to believe Jesus isn't enough and a Jesus plus cultural theology is ready to satisfy their appetite.
Hope you don’t mind me sharing what I think about this topic.
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