The attempts the devil makes to frighten and/or oppress you are, in reality, like a toothless lion pretending he has a roar. YOU ARE IN CHRIST! The Lion of Judah lives in you, and the devil can’t touch you, no matter what your situation may look like to the contrary. This New Year, prioritize the time to get the Word of God rooted and grounded inside you, letting Jesus teach you. When you do, your understanding will be renewed and changed, and the devil will flee when YOU roar!
Religious tradition teaches that God uses sickness to teach us. But if that were true, then every person seeking medical help and every doctor who treated them would be in rebellion against God for attempting to heal that afflicted one. Every hospital and medical office would be houses of rebellion. The truth is, Jesus was a revelation of God’s will as He went about HEALING all who were oppressed of the devil! (Acts 10:38)
In many areas of life you can slip back into old patterns that you had previously freed yourself from. You wake up one day and realize you are back in the rut of doing what you were stuck in 10 or 20 years ago! This can also happen in your thinking, which ends up limiting the power of God actively working in your life. It happens when you start reading the Bible more as a history book than as a living letter to you, to be applied and acted on every day. Remember, back then it was the ministry of Jesus in a Jew. BUT NOW, it’s not just history, it has become the ministry of Jesus carried out through you!
As you negotiate through the traffic and the bustle of stores, and thrill in the beautifully decorated scenery around you, remember that on that night an angel stood in the heavens declaring the reason for our celebrations. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord…” (Luke 2:11). Merry Christmas! What a precious and amazing gift God has given to us!
We are like the town criers, announcing the truth to people that they are forgiven, healed and free—it’s already been given to them by grace and they don’t have to earn it! It’s God’s justice delivered to His children in Christ!
Justified means “just as if I’d never sinned,” but it also means, “just as if I was never a sinner and was never under the devil’s oppression, just as if I had never lost anything, just as if I had never been sick, and just as if I don’t have to be under the curse of the law anymore!”
When you really get it that Jesus paid the entire price for sin, you’ll understand that you’re no longer under the devil’s tyranny and oppression. Know this as confidently as you know your name—the devil has NO power over you anymore, in any area, because Jesus took your sin and permanently gave you HIS righteousness!
Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves. Our sins for His righteousness. Our fear for His love. Our sickness for His health. Our unbelief for His faith. Our life for His LIFE. “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).
Jesus took off His equality with God, so He could put on human flesh and walk on this earth demonstrating to us what God looked like in human flesh. He had no sin nature, so the devil had no ability to put anything on Him or do anything to Him until it was time for the cross. There, He took YOUR sin nature, and all the judgements that were against you because of it, and gave you His LIFE in exchange! Now you are cleansed, with the nature of Christ in you, and the devil has no more right to touch you than he did Jesus! This is how we walk in the earth as He did, and can do the works He said we can do! “… as he is so also are we in this world” 1 John 4:17.
The only way we can build our expectations upon something other than personal experiences is through exposing our hearts and minds to the “great and precious promises” of God, and believing them to be ours! (2 Peter 1:4)
