Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7 (KJV)
We all wish that our lives went according to our plans and wishes. Living our life as we plan gives us comfort, ease, a sense of predictability and control in a chaotic world. However, is living only our way the right way? Will it allow the enemy to tempt us? Then we wonder why God’s promise of ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you’ does not work in our lives. The answer to our victory over the enemy is at the beginning of the verse – ‘Submit yourselves to God’.
So, what is submission to God?
The dictionary meaning of submission is “to give over or yield to the power or authority of a higher entity; to be subject to some kind of treatment or influence.” Submission from the Bible is to surrender our self completely to Lord Jesus Christ and trust His plan for our life (Jeremiah 29:11). Submission sometimes may not be an easy option, but that is where the challenge comes us to trust God irrespective of our situation or circumstance. When we love Lord Jesus Christ – we trust easily, we follow willingly and submit readily.
By yielding to the authority of the Lord Jesus, we are actively resisting (Matthew 26:41) the enemy, his temptation and all his schemes. When we resist as explained in Ephesians 6:12-18, he has no other choice but to FLEE. The only power the enemy has over us is what we give him.
Today, even as we see chaos all around us, take up this challenge to submit to our Lord Jesus Christ, trust His plan and live a victorious life.
