Now a word about this subject in relation to prayer. A number of people tell me how sometimes it is difficult to pray, and that confirms my own experience. Indeed, the universal admission is that whenever people give themselves to prayer, they never find it easy….
There are some striking passages of Scripture which make it abundantly clear that in the unseen world there is a tense battle for supremacy in progress all the time (Dan. 10:12,21). That is a primary reason why prayer may be difficult—the devil opposes it….the man of prayer operates in a world where every inch of the ground has to be taken in the teeth of the opposition. Make no mistake about it, the devil knows when a man is really praying effectually, and he does his utmost to stop him.
In some parts of Scripture the language employed is of a distinctly military character and unmistakably descriptive of the existence of a tense battle for dominion. What else can be meant by such words as “Put on the whole armour of God . . . stand against the wiles of the devil . . . We wrestle . . . withstand . . . overcome”? “Take . . . the sword of the Spirit . . . praying always” (Eph. 6:10, 17, 18). “Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons or our warfare are . . . mighty through God” (2 Cor. 10:3, 4). Here is the word “war” spelled out for us. Moreover, let us recognize the fact that the foe is so obstinate that he will let go only what he is compelled to let go, and he is so powerful that none but a God-endued man can overcome him. Even then the basis of that overcoming lies only in Satan’s having been conquered by Christ at Calvary.
How to Resist the Devil by F. J. Perryman
Link for book in bio.
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[What to do when faced with personal failure.]
Dare to get up. Be a Christian. Defy all the powers of darkness in the name of the Lord, and if nothing else will work, fall upon your knees and cry out, “O God, save me from the devil, for I mean to live and labor and die (if the Lord tarries) like a Christian.”
Desperate conditions call for drastic measures, and if there is one thing I know more than another, it is this: There is no soul who has gone too far for the Almighty to reach him. The faintest glimmer of desire for deliverance finds abundant response in the embrace of redeeming love. Length, breadth, depth, and height—you cannot fathom it. It passes knowledge (Eph. 3:18, 19), but it can reach you, because it is the expression of the very nature of God (1 John 4:8).
Men make barriers, but they were all dealt with at Calvary, and God can break through them all. The mighty forces of evil may gather to hold their prey, but they are less than nothing to the Almighty, who at the cross brought to naught “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” for the express purpose of delivering “them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:14, 15).
Read carefully and prayerfully Isa. 40:12-31, and you will see God in such majesty and power as to dispel all fear of the evil one and his wicked powers.
How to Resist the Devil by F. J. Perryman
Link for book in bio.
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There is another section of the church against which the devil persistently wars. Many men run the Christian race well up to the age of fifty or sixty and then somehow miss their way, or “go to seed.” Probably Paul had this in mind when he wrote “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (1 Cor. 9:27). The word “castaway” means “disapproved” or “rejected.” What terrible peril for an apostle! AND IF FOR PAUL, WHY NOT US?
There have been men who have borne testimony to some of the deepest truths the Scriptures teach and have spent from twenty to thirty years in Christian service, yet slowly or suddenly they have been shunted on to a siding. What is the reason? It makes you think, and ponder, and pray, if your spiritual senses have not become dulled to the place of indifference.
Whatever your age may be, do not allow the divine fires to smolder and die out. Stir up the gift that is in you. Do not drift. Do not run the risk of being disapproved. Jam on the brakes before the downgrade momentum is so great that only a crash can stop you. Or if you have crashed, get up, hear the words of the Risen Lord again and again, “Rise, and stand upon thy feet.” Dare to believe that God can restore you, your testimony, your spiritual vigor, your prayer vision, and maybe your health, too, if you have lost it (as you can) through stemming the tides of the divine life in you.
(Gal. 6:1; Hos. 11:8; 14:1-9).
How to Resist the Devil by F. J. Perryman
Link for book in bio.
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[The billows have gone over my soul]
What is to be done for this man? Is he to be left to perish on the battlefield? No! He may be forsaken of men, but God has not turned against him. The Holy Spirit is alongside (the word “Comforter” means “one called alongside to help”) to cool the fevered brain, to calm the troubled breast, and to make the wounded spirit whole.
How weary he is, none but he and God really know; and how unspeakably gracious are the ministrations of the Most High at such a time! What infinite patience, what tender compassion, what amazing love!
Not for a week, nor for a month, but for years will the Spirit of God brood over the darkness and chaos if haply He may again see the unsheathed sword brandished in the bruised hand, the flash of victory in the tear-red eye, and the foe impotent at the trembling feet! Hallelujah! It can be so. Though the soul may have descended to depths unspeakable while floundering and groping in the underworld of darkness, there can come a moment when the sky overhead is cleared, and he will see that God is well able to rescue him from his plight. But what happened in this case?
The greatest part of the battle was to get the man to WILL as well as to want to get free. We may want a thing without willing it. When that point was reached, then was real progress, though at first it was slow. He said, “I will that God shall free me from this state, and I trust Him to do so.” That position was affirmed again and again, especially when the dawn of breaking day became obscured by angry clouds on an ever-changing sky…Slowly the sluice gates opened, and the waters of life again began to run into the dry dock. What a work to have a hand with God in refloating these broken but mended craft!
Are you in dry dock? Have waters in which you once swam receded until you can scarcely see a trickle? Do not lose hope. God does not. Ask God for strength to reassert your will, set the rudder, count on God, and surely, if slowly, you will again sail on the waters of His ocean, as did he of whom I have written.
How to Resist the Devil by F. J. Perryman
Link for book in bio.
Here is another worker, one with noted ability and keen tenacity in the fight. This one has taken the gospel from door to door, spoken in cottage and villa, at street corner and church, and souls have been saved and blessed. The devil is out to stop this, and he does. He stimulates an inordinate desire for visible results by giving visions of wonderful things that are going to take place. What is flashed across the imagination and implicitly believed to be from God does not come to pass, however, and slowly the soul is drawn into darkness and doubt. The power to resist is lost in an atmosphere of perplexity and confusion.
How easy at such a time to lose heart, to let everything go to believe that all is a deception, and in consequence to become careless, prayerless, and almost as one that is godless, with the rudder of life at the mercy of the devil’s seas! Some at this stage begin to drift back into the world—anywhere to get relief. They soon find that the world is very shallow and its pleasures transitory. No true peace can be found within its borders.
God must deliver, and He will. He proves that His child can be rescued from an enemy who is so wicked that he seeks to imitate the Holy Spirit.
“You shall be delivered,” I said to such a soul. “The devil must let go. In the name of the Lord, and by His grace, you will be set free once again to witness to the power of Calvary.”
What a sigh of relief came with the reply: “Oh, thank God, someone thinks I can be restored, for I have feared that my brain would go with thinking about it!”
Praise God, the restoration came, and an important center of Christian service was benefited thereby. There is recovery and restoration, and the deep lessons learned in such tribulation will mean that he who once “chased a thousand” will now “chase ten thousand.”
How to Resist the Devil by F. J. Perryman
Link for book in bio.
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Romans 8:2 Is Good Medicine
Continued from yesterday…What has happened? The man is depressed. His spirit is enveloped as in a mist, by an unseen power. His will to act in certain directions cannot operate. He is as a man paralyzed, or as one in a faint. Indeed, he feels that would be a great relief and an easy way out. What David experienced in the physical realm, this man is encountering in the spiritual (Ps. 55).
One day a friend came along and repeated Romans 8:2 to him. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” As one aroused from sleep, he said, “Amen! Say that again.” It was repeated. Recognizing that he had unconsciously been under a spirit of death (the devil’s objective is always to administer death of some kind), he continued to use that verse and other Scripture and finally broke gloriously free. That is resisting the devil.
You may not always be able to account for these things happening, but they do. In more ways than one a servant of God can be overwhelmed in spirit, hemmed in by the devil, drop the fight, faint by the way, and exist—yes, just exist—for a very long time under a spirit of death.
Do you know anything of this degree? Do you know someone in this condition? If you do, you will not blame but pray, and in spirit get alongside, so that the struggling soul may be lifted into the light. The life is there, but it is buried or not functioning. The spirit can be revived, the will can be renewed, the man can be dug out; but God may want you to raise the pick of prayer and lower the shovel of faith. If He does, do not delay.
How to Resist the Devil by F. J. Perryman
Link for book in bio.
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Here is a man marvelously enlightened in what the devil does and able to explain the subject with rare clarity and power. The day comes when, eager for the spread of the gospel, he ventures into the battle zone of another country, but without any real understanding of the tremendous hold which the powers of evil have upon the people. The atmosphere is so controlled by opposing forces that any doubts which he may have had as to their existence or activity are now banished (Eph. 2:2). This is a real spiritual battle “where Satan’s seat is.” ….
The days come and go, each bringing its added stress of conflict. Perplexing situations arise, disappointing things happen, the “east winds” blow with a bite never before experienced, and he is baffled. Hoping against hope that the tide will turn, he plods on. Maybe he tries to do through human what is the work of his God—a common failure of us all—but slowly his power to resist weakens and he becomes enveloped. His head is in his hands, none of those around him understand, if they even so much as perceive what is wrong. All is confusion and darkness to him. You might tell him some of the things that he himself said about “the way of victory” in such circumstances, but he will reply, “That was all right for England or the United States and the armchair; it is different out here.”
He prays—at least he tries to—but the heavens seem as brass; he weeps inwardly and outwardly, and the devil whispers “Your being here is a huge mistake.” The agony deepens. Things happen of which I cannot speak. Trouble upon trouble sets in. It is an “evil day.”
“Resist the devil, brother,” urges someone, but somehow he cannot. If it occurs to him to do so, he either says, “It is of no use,” or “I cannot.” And to say that is, of course, fatal, for by a swifter process than you think, the attitude becomes “I do not want to.”
How to Resist the Devil by F. J. Perryman
Link for book in bio.
A great deal of lethargy with respect to mind and will abounds among the Lord’s people. Many seem to think that when they are saved, God will decide things for them instead of giving them the ability to see for themselves what is right and wrong and what is wise and unwise.
Some of them will do anything rather than get into the place of a responsible person endowed with the wisdom and decision of “the new man in Christ.” ....Most of them cut their lives into two departments—one natural and the other spiritual. In the former they use their brain and will, but in the latter they just drift along. You never know what they are going to do in the spiritual realm, for their guidance is enveloped in some vaporous mysticism which nobody understands.
“Be sober.” Use your mind. Your brain has been redeemed as much as your heart. “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph. 4:23; Col. 3:10; Rom. 12:2), Let the light of God create for you a new intelligence department— “UNDERSTAND what the will of the Lord is.” Say, “I must get to understand the will of the Lord.” This will call for faith and patience, but persist in coming to know God’s will for yourself by regular searching of His Word. If you will do that, you will guard yourself against falling into many a snare of Satan.
In addition, you will become increasingly efficient in the Lord’s service as His fellow worker (2 Cor. 6:1). A word of caution is needed here, however. There are some things that for the time being are designedly veiled from our eyes, and the recognition of this sometimes places faith in its best setting to mature (John 13:7).
How to Resist the Devil by F. J. Perryman
Link for book in bio.
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