“Oh, no, you don’t!” protested our neighbor as she wrested our lawnmower from the grip of a would-be thief. My wife Peggy had walked up the street and, knowing she would return in just a matter of minutes, left our garage door open. He may have been watching, for in that slender sliver of time a man backed up our driveway, strolled into our garage and proceeded to load our mower onto his truck bed. Watching this unfold, our neighbor Janice1 confronted the man. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “They said I could borrow it,” the man replied. Not satisfied, Janice countered wisely, “Who said you could borrow it?” The man had no reply, obviously exposed, so acting on our behalf Janice took authority over him who had none. Armed only with truth and conviction, she seized our mower and wheeled it back to our garage. The man jumped into his truck and sped away.
Jesus taught that “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”2 He spoke of the evil one, of course, our “enemy the devil [who] prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”3 He would rob us of understanding, faith, joy, and ultimately life itself. Like the man in the truck, he waits for “an opportune time,”4 yet also like the man in the truck, he has no authority over what is not his. For it is Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion.”5 And “[we] belong to Christ.”6 Living in Him—and He in us—we have “authority to . . . overcome all the power of the enemy.”7 We are heirs with Christ, so it is crucial that we “know . . . his great power for us who believe.”8
Then we live in His authority to serve His purposes. Grounded in Him, we “stand against the devil’s schemes” and “struggle against the rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”9 “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world,” wrote Paul, “On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.”10 For we wield truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, the Word of God, and prayer.11 Armed with these weapons and empowered by the authority of Christ, we stand immovably before the evil one and proclaim confidently to this would-be thief, “Oh, no, you don’t!”
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. —James 4:7
Father, You have put us in Christ, and in Him, we are made strong. Embolden us to pick up Your Kingdom weapons and stand confidently against our enemy. In the name of Christ and in the power of the Spirit we pray. Amen.
1 Name has been changed for this post.
2 John 10:10
3 1 Peter 5:8
4 Luke 4:13
5 Ephesians 1:21
6 1 Corinthians 3:23 NASB
7 Luke 10:19
8 Ephesians 1:18-19
9 Ephesians 6:11
10 2 Corinthians 10:4
11 Ephesians 6:14-18
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Paul Nordman—Author 