Spiritual Protective Custody

Submission.

Jas_4:7  Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

SUBMIT', v.i. To surrender; to yield one's person to the power of another; to give up resistance.  (Webster's)

Yielding ourselves to others isn't always easy. The fact we need to be told to submit implies we will want to resist, doesn't it?

Yielding ourselves to God, giving ourselves to God is comprehensible, isn't it? Letting God's power rule over us is a blessing to us. We pray for God's will to be done in our lives, and then sometimes when bad things happen we despise that it was God's will that they happen. I may keep revisiting this theme but it's true that people blame God for allowing the bad to happen. They have this idea if they were in God's shoes they'd never let evil happen at all. They would never allow a single innocent being be hurt in any way. And truly this is the thing most people want, isn't it? A life of what we consider fairness. Yet if we boil that life of fairness right down to its core we'd find us all instantly deserving of death upon our first true intention towards sin and all of us would die very, very, very young. We are blessed beyond measure to have a God who has made it so we have the opportunity to be forgiven for our evil choices. Do you think Noah and his family were without sin? They weren't. Noah found GRACE in the eyes of God. (Gen.6:8). To find the grace implies a need of grace.

God allows everything that happens, and it all happens for a purpose. That we have HOPE is the blessing that cannot be overlooked even as we suffer unimaginably throughout our lives if many ways large and small.

Yielding ourselves to God, is the recognition of our position of submission to our Creator, our Redeemer.

To recognize our submission to God is to place ourselves in spiritual protective custody, in a place that cannot be touched by anything that can spiritually harm us.

We are told to submit- to give up our resistance to God, and then we are told to resist the devil. We are not to submit to the devil, we are NOT to give up our resistance to the devil in any way. 

The devil would have us resist God, he wants us to resist submitting ourselves to the complete and utter authority of our Creator. The devil will convince people that giving up resistance to God is placing ourselves in the hands of a being who enjoys the agonies of life. The devil will tell us not to submit to a being that does not stop the unfair evils from attacking us throughout our lives. The devil shouts how can you submit to God when He lets such horrors happen!? The devil doesn't say that the only alternative to submitting to God, is submitting to him. One or the other, no in between. And if our choice to submit is to the one who is evil incarnate, the one who causes the evil for evil sake and not to the One who ultimately will eradicate all evil, then that is our fatal choice.  The devil would have people believe that they can choose neither God nor, him- that they can live for themselves and do not need to submit to any authority, or even recognize there is an authority over them. Spiritual blindness is a deceptive tool the devil uses all the time.

More on this tomorrow, by the grace of God!

May we choose the spiritual protective custody of submitting ourselves to God and resisting the devil!

All through the love of our Savior, our Lord, Jesus Christ, now and forever!!!!!!!