Day 8
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
—JAMES 4:7
Submitting to God means living a life of repentance. The Christian life begins with repentance: that first surrender of our will to Jesus at the moment of our salvation, and it continues as a lifestyle of daily repentance of those sinful behaviors and attitudes common to all human beings. Living a life of continual repentance to God is our surest safeguard against the attacks of the enemy.
Knowing that continual repentance holds the key to effectively protecting us from the activity of the devil doesn’t make it any easier to do, does it? Submission feels like the most unnatural thing in the world to us because we are, by nature, a hard-hearted and stubborn bunch. But refusing to submit areas of our lives to God allows confusion to reign in our minds, disquiet to plague our hearts, and sets chaos loose in our lives.
When we are actively involved in sinful habits, patterns, or heart attitudes, we tend to point fingers at external circumstances to explain away this vague feeling that we just aren’t doing very well. The devil wants to keep us pointing and blaming because when our eyes are focused outward, we can ignore the root cause that lies in our own unsubmitted and rebellious hearts.
The habit of continual submission may sound like a difficult concept to grasp but it is, in truth, very simple: It means approaching every day with a heart that says, “God, you are wiser than me in every way. Show me today how I can do better in my relationships, in my work, in my leisure time, in my thought life, and in my heart.”
The devil trembles at prayers like that because it gives him very little to play around with.
Take some time today to do a little submission survey in your life. Pray the above prayer and invite God to speak to you and commit to hearing whatever He has to say. Invite Him to point to any area of your life that isn’t submitted to him and be brave about it—brave enough to unclench your hands and submit that thing to him that you’ve been hanging on to for far too long.
