Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
Jesus has taken back ALL authority. This means that everyone else has NO AUTHORITY unless He gives it to them.
So, if the devil has no authority, how does he still do stuff that hurts us? Jesus is not giving Him any authority. Satan obviously got some type of power or authority from somewhere because he is still stealing, killing, and destroying. Where did that ability come from?
Satan can only be empowered by those who have authority. Which means you and me.
How does he do that? Because we are not knowingly handing over what Jesus paid for us to have. Are we?
Could it be that we are unknowingly, yet willingly, relinquishing control of our thoughts and beliefs to a known liar?
For Satan to gain some measure of control, he must bring himself into agreement with one who has authority. The stronger the agreement, the more authority he has. Instead of bringing himself into agreement, he deceives believers into agreeing with him. This doesn’t allow Satan to gain authority, just a measure of influence and control to keep us from understanding and exercising our authority.
Satan would never truly bring himself into agreement with Christ. We observe Satan trying to trick Jesus during their encounter in the wilderness. He attempted to lure Jesus into some type of agreement with him. And Jesus would never give Satan authority now because He is the one who took it from him.
So, he tricks Christians into agreeing with him in the same way.
How?…
He just keeps talking until we make a verbal agreement with him. He is relentless in his attack on our thought life.
When we believe a lie to the point we speak it, we empower the enemy. We give him authority to further deceive us.
What forms that agreement?
Words are creative by nature. The first thing words create are images. Satan uses those images to manipulate our thoughts. Remember, he is looking for agreement. Once he has that verbal agreement, it becomes a covenant. This covenant gives Satan the legal right to have access to our lives.
Satan speaks relentlessly, putting images in our heads. These images are meant to draw us away from the truth and get us to question what we believe. He is looking for any word or action that would indicate agreement. When he sees or hears an indication of agreement, he begins to exert pressure to gain more control. When we believe the lie, we empower the liar. The more of his lies we believe and verbalize, the more influence he gains.
This is why we are warned repeatedly throughout scripture of the power and consequences of words.
Proverbs 18:20-21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.
First, Satan lied to Eve and made her doubt what God said. She didn’t take that thought captive, she had a conversation with the devil and just let him keep talking. Entertaining Satan’s lies made her doubt that God’s Word was true. In Genesis 3:6 we see that after Eve had her conversation with the devil, she saw things differently. (images!)
Genesis 3:6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
The only authority he can gain now is a false authority, a counterfeit. He keeps us ignorant and deceived. This prevents us from receiving and enjoying the inheritance that Jesus paid for with His blood. His deception gives the illusion that he has authority, but he doesn’t; he just has a measure of control. As soon as we break the verbal agreement, we renounce any words spoken that gave him access. Then, we can cast him out. At that point, we take back the things he stole, and we strengthen ourselves to defend them.
Matthew 11:11-12 Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.
Jesus took the kingdom back by force, the authority that Adam relinquished to the devil. When the enemy deceives us, he isn’t stealing our authority. He is stealing our revelation of truth surrounding it. If we lose by deception what Christ took by force, we must also take it back by force. Taking it back requires effort and determination.
The Church has relinquished her understanding of spiritual authority in so many areas. The revelation of righteousness, of healing, of the Holy Spirit, and the list gets much longer. The Church is rising up all over the Earth. God is giving His people understanding in these areas. When He pours out His Spirit upon us in the last days, we will have the understanding to steward that outpouring.
We must break those verbal agreements, declare our deliverance. Then refuse to speak anything that agrees with darkness or the curse. We must learn what it means to take thoughts captive and bring them into subjection to truth. To do that, we have to learn how to put on the whole armor of God found in Ephesians 6:10-18.
And that we will cover in the following posts.
JESUS IS COMING!
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