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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 036. The Real Struggle
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The Real Struggle
Then there is a second practical answer to that question of why Satan has power to continue his struggle, and it is rather a startling one. The man who accepts our Lord Jesus' victory as his own, must choose to let the Jesus-spirit control his life.
If there be some part of my life uncontrolled by that Spirit, that uncontrolled part is held by Satan. Any bit of selfishness allowed to remain becomes Satan's footing in my life. He holds that bit of ground stubbornly. And he can hold it, for I yield it to him in letting the selfishness or the wrong spirit remain. On that ground he stands and struggles for more, so there is a present struggle because I let him have part control within.
If my Master has asked me to sell a bit of property, whose income I don't really need, and to send the money out through my church channels, that men in China may learn of the victory of the Lord Jesus—if so, and I simply don't, that disobedience, that bit of self-will, that bit of Satan-spirit, gives the evil one a fresh hold upon my life.
In that I neutralize the victory of Jesus. I am helping Satan in his present struggle. In so far as your life and mine are not swayed and swept by that Jesus-spirit of which we have spoken, in just that far we are strengthening Satan in his present struggle.
I will not stop to make a survey of the Christian world, and attempt to gather up into words, how much help of that sort the cunning enemy is getting to-day from those who profess to belong to Jesus Christ. The results would be startling, and would without doubt seem critical, and in a bad way, even though merely a colourless statement of facts.
Each of us would better go off alone, and look within, with that "search me" prayer, and with a willingness to look honestly at what that searching eye of God reveals within.
There is still another bit to be put in here. It is this; our ignorance of Satan and his wily ways of working is helping him greatly in his present struggle. Knowledge is power. Ignorance is weakness. Our ignorance of Satan adds to his power immensely.
Satan is being strengthened in his present struggle because of the very common widespread ignorance of him. He works freely among us, and even—startling though it sounds—he works through us, yes we Christians, because we have not learned to recognize his presence, and so do not aggressively resist him in the Victor's Name.
We should remember that one of Satan's peculiar weaknesses is this—he is dependent very largely upon our human co-operation. Perhaps he is wholly dependent upon us men. His very first attempt in Eden was to get the control of a human being, and once in control he used that one to get another, and so on endlessly ever since.
If we men were to throw off his allegiance at once in the power of the Victor, Satan would not only be terribly weakened, but far more, he would be driven out of his present sphere of activity. He is dependent upon us in his present struggle. And right well he knows it. What a soul-winner he is! With what persistence and tenacity he keeps after a man who is trying to get away from him!