“Give no place to the devil.” (Eph. 4) It doesn’t get much more direct and to the point than that. Would you care to guess why Paul wrote those words for us to read/hear? He sure didn’t share them for us to analyze and debate; they were written for us to heed and put into practice. And here’s the reason why: We can give place to an evil, spiritual entity… who ‘comes to steal, kill, and destroy’ (John 10:10). Jesus referred to him as a ‘thief’ in that verse and would later warn how “if the owner of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.” (Matt. 24:43) Other translations use the phrase ‘don’t give him (the devil) a foothold’, or an ‘opportunity’…or an ‘open door’. If you do, you can pretty well be assured that he will take it; and when he ‘comes in…’ he tends to do so ‘like a flood’ (Isa. 59:19). I should also point out here that once that ‘opening’ is granted, we don’t always know when he will ta...
