“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 take advantage of that opportunity. It could happen ‘immediately’ (Mark 4:15)…or any given time thereafter.

Just how do we ‘give him place’? That’s a great question and there are a variety of ways in which we do that. When Paul shared that counsel to the church at Ephesus, he had been addressing the need to ‘put off the old man’ and our ‘former conduct’ (Eph. 4:22), along with lying and anger issues one might be struggling with. And please make note of the adjective used there… ‘former’, when pointing out our conduct. He seems to be circling back reminding us from 2:1-3 how those who have been ‘made alive’ no longer live that way, giving in to the lusts and desires of their old carnal nature and mind. And it’s no coincidence that he connects how Satan works ‘in us’, using our old nature as a platform, or should I say ‘ground’? (Eph. 2:2-3).

Take a quick moment and go read Romans 13:11-14 and be sure to underline that last line that admonishes us to “make NO provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”

Our ‘flesh nature’…gives place to this enemy of ours; which is probably why so much emphasis is placed on following the leading of God’s Spirit so we will deal with that nature and ‘put it to death’ (Rom. 8:13). That is, what those who ‘belong to Christ’ have done, according to Gal. 5:24.

We are…after all…’not ignorant of Satan’s devices’ as Paul would remind the Corinthians in his second letter (2:11). There, he was admonishing the church to forgive a man who was repentant over some previous sin and wanted to make sure they ‘reaffirmed their love for him’ (2:8). That’s another way of suggesting our forgiveness better be genuine and ‘from the heart’. Do you remember what Jesus warned about not ‘forgiving a brother from the heart’, in Matt. 18:34-35? You get ‘handed over to the tormentors’. Care to guess who ‘they’ might be?

May I be so direct to suggest that if you are currently ‘nursing a grudge’ towards someone… anyone, for whatever reason… then you have most likely ‘left a door open’ …and unwanted ‘critters’ have found their way into your heart; and you are suffering miserably for it. And before you want to refute that possibility because you were taught that any believer who has the ‘Holy Spirit’ within them…’can’t have unclean spirits’ working in them to ‘steal, kill, and destroy’…then why would Paul warn us to ‘give them no place’? What do you think the lesson Jesus gave in Matt. 12:43-45 is all about, and how an ‘unclean spirit’ will make its way back to the ‘house from which it left’…and if he finds an opening, not only will it/he return, but the likelihood of ‘others more evil’ will join in …and the condition of that man will be worse off in the end. And why are ‘God’s people destroyed’, according to Hosea 4:6?

I mentioned last week listening to a podcast where Beatty Carmichael was interviewed, and I even shared the link for anyone who might care to give it a listen. I ordered his book, “The Prayer of Freedom” and have truly been blessed by it. If you do get it and start to dive in, give me a holler as I’ll point out one particular area that I might see a bit differently than him, but overall, I love what he is sharing there. He is addressing things I have been doing here for several years, and they concern matters as to why so many people are hurting and suffering; as they relate to things you won’t hear touched on much in many, if not most churches today.

He refers to these ‘spirits of discipline’ whom God allows/uses… to ‘chasten or discipline’ those whom He loves (Heb. 12:5-12). And yes, this is quite ‘Biblical’ (1 Cor. 5:5). Beatty uses a brilliant analogy describing how a local diner might make use of a towing company. The restaurant is in a college town where parking is limited, and the owner of the business wants to provide space for his paying customers. So he has an ‘agreement with the towing company that gives them legal right to tow any car in his parking lot that is not a customer. He even posts warning signs letting any driver know that their car could be legally towed away and it will be on them to pay the fees/costs to get it back from the tow company.

Do you know how tow truck drivers get paid? They make money for every car they bring in, so they are motivated to go out and find violators. Want to avoid having your car towed? Give them no reason (or foothold) to do so.

If an unsuspecting driver pulls up in the middle of the night to run a quick errand and parks on the lot where few, if any cars are parked at that hour, and in the short time that he is gone…his car gets towed…whose fault is it? It’s not the restaurant owner’s fault, nor is it the fault of the towing company, since they had ‘legal right’ to remove any violator parked their illegally, regardless of the time of day or night.

Care to guess what gives the ‘enemy’ …’legal right’ to come in to our lives and inflict suffering and pain? What was the warning Jesus gave in John 5:14? I’m telling you friends, we have much to learn, and God is trying to awaken His people. Do you know why? There is a slew of ‘tow truck drivers’ on the move, and they will indeed come under the cloak of darkness and move in like a ‘flood’, just as Jesus warned would happen in the ‘last days’ (Matt. 24:37-39).