When I
preach deliverance and inner healing, I often mention a verse that I have come
to refer to as, “the Formula for Freedom.” This verse sums up, in God’s perfect
way, the process of spiritual freedom.
The verse is
James 4:7.
Submit yourselves therefore
to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
It consists
of three parts, or steps:
1) Submit to God
2) Resist the devil
3) The devil will then flee
In the first
part of this verse, the Apostle James exhorts us to submit every part of our lives to Jesus. Of course this would
include our relationships, our finances, our families and everything else in our lives.
And on the
level of spiritual warfare, this “everything else” would include our spiritual
“junk” also. Our spiritual junk consists of our generational sin (the curses
that we inherited) and it would also include the demons that torment us.
What does
“submit” mean? I teach that a good working definition of “submit” is: to give something to the Holy Spirit in
order for Him to deal with something or heal something in our lives.
Next, this
verse tells us to “resist the devil.”
This is the part where we use the authority and power that we have as followers
of Jesus to break the hold of the enemy. This refers to declaring that the
devil can’t have us or operate in our territory. It also means the intentional
breaking of curses and the expelling of unclean spirits—in the name of Jesus.
The final
step in the Formula for Freedom is a spiritual law of God. This law states that
if we submit to Him and then re resist the devil, then the devil has no choice
except to go. He doesn’t have an option. It is analogous to a prisoner who has
no choice but to obey the sentence of the judge who has ordered him to go to
prison.
If you watch
me minister to people who are oppressed by unclean spirits, you will notice
that I often lead them in a prayer of declaration that basically restates James
4:7. I will have them repeat something like the following: “I submit everything
to you Heavenly Father. I submit the abuse that I suffered [or whatever is
relevant to that person’s life story]. I submit every torment to You. And I resist the devil in the name of Jesus! I
take authority over the enemy and command him to leave me now. The devil must go!”
No matter
who you are or what you’ve been through, the Formula for Freedom is a spiritual
pattern that you can follow right now. It is powerful and God-ordained. It
brings us into the presence of the Lord and it states a spiritual law that cannot
be violated by the enemy—in the name of Jesus!
Huge
blessings,
Pastor Mark