Big Healing Book - James 4:7

James 4:7:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Notes on James 4:7:

Before you resist the devil, make sure you’ve submitted to God. If you’re in rebellion against God’s plan for you, you won’t have much success resisting the devil – you’re doing what he wants you to do!

YOU are the one who must resist the devil. That means that God will not resist the devil for you. It is a waste of your prayer time to ask God to make the devil go away. YOU have authority over him, but that means that YOU are responsible for exercising your authority. God won’t do it for you.

When you are resisting the devil, you are almost certainly resisting one of his minions that he has dispatched. Being a mere fallen angel, Satan cannot be in more than one place at a time, so he cannot harass multiple people simultaneously by himself. This is not a contradiction; it IS resisting the devil when you resist one of his agents. We think of things that way today when we assert that Hitler killed millions of Jews. He did not personally kill millions of Jews; his minions did. But he was still responsible and it is right to say that he did it.