“Get out of my garden!” That’s what Adam and Eve should have said to Satan when they were tempted to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead, Eve got into a discussion with Satan and was conned out of her identity and the blessed life she was called to live.
I believe God is wanting many of us to command Satan out of our garden today! Often he comes into our lives and gets us to question our identity as children of God, our covenant rights as believers, and the plans Jesus has for our life. When Satan comes in with questions or outright attacks we don’t need to debate with him, we need to tell him to leave!
This has struck home to me over the last 18 months as we have seen the chaos that has hit our nation. We have seen a pandemic kill thousands, our healthcare system hit hard, and our economy has been savaged. We have also seen rioting in our streets unlike anything in our nation’s history, experienced election chaos, had the disaster of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and had an overall anger and distrust amongst people that I have never seen before. At some point we have to begin to ask, what is the root of all of these crisis we are having? Look at 1 Corinthians 14:33:
33 For God is not the author of confusion but of peace.
All the chaos we have been living in is the opposite of the nature of God, which should indicate to us that it is from the devil. He’s thrown the kitchen sink at us over the last 18 months and I believe we need to stop looking for natural solutions to the spiritual problems we are facing. We can’t fight spiritual problems with natural solutions. Look at where that has gotten us so far. So what do we do? I think we need to do what Jesus did when He met the Gadarene Demoniac in Mark 5.
5 And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. 7 And he cried out with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.” 8 For He said to him, “Come out of the man, unclean spirit!
Jesus realized this man’s problem was that he was possessed by demons so he didn’t try to do a counseling session with him. Also, Jesus didn’t go hold a meeting with the people of Gadera to encourage them to come up with government programs to treat the mentally ill. Jesus didn’t look to any natural solutions to deal with this problem. He cast the demons out! Why? Because we can’t fight spiritual problems with natural solutions.
After Jesus cast the demons out of the man, he was in his right mind and completely healed. Jesus then sent him to Gadera to tell others what Jesus had done for him. Within a few hours Jesus had turned the town lunatic into the leading evangelist in the region. That’s almost unbelievable! Who does that? But this is what’s possible when we begin to think like God thinks and we exercise spiritual authority over the enemy. If you’d like to learn more about what’s possible when we live in the fulness of the spirit, check out this message I taught at Grace Life Church.
I believe Jesus wants us to follow his example and begin to exercise our authority over Satan. As my pastor Lawson Perdue says, “You don’t counsel a devil, you cast him out!” If we’ll use our authority as believers we can stop his attacks with this virus, the political chaos, and hatred. We can also limit his influence in things I didn’t address in this article like depression, drug abuse, marital problems, and child abuse.
I want to invite you to join me in telling the devil to “GET OUT OF MY GARDEN.” This is the solution we need to restore sanity to our lives and to our nation! If you’d like to learn more about spiritual warfare, check out this message I taught at Grace Life Church.
