Don'T Give the Devil a Foothold

It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing to World Challenge, P.O. Box 260, Lindell, TX 75771 or calling 214-963-8626. None of these messages are copyrighted and you are welcome to make copies for free distribution to your friends.

Take me in your Bibles to Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 4. I want to talk to you about not giving the devil a foothold. Don't give the devil a foothold.

Ephesians chapter 4. I'll read just a few verses and keep your Bibles open to that fourth chapter. Refer to it again from time to time. Although I have a number of other scriptures from other places, we'll keep coming back to this.

Beginning at verse 24, Ephesians chapter 4. It says, Now I'm reading in the New American Standard Bible. I don't know what version that you have, but mine's the New American Standard, so it may read just a little different than yours if you have the King James. Verse 25.

That's Ephesians 4.27. If you have the King James version, it says don't give place to the devil. Another version says don't give the devil a foothold. And that's what I want to talk to you about.

Don't let the devil push your buttons. I don't know how many of you are familiar with that expression. But for example, a wife often knows how to push her husband's buttons.

She knows what irks him or upsets him, and if she wants to, she can say or do certain things to gain a calculated reaction. We know how to push someone sometimes to gain favor, or push somebody knowing purposely that we're pushing or saying something that's going to get a negative reaction. Brothers and sisters know how to push each other's buttons.

Sometimes children know how to get on a parent's nerve. They know how to push their button. They know just what to do or just what to say that will upset them.

Well, you see, the devil is a master button pusher. He's like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. In other words, the devil likes flesh.

He's always waiting for an opportunity for our flesh to flare up, and thereby for him to have a place or to have a foothold or for a door to get open, and if you give the devil an inch, he'll take a mile and more. You see, the devil studies our character, our habits, our actions, our reactions. He stalks us like a vulture.

It is said of the great General Napoleon that before he ever went into a battle or attacked his enemy, that he studied his enemy's territory scrupulously. I mean, he dedicated himself to studying. He'd lay out the maps of the territory out on the ground, and he'd make himself familiar with every feature of the map.

He would know where every river was, where every bridge crossed every river, where there was every ford. He knew where every village was and where it was in relationship to another village, and then he planned his method of attack based upon the knowledge of his enemy and his enemy's territory. And you see, the devil studies us just like that.

He knows what our appetites are like. He knows, he acquaints himself with our weaknesses, with our infirmities, with our passions, with our inclinations, and with our weaknesses. And then he maps out a plan of attack accordingly.

How many of you know that? Now the Bible says that we must not be ignorant of his devices in giving him an opportunity to gain a foothold, because he'll try to turn a foothold into a stronghold, and then he'll try to turn a stronghold into total control. But it all begins when we give him the very first inch, the very first opportunity. Now you've heard, when I grew up in our neighborhood back in western Pennsylvania, we always, or my parents always, and that generation, always sometimes explained people's behavior by their nationality.

And I used to hear my mother sometimes saying, well, boy, he sure got his Irish up. Now some of you can't identify with that. You don't get your Irish up because you're not Irish.

But that's because you get whatever you are up. But the truth is there is no Irish or German or Italian or white or black or Hispanic temperament. What really is worked up inside us and comes out of us is the sinner, sinful, carnal, fleshly nature.

Oh, it may have cultural overtones. It may have cultural expressions and similarities. But you see, flesh is flesh.

And sin is sin, and carnality is carnality. It's not ethnic in origin. It's the product of our sinful birth.

And whoever you are or whatever your makeup, the devil knows how to push your buttons. He also knows that there are enough other people and situations that arise that he don't even have to push your buttons. He knows that other people in other circumstances will push your buttons.

And all he has to do is lay back and wait until somebody else pushes your button. And when he sees that flesh flare up, then he comes pouncing in like that roaring lion to devour you. But I want to say this, is that the devil does not have an opportunity unless we give it to him.

Let me say that again. The devil cannot or does not have an opportunity unless we give it to him. Here in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, look at it.

Paul talks in verse 18 about those who are being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. And they have become callous. They have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

But in verse 20 he said, but you, he's writing now to the church, he's addressing it to you and I. And he says, but you did not learn Christ in this way. Verse 22, that in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit. And that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and you put on the new self which is in the likeness of, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

And when you put on the new self, it is our armor, the armor of God against the devil having or getting a foothold in our lives, praise the Lord. Now let me share with you in this message three ways or areas in which we can give the devil a foothold. But let me preface it by saying that there is an old Arab fable that goes like this.

A man woke up in the Middle East somewhere in the middle of the night and there was a camel who had stuck his nose through his window. And the camel said, may I, it's cold out there, may I keep my nose in your window. The man says, all right, you can.

And the man goes back to sleep and a little while later he wakes back up and now the camel has his neck inside. And the man looks at him and the camel says, well, it's cold out there, can I keep my neck in your bedroom? The man says, okay. A little while later the man wakes up and now the camel is all the way inside.

The man doesn't say anything this time and goes back to sleep. Finally he gets up a little bit later and he said, man, he said, you're going to have to go, there's not room for both of us in here. And the camel says, I ain't leaving.

I ain't leaving. And the point of this is that if it gives you the devil a nose, pretty soon he'll have his neck all the way in. You give him a neck and pretty soon he's all the way in.

And then when you try to come up against him, he says, I ain't leaving. Now let me share with you three opportunities that can give the devil an opportunity. The first one, listen carefully, beware of a moral weakness that can become an occasion for the devil to gain a foothold.

If you have or had or currently are having a battle in a particular area, you especially must be alert and must be sober and must be vigilant not to give place to the devil in that area of a particular weakness. That's the very first button that he will push. For example, and I could use many examples, but if one has a lust problem, beware of giving the devil an opportunity in that area.

You see, the reason that many people do not have victory or do not retain their victory, especially over lustful temptations, is because they don't use wisdom. And they often place themselves in situations where temptations come a hold upon them or those temptations are stronger. In other words, they give place or they give room for the devil to lure them.

Now, if that be the case, you can call on the Lord for help, but if you're being careless or lazy or doing things or going places where you set yourself up for temptation, then if you sin you have nobody to blame but yourself. God does not lead us into temptation. We lead ourselves.

No one can say, I am tempted of the Lord. James 1.14 says, But each one of us is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. By his own doing, his own lust.

Now, for example, I'll just give you, I'll touch in one little area. If you have a lust problem, you ought to avoid television and movies that feed or excite the lust. TV is an open door, a place for the devil to gain a foothold in your mind if you have a lust problem.

Now, let me put it this way. Suppose you had a drinking problem. Let me use this as an analogy.

Suppose you had a drinking problem and all of your friends, all your family tried to keep booze out of the house or beer out of the house, but you had made arrangements for somebody to come and deliver it to you. And you had a secret way that they could come to the door or a secret passageway or whatever and they'd come and you made arrangements, they'd always be delivering your liquor to you. And then suppose you wanted to get cleaned up, you wanted to stop doing it.

Well, the first thing you would do, of course, you would not have the liquor delivered to the door. And secondly, if that person came back knocking at the same secret door or secret passageway, what would you do? Well, you'd board it up or you'd do something to prevent that from happening again. And whether you know it or not, the devil sometimes has a secret door into our life that you don't even know.

It could be the television set, it could be something else, some other way. And when you recognize it, you've got to do something about it so the devil does not have an opportunity. Now, lust is only one example of how we can give place to the devil.

In any area in which we have a known moral weakness, we must not be guilty of being the cause of our own downfall. Psalms 119, 101 says, I have restrained my feet from evil ways. Let me say that again.

I have restrained my feet from evil ways. Or Proverbs 426, Watch the path of your feet and all your ways will be established. Now, let me give another example of a moral weakness.

If you have a compulsion to buy things that you can't afford, if the lust of your eye is turned on by the latest camera or gadget or clothes you can't afford or whatever, the Bible says watch the path of your feet and stay away from Newmark and Lewis or whatever it is, the Wiz or Macy's or whatever the place might be. Or get rid of the plastic in your pocketbook. You see, because for some people a credit card is an open invitation to the devil to move right in.

You say, what does that have to do with walking in the right path? Well, I want to tell you, I've seen more Christians under pressure. I've seen more under pressure. I've seen more marriage and couples run into difficulty because they don't bring their finances under control.

It gives the devil an opportunity. If you were on an island in a war zone somewhere and you were on an island that had a landing strip and there were airplanes coming by all the time, the first thing you would do is you'd get rid of the landing strip. And you see, the devil has certain landing strips in our lives and the first thing you have to do is get rid of the landing strip.

If you have an eating problem, then get rid of the landing strip in your refrigerator. If you have or had a problem of immorality, then avoid the very appearance of evil. Stay away from tempting situations.

There are certain things you just don't do. And the Bible expects us. It gives us wisdom and understanding.

It expects us to use our heads. And this is what the Scripture means when it says, I have restrained my feet from every evil way. You know, I remember a story I heard one time about a man trying to hire a man for a chauffeur's job.

And he was to chauffeur this man who lived way up in a mountain somewhere and they had to go around these mountain paths and there were windy roads and there was no railing and so forth and so it was dangerous driving, very dangerous driving. And so the man who was hiring the chauffeur asked all three of them the same question. He said, if you were driving your boss, driving my boss up this mountain, how close to the edge could you come without endangering your passenger? And one man says, oh, I could drive about six inches to the edge and I believe I'd still be driving safe.

The next man said, I think I could probably drive three inches to the edge and I'd still be driving safe. The third man says, listen, I'd stay as far away from the edge as I possibly could. And he got the job.

And you see there are some people, they live their lives so close to the edge of the world and they get themselves in trouble. No wonder they fall over the cliff. God has given us the necessary tools not only to fight evil but to refrain our steps from placing ourselves in potentially damaging, dangerous situations.

In the first book of Proverbs, it says wisdom shouts. Wisdom, wherever you go, it says wisdom shouts in the streets. It shouts in the marketplaces.

It shouts when you find yourself in tempting situations. And that wisdom is Jesus. And that wisdom is the word of God.

And it's there warning you and saying refrain your steps because if you take one step down that road, you're going to get yourself into deep, deep trouble. Now, there's another area. Don't give the devil a foothold in the face of offensive words.

Don't give the devil a foothold. Give the devil no foothold in the face of offensive words. Proverbs 15.4 says, A smooth tongue is a tree of life, but perversion in it crushes the spirit.

Now, if there's any area that devil pushes our buttons, it's by offensive words. He tries to stir us up, to stir up our spirit by hurtful, slanderous, foolish words. Psalms 91, verse 5 in Psalms 91 is one of the greatest Psalms that there is.

And it says this, You will not be afraid of the terror by night and the arrow that flies by day. And I believe that the arrows here are referring to words. You can't live today without arrows flying by you all the time.

No matter where you are, at home, on the job, the arrows go flying by every day. And some of those words are intended for you. And they're poison arrows.

Now, let me qualify this by saying there are some people, as far as they're thinking poison arrows are hitting them, certain slanderous words are intended for them. There are some people that go around looking for poison arrows. In fact, they go around with a target right over their heart.

And they see an offensive word flying off, and they run over and they run in front of it, and they get hit by it. They must have meant me. They surely intended it for me.

I'm not talking about going around collecting poison arrows. Listen, there are enough that are intended for you that you don't have to go around collecting others that are intended for somebody else. Say amen again.

Psalm 64, 3 and 4 says, Hide me from the secret counsel of evildoers, from the tumult of those who do iniquity. And that's referring to those who have bow and arrow in hand. And they use it in order to inflict damage to other people.

It says, Who have sharpened their tongues like a sword. They aimed bitter speech as their arrow to shoot from concealment at the blameless. Suddenly they shoot an evil purpose.

And I dare say that some who sit here today have wounds in your soul. You have wounds in your heart because of hurtful words. Who of us have not been shot at or ambushed by words? Now the context, and going back to Ephesians chapter 4, the context in which Paul wrote these words, Do not give place to the devil, had specifically to do with dealing with slander and offensive words.

Ephesians 5, 25 says, Therefore laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Well the fact is that our neighbors do not always speak truth. Sometimes they speak falsely.

And Paul knew that, and he said, Speak truth each one of you to your neighbor, but he said, In case that doesn't happen, be angry and sin not. In verse 29, He says, Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edifying according to the need of the moment. According to the need of the moment.

How many times people think they're giving us an encouraging word, but it wasn't what we needed to hear at that moment. According to the need of the moment that it may give grace to those who hear. Well the fact is that some words that we hear are not wholesome.

They are not good for our edification. They may be harsh, uncaring, untimely words. And Paul says, Beware.

Beware of the angry reaction to hurtful, offensive words. Because if anything gives the devil the opportunity to defeat us, is when we nurse. When we nurse those words, we allow them to keep building up and building up within us, and causing us to have all kinds of ungodly feelings in our heart.

And if you've been offended or angered by words the scripture says, Don't let the sun go down on your wrath. Do you know what that word wrath means? In the Greek it literally means, Don't nurse a wound. Hold it out as fast as you can.

If you nurse it, you allow it to fester, it will turn to wrath and anger, and it's a perfect opportunity for the devil to get a foothold. There's an old Latin proverb that says, He who goes to bed angry has the devil as a bedfellow. You see, when the devil gets through the door of a hurt, there's no limit to the damage that he can do.

And by the way, do you know that hurt is the flip side of anger? Some people take their hurt within. They take their anger within. And they feel hurt.

They may not say anything, but it's there, it's within. Other people lash out. But whether you internalize it, or whether you lash back or not, the Bible says, Don't give place to that kind of a thing.

When poison arrows fly at you, give place to Jesus. Hallelujah. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of self-control.

Listen to 1 Peter 2.21. It says, Christ suffered for you, leaving an example for you to follow in his steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. And while being reviled, he did not revile in return. That's the spirit of Christ.

I think one of the hardest things for a Christian to learn to do is this, is to return evil with good. To return a curse with a blessing. Now, if you've not reached that point yet, at least you can take the first step, and if you can't return evil with good or blessing with a curse, the very first thing that you can do is don't nurse an offensive word.

Don't let the sun go down in your wrath and remain silent. And do not have a retaliatory spirit. Psalms 39, 1 and 2. David said, I said I will guard my ways that I may not sin with my tongue.

I will guard my mouth as with a muzzle. While the wicked are in my presence, I was dumb and silent. Or listen to Proverbs 13 and 3. He who guards his mouth preserves his life, and the one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.

Listen, how many, I've been in that position where oh, as soon as the word got out of my mouth, I wish I could have grabbed it. I wish I could have grabbed it and pulled it back in. There is nothing that can hinder relationships more, especially in families and marriages, is when we do not practice self-control over our tongues and our mouth.

Listen to Matthew 5, 37. But let your statement be yes, yes, or no, no, and anything beyond these is of evil. You know sometimes it's the hardest thing when somebody asks us a question just to say a simple yes or a simple no.

We have to say yes, but, or no. And the Scripture says let your yes be yes, and your nay be nay, and anything more than this is evil. You see, it's what comes after the answer that gets us in trouble.

So many times. It's always when we go beyond these and interject our own hurts or our own flesh that we cause a situation to get worse. The Spirit of Christ, I say again, is an unretaliatory Spirit.

2 Peter 1, 4 says, For by these He has granted us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. And you see when we partake of the nature of Jesus Christ, I believe it qualifies us to have good godly self-control over our tongues, over our passions, over our flesh. Now, there's another area that I want to talk about not giving place to the devil.

Don't give the devil a foothold when you face the necessary testings and trials of daily living. Job 5, 7 says this, For man is born for trouble as the sparks fly up. ...riches and success and prosperity.

He said, I don't have some nice pad to take you to. He said, the foxes have holes in their... ...others. I'm not talking sparks for me, I'm talking about sparks from facing just the daily routine of life. Someday your boss sparks, sometimes your wife or husband sparks, your children spark, your car sparks, the people on the subway spark.

In fact, this is Spark City. Some of you live in a house or an apartment full of sparklers. It doesn't take much to set them off, your kids or this or that.

You know, you just take a little flicker and boom! And pretty soon everybody's sparkling. There's a scripture, let me read it to you in Habakkuk, chapter 3 and verse 17. It says this, Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive shall fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls.

Now that describes a time when nothing was going right, a very bad time. And we've all experienced times when the fig tree does not bud, when the olive does not yield its oil, when we go to the bank but we find out there's no cattle in the stall, or we look to others for help but the flocks are cut off from the fold. Let me tell you about a time I had like that a couple weeks ago.

I had been going straight for a number of weeks without a day off and finally I told my wife, I said, Honey, we're going to take off on Wednesday and we're going to drive out to New Jersey and have a nice day together. We're going to stay in a motel somewhere and come back on Thursday. And so I put it on my calendar and so forth.

And I remember on Wednesday as I was preparing for our evening service and I was ministering that night, still feeling very tired, but I took a little joy in the fact that I knew that next day was Wednesday and it was going away. And I said to my wife, in fact, I said, Boy, I can't wait until Wednesday. And she said, Oh, why? I said, Because, you know, that's the day we're going away.

She said, Oh, you told me to make appointments that day. On your calendar, I've got four appointments, three or four appointments lined up for you on Wednesday. And I said, Okay, well then we'll go away on Thursday.

And so Wednesday came and I told my wife, I said, Oh, I've got an appointment at 2.30 and I have an opening at 11.30. Why don't you change it there? That way we can get away earlier. And so about 1.30 in the afternoon, I said to my wife, I said, You know, my 11.30 appointment didn't show up. And she said, Oh, I forgot to tell you because I couldn't get through to your 11.30 appointment so your 11.30 appointment is going to still be here at 2.30. And I said, Okay, as soon as that's done, let's get out of this city before the traffic is bad and so forth.

So finally, I finished my appointments. We went over and began to pack our things and ready to leave. And as we leave the apartment, my wife says to me, Now don't forget to leave the keys downstairs because our kids have no key to get in the apartment.

And I said, Okay. So we got to the elevator and I pushed the button and I listened to it. It comes up.

It stops at our floor. I live in Manhattan. It stops at our floor and the door doesn't open.

First time it happened, you know, it came and it left. And so I went and I pushed the button again and it went all the way. I heard it go.

It left. It went down. I heard it come back up again.

It comes up to our floor. It stops, but the door doesn't open. And by now I'm saying to myself, Somebody does not want me to have a day off.

Well, finally, the elevator door opened and my wife said, Yeah, but it's going up. I said, I'm not taking a chance. Let's get on.

There's an open door. Let's get in. And so it went up and up and up.

And it went down and down and down. In other words, it was a local instead of the express. And so finally it gets down and I get in the car and drove across the George Washington Bridge.

And about 30 minutes out of the city, my wife says to me, Did you leave the keys for the kids? I reach into my pocket and I said, Oh, no, here they are. And then I remembered. I said, Oh, that's all right.

Our daughter, Julie, left another set in so-and-so's house. And so we know she'll think of it. She'll get the keys.

Our kids will be fine. So we go out and checked into a motel and so forth. And about 1030 at night, my wife opens her pocketbook and she says, Uh-oh.

And she pulls out the other set of keys. And I said, in a kind of a nice way, I said to her, How could you do that? And she says, I did it the same way you forgot to leave the keys in your set of keys. So now we're worried.

And now we're having to get on the phone to find out if our children are all right and whatever. And finally at quarter to twelve at night, we find out that they're okay. They went and stayed in somebody else's apartment.

And so the next day on my day off that I had planned for so long, we got up in the morning and we drove back into the city to open the apartment so that our kids could get back in. But I remember, I distinctly remember at quarter to twelve, after I'd made a number of phone calls, my wife made a number of phone calls, different people to try to get a hold of our kids, we finally did at quarter to twelve. And during all of that, I remember distinctly the Scripture coming and the Holy Spirit dropping in my heart.

Do not give place to the devil. Do not give the devil an opportunity. Psalm 17 and 3 says, Though you probe me and examine me at night, though you test me, you will find nothing.

I have resolved that my mouth will not sin. Let me read that again. Though you probe me and examine me at night, that's after a bad day.

That's after the sparks have been flying up all around you. Though you test me, you will find nothing. I have resolved that my mouth will not sin.

Now, let me share one more thing in closing. What we need to do in order to keep the devil from getting a foothold or a place or an opportunity is to have a spirit-controlled temper. A spirit-controlled temper.

Paul, you'll note, does not say, Don't be angry. He says, Be angry and sin not. J.B. Phillips translates it this way, If you are angry, be sure it is not out of wounded pride or a bad temper.

Never go to bed angry. Don't give the devil that sort of a foothold. You see, anger has to do with our temper or our temperament.

And Paul recognized, that's why he wrote and he said, Be angry and sin not, because he recognizes that he was talking really about temperament. And everybody has a different degree of temperament. Someone has said we all boil at different degrees.

And some people have an angry temperament. Some people have a soft temperament. But everybody has a temper or temperament.

And Paul recognizes this, and he said, To live, to be alive, is to have anger. However, he says there is a sinless anger. For example, there are times when we ought to be, I don't know about you, but I get angry at sin.

I get angry at the unrighteousness there is in the land. And I believe, and the Scripture teaches, there is a time for the right kind of anger. It's called righteous indignation.

John Wesley stated, he said, Give me a hundred men who fear nothing but God, and who hate nothing but sin, and who know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And he said, And I will shake the world with those kind of men. So there is a righteous indignation and an unrighteous indignation.

And you see, the full volume of our passion can be directed either into evil or against evil, depending upon what spirit or who has place in our hearts. And that's what Paul is teaching. And he says, When you feel pressure, or when you feel temptation, or when you face the arrows of offensive words, or if you've had one of those days like I described, he says, Don't give place to the devil.

Who is in charge is the important thing at that moment. Be angry and sin not. Don't give the devil his due.

Don't blow your cool. Proverbs 16, 32 says, He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty or the warrior, and he who rules his spirit is greater than he who captures a city. You see, the world, listen, the world admires an angry man.

The world admires the aggressive man or woman, or the macho man. But Jesus says, The meek shall inherit the earth. I heard one of the Teen Challenge fellows testify one time, and he said, I'm a macho man.

He said, I grew up all my life wanting to be the macho man. You know, and so, he said, I got myself in all kinds of trouble and got into drugs, and he said, No, the Lord saved me. He said, Now, when the devil comes at me, he said, I say to the devil, I'm not your man.

I'm not your man. That's called the nacho man, you see. You finally got it.

It took you a little time. It took you a little time, but you got it. And I think we all can make that our testimony.

I'm not your man. That means not giving place to the devil. Hallelujah.

Let me give you one more scripture. Turn in your Bibles, if you will, to Psalms 91, and I'm going to close with this. Psalms 91, verse 13.

Let's start at verse 10. No evil shall befall you, nor will the plague come near your tent. For he will give his angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.

They will bear you up in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will trample down. Now, the young lion and the serpent are not as powerful as the lion and the cobra.

You see the difference he makes here. He talks about the lion and cobra, and he talks about the young lion and the serpent. And what the scripture is teaching us is that you have to take care of the young lion first and the serpent first, because if you don't take care of the initial attack, when the young lion comes at you, if you don't come up against him, then you're going to have to deal with the lion, or in other words, the king of the beast.

And he said if you don't, when the enemy comes in and tempts you, or if you give him an inch, if you don't take care of the first attack against you, if you don't take care of the serpent that comes against you, then it's going to grow, and then you're going to have a cobra on your hands. And you see, when the devil comes to get a foothold, if you don't resist the serpent, then you'll have to deal with a more powerful and poisonous cobra. If you do not resist the young lions that roar, how do you expect to trample the king of the beast, or the daddy lion? And here is the promise to those who will put their foot down at the first sign of the young lion or the serpent.

The promise is this. In verse 11, it says that you will trample down the young lion and the serpent. You will trample down.

Hallelujah. But you've got to put your foot down. John 14, 13.

1430. Jesus said, I will not speak much longer with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in me. He has nothing in me.

He has no place in me. He does not have a foothold in me. And the same truth that applied to our Lord applies to us when we stand upon Him and stand in Him, is that the devil can come, but he won't be able to push your buttons.

The devil comes, but he doesn't find any landing strip. The devil comes, but he doesn't find anything in me. Is that your desire? Is that your prayer? I pray that it will be, and that it is.

And that if you are here this morning and you have given place to the devil, that you'll remove him out of the place that he's in right now, in your heart or in your life. Shall we bow in prayer?