God's Power and God's Name

 We all need power to live the Christian life and to be victorious over Satan and his forces of evil. If we are saved, but we try to live the Christian life in our own power and intellect, we will fail miserably. Then, we might wonder why God did not help us and get discouraged. However, God did not fail us. We failed to do things in His way, so He could not help us do the wrong thing. Therefore, we need to understand how to live in victory God's way.

The psalmist knew how this works together. (Psalm 44:5) "Only by Your power can we push back our enemies; only in Your name can we trample our foes." The psalmist knew that only the power of God is able to repel Satan. We can't do that on our own. He knew that our character was not enough to trample our foes. It takes the character and Person of God to get rid of our foes. Let's think about this for a moment.

To live the Christian life, we must stop trying to just grit our teeth and do the right things. Satan, the world, and the flesh will defeat us every time we try to overcome them in our strength. We must come to trust in the power of God. To do that we have to go to Him in prayer, fully dependent on Him, and ask God to push back our enemies. Then, when He does it, He gets all the glory which He deserves, and we realize we can only do it with Him which leads us to a closer relationship with God, since we need to call on Him every day.

We have to do all we do in the "name of God." That means we have to do what He would do. We have to depend on our relationship with God when Satan comes, and we have to stand on His authority to resist Satan. The Word of God is the authority, not our words. God's Word shows who He is and His character. Satan and his forces can't stand against the authority of God so they have to flee. Therefore, we need to use the Bible, God's own words, to attack our foes, and they will be defeated.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Psalms 46-48.