Stealing

          Think for a moment about stealing. Oh, not you stealing, but someone stealing from you. No one can steal from you unless you let him or her. You can argue that if you are not at home, and someone breaks in and steals your belongings, you hardly allowed them to do that. In that instance, it is true that you had nothing to say about it and could not prevent it. But what if you are at home when the thief strikes. Then there is the question whether you stop the thief or not. A lot of that could depend on if the thief has a gun, if we have a gun, our level of confidence and bravery at the moment, etc. Generally speaking, we would think that a person being burglarized would take measures to stop the thief. I can see grabbing the iron skillet and kitchen knife, if nothing else, hoping that my weapons would not be turned and used on me.

          If we are walking down the street approaching our car parked on the side, and see someone attempting to break in and steal it, our reaction would usually be to run toward our car and shout something brilliant like, “Hey… that’s my car…get away!” We probably would not take the attitude of, “Oh, it looks like you are stealing my car, (with the expensive stereo sound system in it), OK, go ahead, I’ll just stand here and look on.” Even if the thief has a weapon of some type, we choose to either let him steal or try to prevent the thief…even at the cost of injury or death to ourselves. We fight for what belongs to us.

          There is a correlation to this in the spiritual aspect of our lives, too. We have an enemy that the Scripture says loves to steal from us (John 10:10). As a matter of fact, he comes to steal, kill and destroy. There is a definite progression there that we will touch on a little later, but our enemy is out to steal from us. He steals things from us like our joy, and peace, the song in our hearts, our sense of well-being, the good gifts we receive from our Heavenly Father, and many other things. He can do it on a little scale, just here and there a little nip at our peace or joy, or on a grand scale, a major assault on our trust and confidence in people and our ever-faithful God. The surety in it, however, is that he does steal. We have a choice to let him…or not. Just like we are no longer slaves to sin (we do not have to sin, we have the power of Jesus available to us to keep us from sinning, Romans 6:16,18) we do not have to let Satan steal anything from us.

          I realized this the other day when I noticed that I was just letting Satan steal my joy. In fact, I was in essence saying (by my attitude), “ You want my joy…sure, go ahead and take it, and you want my peace while you’re at it? You already took my song…what else do you want? It was almost one of those moments when we are tempted to say—“Here, just take it all,” and just throw it at him (in his face, of course). But the Lord graciously showed me the error of my thinking. The Bible says to resist the devil (James 4:7). We have to stand up to him and fight back! The weapons of our warfare are not physical, but spiritual (2 Corinthians 4:10). And make no mistake about it, we are in a war with our enemy. Every thing that is good that we have and have received from our Heavenly Father, our enemy wants to steal—EVERYTHING.  This is just the first step in the progression that we talked about earlier. He wants to steal everything we have, our joy, our peace, our contentment, our trust, our sense of being loved and cared for- all of it. If we allow him to do that, then he goes to the next step of the progression. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He then kills any hope we have of things ever getting any better or being any different. He kills our hope of Jesus being able to come and rescue us and save us. He can kill that hope because he has already stolen the joy, peace and trust that buoy that hope up and carry it along. Once hope is gone, or dead, then the destruction of our soul is easy. It is similar to when you take all the foundation out of something, and then with just a little push, the whole thing crumbles. The foundation is destroyed, the weight bearing walls are removed, and the structure falls into a heap. IF WE ALLOW IT. Recognizing that we have the power over the situation is not always easy.

          Go back to the thief scenario. I can stand up to the thief, but if he appears to be big and strong, and especially if he has a gun, my desire to resist dwindles. I fear that I may be hurt, or even killed. I may loose my life trying to defend what is mine. Is it worth it? That is a decision we have to make. Satan walks around puffing himself up into appearing to be big and strong. He carries the biggest gun he can find, and brandishes it like a shiny sword. He wants us to be afraid of his power. He wants us to think that he can totally destroy us in a heartbeat. We see that and our desire to resist dwindles. But, the scripture admonishes us to resist the devil. There is a second part to that verse in James 4:7. We are to resist the devil, and what happens? HE WILL FLEE. Say what? You mean that big burley guy with the very intense looking gun and angry bloodthirsty look in his eye and voice is going to flee if I just take a stand against him? That is what God’s word says. Resist, and he will flee. Notice it does not say he might, or you will have to bargain with him or talk him into it. He will flee.

          If we see the thief in the house, we need to grab our skillet (or rather, our sword) and stand up and say NO, by the power and name of Jesus who lives within us, and the thief will flee. He has to, because the secret is that he is defeated. He was defeated on the cross, and he knows it. He just carries on as if he doesn’t, trying to fool us. For a time, our enemy does have strength to harass us. He is the prince of the air, and a prince does have some strength, but he is not the ultimate authority. The King is that, and Jesus is the King of Kings, and we have His power and authority available to us to use against our enemy, if we will only recognize it and choose to use it!

          So the next time the thief comes to steal from you, will you turn your joy (peace, love, etc.) over to him, or will you stop the thief, resist him, and watch him flee under the mighty authority of the One who gives you everything you have and are?