One of my favorite cartoon characters as a kid was Foghorn Leghorn. For those of you who don’t know, he was a rooster with a thick Southern accent on the Bugs Bunny show (Looney Tunes). Foghorn loved to torment the the family dog who was usually chained up to his dog house. He would paddle him on the rear, and then start running. Of course, Foghorn knew exactly where the line was when the chain would yank the dog back and he would be safe. The problem is that eventually, the dog would get off the chain or Foghorn would push his luck too far, and the dog would get his revenge, usually blowing all of the rooster’s feathers off in the carnage. Foghorn would then exit naked, carrying his feathers, and say my favorite line, “Fortunately, I have all of my feathers numbered for just such an occasion.”
My point in all this (in case you were wondering) is that I find myself to be a lot like Foghorn when it comes to Satan and sin. I often think that I can get away with running up to Satan and sin, having some fun, and then running back to God and safety. The problem is that I eventually get “my feathers blown off”, and give Satan and the sin an opportunity to control my life. I said in an earlier post that the only power Satan has over Christians is what we give him. How do we give him power? Through three main ways: ignorance, fear, and sin. Ignorance and fear go hand in hand together. If we don’t know the Bible, we won’t know the power that we have in Christ. That is why we went through passages about Jesus and His authority in the spiritual realm. Eradicate the ignorance, and the chance for fear goes way down.
Sin is an all together different matter. Going back to the book of Ephesians (an amazing book full of spiritual warfare teaching), Paul lays it out for us in 4:26-27, ““In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” This comes from a section in which Paul is calling the Ephesians to put off their “old self” and live like their “new self”. That means putting aside the sinful habits of the past, and living according to God’s standards. Paul says, when we give into sin, like anger and hate, we are in effect “giving the devil a foothold”. This word “foothold” has been translated as opportunity, place, or “don’t give the devil a way to defeat you”. The Greek word used by Paul is used literally for a city, village, or place, but carries the figurative meaning of power or occasion for acting.
Do we really think of sin as giving a “foothold” in our lives to Satan? In my experience, the deeper and more habitual the sin, the more power we give over to him spiritually. For many of us, these sins were demonically inspired or influenced before we were Christians. Now, we are “sealed by the Holy Spirit” as Ephesians 1:13 says, but we are kidding ourselves if we think we can just dive back into our old sinful lives and not suffer spiritual consequences. I DO NOT think that Christians can be “possessed” or “have a demon”, and I will make that clear in the next post. However, I do believe that Christians can experience what I would term “oppression” or “influence” from demons when we choose to have deep, habitual sin in our lives. Satan can’t create or take his own foothold in a Christians life, but we can hand the keys over and start digging for him.
The good news is that we are still Christians, and repentance is always an option! James 4:7 promises us, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Submitting to God means confessing our sin, getting help from others in counseling and accountability, and walking out a daily choice to not allow that sin to continue. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of getting my feathers blown off. Satan is on a chain, and I want to quit walking over to where I know I can get bit. Time to take back those footholds, and be a smart chicken for once. We all love Kentucky Fried Chicken over here in Taiwan, but I will pass at being a tub of original, extra crunchy, deep fried lunch.
The Bible Nerd 