You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
—1 John 4:4
The “them” that we who are of God have overcome are the “instead of
Christ” (antichrist) things in the world. The presence of God in us in the person of the Holy Spirit is greater than anything the devil puts in front of us in place of Christ. This removes, in a very real sense, the words I can’t from the Christian’s vocabulary.
If nothing is too hard or impossible for God to do (Jer. 32:17) and God is in us, then we can overcome every bad habit and wrong attitude because greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. But it also means, as John reminds us, that we possess power over deception and need not be led astray by “instead of Christ” spirits.
Satan’s pride and desire to be worshiped led to his fall (Isa. 14:14), and it is still the thing he covets today. To worship means “to prostrate” and “to submit.” However, when we think of Satan worship, we often envision it as singing songs of praise to Satan or wearing weird robes and repeating morbid chants. But the fact of the matter is, Satan worship is prostrating and submitting to his will, and his will is for us to bow before anything instead of Christ.
But greater is the Spirit of God in us than anything Satan throws at us.
Because we have Christ, we cannot say, “Alcohol is bigger than me,” “Drugs are bigger than me,” or “Gossip [lying, cheating, or stealing] is bigger than me.” I know this is true because many of those things were once part of my life, but through Christ I overcame them.
I can’t say “I can’t” anymore. Neither I nor any other Christian is perfect, but as I have said many times, “We don’t have to sin if we don’t want to!” Though we all fail from time to time, we don’t have to, but rather we choose to. But we don’t have to make that choice anymore, because greater is God who is in us than Satan who is after us!
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