Three Powerful Tips to Defeat Satan

For thus says the Lord,

“Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘Oh, Lord, save Your people, the remnant of Israel.’”

There are three weapons or three activities spoken of there which I believe are crucial for us to understand. They are praise, proclaim, and pray.

Praying is this, saying,

“Oh, Lord, save Your people, the remnant of Israel.”

Now, the Lord has declared He’s going to save the remnant of Israel. You could say, well, He could do it without our praying. But God says in another place,

“I will not do it until I’m inquired for to do it.”

Understand? Praying is our contribution to the outworking of God’s purposes in the earth.

And God, somebody said, has chosen to need us. He could have done without us, but He’s not going to. But praying is not just thinking of anything we want and asking for it. Praying is discovering God’s revealed purpose in Scripture and then praying for the outworking of that purpose.

And it takes persistence. Paul said,

“God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or think.”

How? By fulfilling His Word. Because what God has promised in His Word is far above anything that we in our natural mind could ask or think.

There are some things that Ruth and I have been praying for for 10 years. They haven’t come yet. When that happens, you know, you discover whether you’re praying in faith or unbelief. Because if you’re praying in unbelief, you say, “Well, I’ve been praying for 10 years and nothing has happened.”

But if you’re praying in faith, you say, “The answer is 10 years nearer than when I started praying.” See? Jesus said,

“Men ought to persist in prayer and not to faint.”

I think Ruth and I have discovered that this is one of the greatest tests and shaping instruments of Christian character is persistence in prayer. Discovering the will of God and asking God to do what He said He will do.

Then there is praise. How important it is to praise God. In Psalm 8, David said,

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, Thou hast ordained strength, that Thou mightest, because of Thine enemies, that Thou mightest still or silence the enemy and the avenger.”

And when Jesus quoted that in Matthew 21, verse 9, He changed the words,

“Thou hast ordained strength”

to

“Thou hast perfected praise.”

So what is the ordained strength of God’s people? Perfected praise. What does that do? It silences who? The enemy and the avenger. Why do we need to silence Satan? What is he doing all this time? Accusing us. You say, “Why doesn’t God stop Satan from accusing us?” Because God says, “I’ve given you the means to stop Satan. If you learn to praise Me the way I want to be praised, it’ll silence Satan.”

What a wonderful revelation that we can impose silence on Satan. We can say to him, “Shut up!” Isn’t that marvelous? What do we do that? How do we do that? By praise. See, if God’s people would take the time and learn to praise Him and spend hours in praising Him, with pure hearts and honest motives, not trying to twist God’s arm, but praising Him because He’s worthy of praise, the whole atmosphere around would change.

People’s hearts would be open. The dark powers that have bound men and women will be shaken and driven out. I tell you, we’ve only just on the fringe of a mighty ocean, which is the power of praise.

We come to the last point in requirements for the church to be victorious. This is something that God has begun to quicken for Ruth and me in the last few years in a new measure. You see, proclaiming is actually the activity of a herald. And in the New Testament, the word that’s used for a preacher is the word for a herald.

See, one of the great strengths of Islam, as we’ve been speaking about Islam, is that for more than 13 centuries, five times every day, out of that mosque has gone the proclamation about Allah and Muhammad. And that has created a darkness over those nations which, if you haven’t experienced it, you have no idea of its intensity.

What’s that? That’s the power of false proclamation. We need to overcome that power with the power of true proclamation. We need to proclaim the truth.

“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.”

That’s really another example of proclamation. When you do that, you overcome Satan, but you’ve got to be a certain kind of person.

It says of these people,

“They did not love their lives to the death.”

What does that mean? It means this, that it was more important for them to do the will of God than to stay alive. What’s that? That’s commitment.