Overcoming the Opposition

Know your enemy—self, the world, and Satan, the ruler of this world. Overcome your enemy—with the Greater Power within you, the Holy Spirit.

January’s Awakening, Day 22

We have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as the natural and expected thing.

 —A. W. Tozer 

In the final analysis our greatest problem with holiness is not that our concepts of holiness are feeble, but that our hearts are rebellious. We are selfish, that’s our problem. And the fact that we often won’t admit our selfishness shows how deep the pride goes.

 —Floyd McClung

There is no duty we perform for God that sin does not oppose. And the more spirituality or holiness there is in what we do, the greater is its enmity to it. Thus those who seek most for God, experience the strongest opposition.

 —John Owen

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.  1 John 4:4–6 NIV 

            Concerning anything done for God and concerning anything of God, the one irrefutable truth is this—opposition will come. And the greater your desire be like Christ, and the greater your efforts to work for His kingdom, the greater the opposition that will come. Opposition can be covert, coming from doubts and issues deep within yourself and the negative spiritual realm of Satan, or it can be overt, coming blatantly from the world. (Sometimes the world can be quite covert also, so you constantly need to be on guard.)

            The solution to combating the opposition is twofold. First, know your enemy well and the schemes and techniques of the enemy, including yourself and sin and self-destruction. Once you understand your enemy well, then you can take the necessary steps to block, thwart, and combat those guiles and schemes, no matter from whence they come. The most important point to remember is this—you will always need the help of the Greater Power within you, the Holy Spirit, for in your own strength you will always miserably fail. Do not let anything, especially self, sabotage your efforts.