27/09/2026
THE STRATEGY FOR THE BATTLE
A
father and his son were traveling across the Wild West in a wagon one
day when a prairie fire broke out. The father and his son tried to outrun the
wildfire in their wagon, but they quickly realized that it wasn’t going to
work. The fire was coming too fast, and unless they tried something else, it
would catch up to them and consume them.
Much to the confusion of the son, the father turned the horse and wagon
around and rushed directly back toward the fire. He took them to a spot that
had already been burned and yelled to his son, “Jump out and stand here.
Don’t move!”
They both jumped out, but the boy became afraid as he saw the fire
raging and moving toward them. He wanted to run, but his father grabbed
his hand and said, “Don’t move, son. Stand firm!”
“But the fire is almost here,” the son cried, his voice shaking with fear.
“I don’t understand!”
“This spot has already been burned,” his dad replied. “There is nothing
left for the fire to grab. The fire will come near, but it cannot burn again
what has already been burned once before.” The boy was safe because he
stayed with his father in a place that the fire could not reach.
As Satan battles you in spiritual warfare, he wants you to step away
from the ground that has already been burned in the spiritual realm, which
is Jesus Christ. Jesus has already been crucified, and His resurrection has
already secured the victory. Satan can’t touch you when you stay close to
Christ. If you stand firm in the center of the safest location—the cross,
where the victory has been accomplished—you will stand victoriously
because Satan can’t reach you there.
But that raises a question. How do you stand firm? As Paul said in
Ephesians 6:10, we are to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His
might.” You stand firm by appropriating God’s strength, not your own
determination, positive thinking, or even self-discipline. While those things
are good, they are not good enough to overcome an enemy battling you
from another realm. Instead, you are to be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ
and in His might.
In order to know how to be strong in Jesus Christ, we need to
understand a few things about His power and His authority to exercise that
power. For us to fully experience the power of Christ, we need to look at
how things began.
When God created man, He made a very significant decision. He
created Adam out of the dust of the ground, and then He said, “Let them
rule” (Genesis 1:26). By letting mankind rule on earth, God willingly
imposed a limitation on His own involvement in human affairs. He erected
precise boundaries where He would respond, either for good or for bad,
based on the decisions of men.
It was up to Adam, therefore, to use his God-given capacity to cultivate
and rule his world. But in order to do that, Adam had to withstand the
attacks of a sly serpent in the garden.
The problem was that Adam did not withstand the deceptive attack of
the serpent. In fact, he allowed that serpent a strong presence in the garden,
forcing Adam out. As a result, Adam allowed the serpent to rule in his
place. In football language, we would say Adam fumbled the ball in the
devil’s red zone, and the serpent recovered it.
What caused the fumble? Eve had gotten out of alignment under Adam,
and Adam had gotten out of alignment under God. This stripped the ball
called “rule” from Adam’s hands and gave it to Satan. He took possession
of the garden from that point on.
So cataclysmic was Adam’s fumble that Satan and his team sprinted
down the field all of the way to mankind’s red zone. Now they have the
ball, they call the plays, and they are running out the clock. Because of the
fumble, the Adamites—the human race—have been scrambling ever since.
And that’s what we’re doing, even to this day. I hear it all of the time.
Maybe you hear it too. People talk about trying to stop the devil. If you are
trying to stop the devil, he’s obviously coming after you. He has the ball.
He’s calling the shots. He’s running the show. He’s setting the agenda. And
the reason you’re trying to stop him is that you are now in a defensive
mode.
Jesus recognized this change of position by referring to Satan three
times as the ruler of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). Because of
Adam’s fumble, Satan is the one who now calls the plays in this world. Of
course Satan can only govern the world within the sovereign boundaries set
up by God, the ultimate Governor, but he still rules through deception,
intimidation, and a myriad of other means.
Not only that, but when Satan took over the rule of this world, a curse
came with it. This curse affected Adam’s career, family, finances, children,
security, and even his life. And unless you and I understand the theology of
authority, we will never overcome the curse handed off to us by Adam, and
we will never be completely victorious in spiritual warfare.
The bad news is that Satan recovered Adam’s fumble. The good news is
that you can get the ball back. You can live in both hope and victory when
you stand firm in the strength of Christ. You can force another fumble—this
time, by Satan—and in so doing recover the authority that has already been
secured for you.
If you have come to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and for
the gift of eternal life that He freely offers, you have already forced that
fumble. Now all you need to do is pick up the ball and run with it. Through
Christ’s sacrificial atonement, you have already been repositioned for
victory in your life. Remember, you are not fighting for victory—you are
fighting from victory. Let’s find out how.
