Last summer, I saw how my rebellion opened me up to a lot of problems. Satan looks upon people in rebellion as free game.  In the book Enemy Access Denied, John Bevere said rebellion is equated with witchcraft. Bevere was a youth pastor at the time. There was heavy occult involvement in the high schools. One of the youths, Brad, told John this story:

“This short kid came up to me in school today and said, ‘I’m going to put a curse on you!’ When he said that, I just started laughing. I didn’t plan it; I just laughed. Then the kid got frustrated with me and said, ‘I’m going to put a curse on you, and you’ll die in two days! I laughed harder. He got all upset and began to yell, I’m going to put a curse on you, and you’ll die now, if you don’t stop!’ But, I laughed even harder.

Then all of a sudden, we were joined by a much larger, older boy. He shoved the smaller one aside and said, ‘Get going.’ Then he turned and said to me, ‘He’s new at this. He doesn’t know what he is doing.’ I stopped laughing and started thinking, ‘What is going on?’

Then this big guy said, ‘He doesn’t realize you’re one of those marked ones we can’t touch, because the God you serve is bigger than the god we serve.’

So, I said to the big guy, ‘Why don’t you give your life to Jesus?’ He shook his head, ‘I can’t. I’m in this too far,’ and walked away.

Bevere goes on to say, “When a person walks in obedience to God, witchcraft has no power over him. Satan is confined to darkness (Jude 6), so he has no access to us when we are joined with God, in whom is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5)

Bevere said he’s met many people in the church who live in disobedience. Their lives consist of one crisis after another. Each problem seems to get increasingly worse. “Somewhere a door stands open, making them vulnerable to an onslaught of demonic oppression and attack. There are two culprits at work that actually feed off each other. The first is deception. This darkness is found in their hearts, because they have not obeyed God’s Word. (James 1:22) The second culprit is the tangled snare of controlling spirits who are sanctioned to attack at will because of disobedience. The paradox: because the people are deceived, they blame everything except their own disobedience. This blinds them to exactly what is needed to secure their freedom.”

After reading this book, as well as working with my Aunt Betty, I’ve become very vigilant about the importance of staying in right order with God in everything I do. I’ve started Life Coaching, and so I owe it to the people I work with, to stay in right order, or I could lead them astray through an open door of rebellion.

I was fighting God on His will last year, and my Aunt Betty told me repeatedly that I was in rebellion. I didn’t listen, and then broke my ankle which finally got my attention. Being injured humbled me on many levels. It’s hard to feel the “power” in rebellion, when you’re hobbling around. When we are in right order, Satan has great difficulty attacking us, because we’re covered. We’re covered with the power of Jesus Christ. But when we are out doing our own thing in rebellion against authority, then we are more vulnerable, because we have the doors open thru which Satan can attack us. Satan loves when we’re out of order. It makes sense. It gives him that authority over us.