by Perry Hall<\/p>\n
James 4:7-8 is taking on a more powerful meaning to me. Here’s the text:<\/p>\n
“Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded<\/em>” (James 4:7-8 CSB).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Why would the devil flee when we submit to God? First, let’s define “flee”: “To flee away, seek safety by flight” (Thayer). So Satan runs away from danger! What danger is there?<\/p>\n
Submitting to God (James 4:7) is drawing near to God, which leads to God drawing near to us. Satan runs away from us because he is running away from God!<\/p>\n
If we want to be on God’s side, if we want to scare Satan away, we need to run to God for safety. Then Satan will run away from both us and God.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Perry Hall James 4:7-8 is taking on a more powerful meaning to me. Here’s the text: “Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:7-8 CSB). Why…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[335,76],"class_list":["post-63689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-james","tag-terminology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15765,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/are-christians-to-rebuke-satan-or-resist-satan\/","url_meta":{"origin":63689,"position":0},"title":"Are Christians to rebuke Satan or resist Satan?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"July 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hi.\u00a0I love your\u00a0exhaustive presentation of the literal days in Genesis!\u00a0 I am praying about how best to present this to our youth pastor, who is an old ager and teaches it privately to the youth.\u00a0 Thank you. My question involves prayer and whether we as God's children ought to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9104,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/if-evil-comes-from-within-what-difference-does-it-make-if-there-is-a-devil\/","url_meta":{"origin":63689,"position":1},"title":"If evil comes from within, what difference does it make if there is a devil?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: If you would help me with a question on the subject of the Devil, I would be grateful to you. If evil comes from within, as stated in Mark 7:18-23 and James 1:14-15, what difference does it make if there is a real devil or not? Answer: If you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":85634,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-to-draw-near-to-god\/","url_meta":{"origin":63689,"position":2},"title":"How to Draw Near to God","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 14, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by George Hutto via\u00a0Biblical Insights, Vol. 15 No. 1, January 2015 \"Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded\" (James 4:7-8). James said,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9300,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-can-i-overcome-the-fear-of-being-possessed-by-a-demon\/","url_meta":{"origin":63689,"position":3},"title":"How can I overcome the fear of being possessed by a demon?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: One thing that's distressing me is, well kind of, a big problem ever since childhood. I have been scared of demonic stuff ever since I can remember and movies like \"The Omen\" just freak me out. There was a period of time when I was convinced that the devil\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27462,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/should-we-respect-satan\/","url_meta":{"origin":63689,"position":4},"title":"Should we respect Satan?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"May 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Below I copy and pasted from a web site with their beliefs on Satan and I emphasized the part that disturbs me. I was wondering what your thoughts on it are. To respect Satan is to exalt him and evil and is woefully contrary to God's word, in my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":38555,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-reality-of-satan\/","url_meta":{"origin":63689,"position":5},"title":"The Reality of Satan","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 8, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"by Doy Moyer \"Satan\" is a descriptive term that means \"adversary.\" \"Devil\" means \"slanderer.\" These terms aptly describe the being who is known as the enemy of God and His people. The first encounter with the devil is seen in Genesis 3, where the creature here slandered God's severity by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}