Daily Devotional for Saturday, January 3
Jesus Healed a Demon-Possessed Man
“And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not,” Luke 4:35.
In May of 2009 I was experiencing pain in my right ear. When it persisted, I scheduled a visit with my ENT who needed only thirty seconds to tell me that my ear was fine, but my right tonsil was, in his words, “going crazy.” Within days I was scheduled to have a cancerous tumor, which was attached to my right tonsil, surgically removed. After sixty-nine radiation treatments and seven rounds of chemotherapy, I was declared cancer free. Imagine if I had been content to medicate the symptoms of my disease, but not had the root of the problem diagnosed? The disease, stage three squamous cell carcinoma, would have ended my life.
In our reading for today, Jesus healed a man who was likely suffering untold agonies because of demons who had invaded his body. These demons were in a space that they did not have authorization to be, yet, the possessed man lacked the power to remove them. Jesus, whom the demons recognized and feared, exercised His authority and evicted the satanic beings from this man’s body. With the removal of the demons, the man experienced immediate relief. The above verse states that after the removal of the demons, they could “hurt him not” (verse 35).
While believers cannot be possessed by Satan, they can be oppressed by him. Perhaps the messengers of Satan are buffeting you (2 Corinthians 12:7) with temptation and other afflictions. If so, trust Jesus to be the greater power in your life (1 John 4:4) and dismiss the enemy from your thoughts. Jesus heals from the inside out, dealing with root issues, not just symptoms.
PARTING THOUGHT
What symptoms of satanic influence are you experiencing in your life? Do you need to examine your music, reading material and social media? Perhaps it is time, with God’s help, to remove some things.
John Nations