How, When Satan’s Winning, Your Victory In Christ Is Assured

Killer blows, dealt to crush us in an oblivion of pain, have their purpose in taking us up to the Precipice of Presence; of Christ at the moment of His cross.

It is always God’s intention that we be accompanied in those forlorn places of soul — the paraclete coming alongside.

There, as He was raised high and vertical, the prince of darkness leapt in conquest, yet, as Christ submitted, in submission was His triumph.  So is ours.

In submission is acceptance of humiliation; a paradoxically gospel precursor to triumph.

The Christian cannot hope to attain the victory of the resurrection without coming to their cross and dying first.  Without submission there is no success in the school of Christ.

In coming close, there is the proximity of defeat, of pain beyond compare, where the enemy is quaking with glee.

Standing at the cross, ready to be raised high and vertical, in anticipation of suffocation, the immediacy of death before us — which is death to pride, self-sufficiency, and fear of being forsaken — we stand immediately before two horizontally-opposed spirits; the spirits of defeat and of victory.

The devil anticipates victory as we’re crushed by the forces of humiliation.  Satan is powerless, however, to stop Love — rendered through submission — which makes a way for humiliation to be the catalyst in resurrection.  Can you see how important humiliation is?  In the acceptance place within humiliation we side with Christ and depart from Satan.

The embodiment of acceptance in humiliation is one tangible way we can imitate Christ, when many ways of the Lord are unique to Him alone.  Satan humiliated Christ momentarily at the cross, but Christ humiliated Satan eternally in His resurrection.  See how Christ shows us how, in accepting humiliation, we demonstrate loving submission in honouring the Father, and we bamboozle the enemy?

We’re in good company any time we feel defeated,
for as we share in Christ’s defeat we share also in His triumph.

Blessed are the crushed and humiliated, for in their submitted demeanour of response they humiliate and crush the devil at His own game.

In Christ alone, with you, the paraclete coming alongside us both,

Steve Wickham.