You probably have heard the story about the saintly grandmother in the church who never had a bad word to say about anybody. One day, a church member said, almost in frustration, “I’ll bet you could find something good to say about the devil himself.”

To which she replied, “Well, you certainly have to admire his persistence!”

I might add one to that and say that the devil certainly knows how to tempt people! For centuries it has been his number one study, and he is a master of the art. He knows exactly how our minds work and how to deceive us and trick us and get us to give in to his suggestions. And of course we know that without the Spirit of the Lord to lift up a standard against him, we wouldn’t stand a chance.

But when we depend upon God’s power, the devil is the one who doesn’t stand a chance, and he knows it.

“Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not.” 1 John 3:6.

And The Great Controversy, page 530, expands the same thought:

“Satan is well aware that the weakest soul who abides in Christ is more than a match for the hosts of darkness, and that, should he reveal himself openly, he would be met and resisted. Therefore he seeks to draw away the soldiers of the cross from their strong fortification.”

If Satan knows that even the weakest one who abides in Christ is more than a match for him, then it would be extremely important for us to understand what it means to abide in Christ.

Let’s look first at the word abide. What does it mean to abide? If you do a study of the word abide in Scripture, you will discover that it means simply to stay. So Satan is well aware that the weakest soul who stays in dependence upon Christ is more than a match for the hosts of darkness.

But this brings us to a problem. We have already noticed that it takes time to grow, that the surrender that happened at conversion can often be an on-again, off-again experience while we are learning day by day to know God and to trust Him more perfectly. At times we will look to Him and depend upon His power, and then we experience victory. But at times we look away from Him and try to depend upon our own power, and then we fall and fail and sin.

So it is important to make a difference between the two kinds of abiding that show up in Scripture. We will study this more in the next few Theses, but briefly, there is an abiding daily relationship with Christ, and there is a moment-by-moment abiding dependence upon Him.

Sometimes we get the idea that if we abide, or stay, in a relationship with Him day by day, that we will then experience uninterrupted victory. But it’s possible to continue to stay with Christ day by day, through a daily relationship with Him, and yet to not stay in dependence upon His power at every given moment. So long as we stay in dependence upon God’s power instead of our own, Satan is defeated. But any time we depend upon our own power for strength against temptation, we are defeated.

God has no waiting period, no time of probation, no delay in the victory that He has to give. From the first day you come to Him, it is possible to experience all of the overcoming, all of the power over sin, all of the victory and obedience that He has to offer–so long as you continue to depend upon His power.

But any time you look away from Christ and try to stand in your own feeble strength, you are sure to fall and fail and sin. It will happen even if you have been in day-by-day relationship with God for 119 years and six months! It happened that way for Moses. He had known God, had spoken to Him as to a friend, face to face. He had led the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt and almost to the borders of the Land of Promise.

But one day he gave in to the devil’s attempts to get his attention off Christ, and he tried to handle things in his own power. He lost his temper, took glory to himself that should have belonged to God alone, and ended up striking the rock instead of speaking to it.

If the time comes when you strike the rock, in whatever form it may take in your own life, you can know one thing for sure– somehow, at that moment you have stopped depending upon God’s power and have started depending upon yourself. But no matter how weak you are, even if you are the “weakest soul,” as you learn to abide in Christ moment by moment, Satan will have no power over you.