Light of the World Today
"He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins."
Colossians 1:13-14 NKJV
Colossians 1:13 uses the past tense for a reason that is enormously significant. He has delivered us. Not he is in the process of delivering us. Not he will deliver us when conditions are right. He has. Past tense. Completed action. Legally accomplished. The deliverance from the power of darkness is not something a believer in Christ is working toward. It is something they are standing in. Or more accurately, it is something they are often not yet fully standing in despite the fact that it has already been fully accomplished on their behalf. And the gap between the deliverance that Calvary provided and the freedom that many sincere believers are actually experiencing in daily life is the gap that this devotion exists to close.
The powers of darkness do not primarily operate through dramatic supernatural encounters. They operate through access points. Specific vulnerabilities in a person's life, thinking and history that have given them legal ground to maintain an influence they were stripped of at the cross. The enemy knows that Calvary settled the legal question. He cannot change that verdict. What he can do is operate in the areas of a person's life where that verdict has not yet been understood, declared and enforced. He is not fighting from authority. He is bluffing from familiarity. And the person who understands what Calvary accomplished and begins to walk in the practical steps of deliverance removes the bluff and enforces the verdict that has already been handed down.
A Biblical Picture of What Deliverance Actually Looks Like
Mark 5:1-20 records the most comprehensive account of deliverance in the entire Gospel narrative. The man Jesus encountered in the region of the Gerasenes was living in the tombs, unable to be restrained by chains, crying out continuously and cutting himself with stones. He was completely beyond any human capacity to help. He had been in that condition long enough for it to have become the defining feature of his entire identity. The community had stopped trying to help him. He had stopped expecting to be helped. His situation appeared, from every natural perspective, to be entirely permanent.
Jesus arrived. He did not arrive with a complicated process or an extended programme. He arrived with authority. Mark 5:8 in the NIV says he had said to him come out of this man, you impure spirit. The command was direct, specific and immediate. And the result was the man sitting clothed and in his right mind, verse 15. In the presence of Jesus, the darkness that had defined this man's life for years was evicted completely. And Jesus did not simply address the visible symptoms. He went to the source. The spiritual root. And when the root was addressed the visible manifestation of the darkness departed with it. The man whose identity had been defined by his bondage became, verse 20, the person who went away and began to tell people what Jesus had done for him. His story of deliverance became his testimony. And the region of the Decapolis, ten cities, heard what Jesus had done for one man who had previously been unable to move beyond the tombs.
"When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind."
Mark 5:15 NIV
The Ephesian Church: What Deliverance Requires in Practice
Acts 19:18-20 records a moment in the early church at Ephesus that is one of the most practically instructive accounts of corporate deliverance available in Scripture. Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. A number who had practised sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas. In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
Several things in that account deserve careful attention. First, the people who brought the scrolls were already believers. They had heard the gospel and received it. But their deliverance was incomplete because they had retained the objects, the practices and the connections that had given darkness access to their lives. Belief without the removal of the open doors produced a partial freedom at best. Second, they confessed what they had done openly. Not privately in a general sense. Specifically. They named the specific practices and the specific objects. Third, they destroyed the objects completely. They did not donate them. They did not store them safely. They burned them publicly at enormous personal financial cost. And the result, verse 20, was that the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power. The freedom of the individual people produced a spiritual atmosphere around them that multiplied the impact of the gospel in the surrounding region. Personal deliverance has a community effect that goes far beyond the person who received it.
Five Practical Steps to Walking in Deliverance
Step 1: Understand your legal position before you engage spiritually
Ephesians 2:6 in the NIV says God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. You are not engaging darkness from beneath it. You are engaging it from above it. Luke 10:19 in the NKJV says behold I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. All the power of the enemy. Not some of it. All. The person who walks into a deliverance engagement without this foundation is working far harder than necessary. The person who understands their seated position and their delegated authority is enforcing a legal verdict that was already handed down at Calvary rather than trying to win a battle that has already been won.
Step 2: Identify and close every open door specifically
The access points that darkness uses are almost always traceable to specific events, choices, objects or connections. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal every door that has given darkness access to your life. John 16:13 in the NIV says when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He is the most reliable guide available for this process. The doors may include past occult involvement, objects in your home with spiritual connections, covenants entered into knowingly or unknowingly, habits or patterns of sin that have become strongholds, or spiritual contamination received through relationships, food or gifts in cultural contexts. Name each one specifically before God. Confess it. Renounce it. And remove any associated object from your possession as the Ephesian believers did.
"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
James 4:7 NIV
Step 3: Declare the blood of Jesus over every area that has been surrendered
Revelation 12:11 in the NKJV says they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. The blood of Jesus is not a sentimental image. It is the specific legal currency of the spiritual realm. It is the evidence that the price has been paid, the verdict has been rendered and the enemy's legal claim has been cancelled. Declaring it aloud and specifically over the areas from which open doors have been removed is the act of applying the verdict to the specific territory. It is not a formula. It is the application of the finished work of Christ to the specific ground from which darkness has just been evicted.
Step 4: Fill every cleared space with the presence of God immediately
Matthew 12:43-45 in the NIV records Jesus giving a sobering warning about the danger of a swept and empty house. When an impure spirit comes out of a person it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says I will return to the house I left. When it arrives it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. The cleared house must be filled. Immediately and deliberately. Worship. The Word of God spoken aloud. Sustained prayer. The fellowship of genuinely Spirit-filled believers. The filling of the cleared space with the presence of God is not optional supplementary spiritual activity following deliverance. It is the specific and essential step that maintains the freedom that was just received and prevents the return of what was just removed.
Step 5: Walk in the freedom daily by maintaining the conditions that sustain it
James 4:7 in the NIV says submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. The sequence is critical. Submission to God comes first. Resistance of the devil follows from the position that submission creates. Daily submission to God through prayer, the Word, obedience and genuine community with other believers is not the preparation for the spiritual life. It is the spiritual life. And it is the consistent practice that keeps the conditions of deliverance maintained across the ordinary pressures of a real week. The person who was delivered but who drifted from the daily practices of submission and filling is the person whose freedom gradually becomes vulnerable again. Not because the victory was reversed but because the maintenance of the conditions that sustain freedom was neglected. Stay submitted. Stay filled. Stay connected. And resist from that position every time darkness attempts to reestablish what Calvary already evicted.
So the Light of the World word for today is this. The deliverance has already been accomplished. Calvary settled the legal question permanently. What remains is the enforcement of the verdict in the specific areas of your life where the enemy has been operating on the basis of access that was not removed. Identify the open doors. Close them specifically. Apply the blood. Fill the cleared space with God's presence. Submit first. Resist from that position. And walk in the freedom that was purchased for you at the highest price ever paid. You were not designed to live beneath what Calvary achieved. The verdict has been handed down. It is time to enforce it.
Memory verse for today
"He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love."
Colossians 1:13 NKJV