Speak Only the Word
Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.'" Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.
Matthew 4:10–11 (NKJV)
I always return to this account of Jesus and Satan, because I find it fascinating how Jesus dealt with the devil's temptation. There was nothing spectacular in what He did: no calling down of fire, no hollering at the top of His voice, as some doctrines suggest you should practise when dealing with the devil.
It was the devil himself whom Jesus was encountering, so one might naturally expect some dramatic show of opposition from Jesus to scare Satan off. But Jesus had nothing to prove to Satan, and the same goes for every child of God. Sometimes you pick up wrong doctrines and practices that destroy your faith, as when some teach that you have to shout for the devil to hear you, or jerk up and down. Let me tell you something: you do not need to do any of those things for the devil to leave you or stop harassing you. Learn from Jesus. Sometimes we want to act differently from Jesus and still expect the same results. The Bible says that after a time the devil left Jesus and the angels came, and that became possible because of the simple but very powerful thing Jesus did to ward off those satanic temptations. Let us look at it.
First, Jesus was the Son of God, and at this point He had already received the fullness of the Holy Spirit. If you really think about it, Jesus was endued with power when He encountered the devil, and He could have blasted him with heavenly power at any moment during those temptations. He did not. Instead He used the most powerful weapon at His disposal, and at ours: the written Word of God.
Second, for Jesus to wield the written Word of God successfully, He must already have familiarised Himself with the Scriptures and memorised them through meditation and reading. Merely mumbling whatever scriptures came to mind would not have done the job.
Third, He resisted temptation by speaking what was written in the Word out loud. This is the point I want to drive home. Jesus did not personalise the Scriptures here; He quoted them verbatim, and that was enough for the devil to leave Him. This is powerful, because it reveals the inherent power of the written Word: if anyone will take the Word of God and speak it forth, it will yield the same results it did for Jesus.
You can use the written Word to resist sickness, poverty and sin. You can use it to reject the influence of Satan over your life and over the lives of those you love. So the next time you are tempted, speak what is written.
The problem with many is that they want to speak what they feel or think is appropriate. Do not try to be wiser than God. Jesus could have used fancy words to resist the devil, something like, "Hey, Mr Devil, did you not hear the voice that said I am the Son of God?" But He did not. He simply said what was written, and it got the job done.
In prayer, instead of shouting many words, begin to declare what is written concerning the matter, though, as I said, this requires that you know your Scriptures.
I pray a great deal, and most of my praying is in other tongues, but when I do pray with my understanding, ninety percent of it is the Word of God or utterance given by the Spirit. It has been my spiritual policy in prayer. I would rather depend on the Holy Spirit than on words produced by my mind, because I want results in prayer. I do not like doing things for the sake of it; I want to do things that work. So ninety to ninety-five percent of my praying is done by the Spirit. I want to bring it to a hundred percent, and I will. After all, He said, "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit." If you want to get the job done in life, do it by the Spirit; that is the Jesus way.
Learn to speak the Word in prayer. Cut down on uttering many words that lead nowhere, and you will see great results in your life. The devil will leave you, and the angels will come and minister to you.