Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. – Jude 1:9, KJV

Have you ever watched an old Western movie where the hero of the movie faces the villain in a good old-fashioned, one-on-one shootout? The hero and villain face each other, mere yards apart, with hands ready to whip their guns out of their holsters. They stare each other down, sweat dripping from their brows, and eyes fixed on their targets. Then, lightning fast, they both draw, fire, and the villain falls down dead (at least in the movies with a happy ending)!

Now imagine you are the hero, and the villain is the Devil. You stare each other down, hands at the ready, and then you both draw and shoot. The Enemy fires at you with temptations galore, and you fire back, but with what? Unfortunately, we usually fire back with bullets forged from human will power, and such ammunition has zero effect on Satan. Our shots bounce off of him like rubber, and he laughs as he overcomes them with ease. In order to win the fight, the ammunition we should be using is not forged from human will power but from supernatural will power, and that ammunition is the Word of God.

Michael the archangel, when contending with Satan for the body of Moses, did not rely on his own strength to win the contest. Rather, he drew on the strength of God’s Word to overcome the Enemy, and by calling on God’s Word Michael won the day. In addition, Christ Himself, in order to set us a perfect example of how to have a shootout with the Devil, faced down Satan’s wilderness temptations not with fancy talk or will power or fanfare. He simply quoted scripture to squelch each and every temptation, and quoting scripture is exactly what we ought to do when temptation comes our way.

Bible memorization is something many of us Christians neglect horribly. This is why, when we find ourselves in a shootout with Satan, we often fail miserably. We can’t win the fight because we simply don’t have the right kind of bullets readily available. By the time we fumble around the Bible (assuming we even have one with us when the temptation comes) looking for the right scriptures to battle Satan’s temptations, we’ve already succumbed. We need to have a storehouse of memorized Bible verses ready to employ in the battle without any hesitation, for that is the only way we can effectively resist the Devil so that he will flee from us.

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