Spiritual attacks and temptation are inevitable—but domination isn’t. Walking in the light, staying aligned with Christ, and cleansing our hearts gives the enemy nothing to grab onto. We uncover practical steps to remove footholds of sin and operate in Christ’s authority in everyday life.
See the complete episode transcript below.
A few episode Highlights
✅ The inevitability of spiritual attacks and temptation means we need proactive measures to prevent compromise in our lives.
✅ Our obedience to Christ is vital in preventing the domination of sin and compromise.
✅ We must identify and lock down any openings that allow the enemy access into our lives.
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Resources — The Authority of Being Clean …
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📖 Scripture
The inspired Scriptures stand above all other literature and writing. To read, meditate, proclaim, and pray the Scriptures releases the potential of God in our personal world and the world we influence.
“The ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14.30 NKJV)
Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. (Ephesians 4.26-27 NASB)
“Why are you so angry?” the Lord asked Cain. “Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.” (Genesis 4.6-7 NLT)
🛐 Kingdom Prayer
Jesus, we progressively align ourselves with You. May we be conformed to Your nature. Our position, Lord, our desire is that we yield no standing to darkness in our lives. Holy Spirit, teach us. Empower us to walk moment by moment. May our lives, Lord, be a space where darkness finds no landing strip, no foothold in Christ. May You be comfortable dwelling in us richly.
Episode Transcript — The Authority of Being Clean …
I want to start with a personal moment. There were many seasons in my life when I realized that the enemy of our soul—Satan, the devil, the adversary—had too much access into my life. He had ways and avenues that he could influence my thoughts, shape my emotions, and really steer my decisions, or at least put me in a place where I would make compromising decisions which could have consequences.
I could see patterns, subtle patterns of compromise and sin in my life, and I could feel the weight of the foothold. I could feel the weight of the ground that I had given away. I wasn’t falling into egregious sins, earth-shaking major mistakes, but small stuff. And I could sense that I was being positioned for the potential of further compromise. Sin will take you farther than you want to go and faster. The Holy Spirit, prodding and bringing conviction, was a wake-up call.
A Jesus Tactic for Spiritual Victory
That’s what I want to explore with you today—a real Jesus tactic. How to walk in the light and remove footholds from the enemy so that we can live and operate in the authority and success that God has given us. Welcome to the podcast today. This is episode 356, and you can catch the show notes page at JesusSmart.com/356.
In case you missed it, I had Frank Viola on for a two-parter: episodes 353 and 355, “The New Testament Like You’ve Never Seen It with Frank Viola.” Tremendous resourcing there. And then episode 354, right between those two episodes, “Life in the Groove,” a solo episode on improvising with the Holy Spirit, where we draw connections with jazz music. What can we learn from jazz that really shows us some elements of what it may mean to walk in the Holy Spirit and keep in step with Him?
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Thank you for bearing with me there. Let’s get right to the content today.
Spiritual Warfare: Inevitable Attacks, Not Inevitable Domination
Spiritual attacks and temptation are inevitable. As John Eldredge says, when you’re born again—even when you’re born the first time—you’re born into a war. And when you’re born again, you’re redeemed and you’re saved, placed on a trajectory, a path where you can become Christlike and become victorious and share in the inheritance of Christ. You’re still in a war, and maybe in a more heightened sense at that point.
Spiritual attacks and temptation are inevitable. They’re part of being what Jesus called, or what the Scripture says, in this world but not of it. And here’s the good news: when we’re talking about sin and compromise and temptation, domination—you being dominated, me being dominated by that—is not inevitable. It’s inevitable that we are going to encounter it, but I’m talking about being dominated and controlled by it.
Jesus Had Nothing for the Enemy to Grab
Jesus knew, I think it was the evening before His crucifixion in John 14, He knew the enemy was coming. And here’s what He said, though: “The ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing in me.” There is no ground in me, Jesus was saying. So the ruler of this world and his minions are going to come against you, bring resistance into your life, friction, try to trigger you, try to attack you, try to seduce you.
If we follow this Jesus tactic which we’re going to outline today, think about it—we can really cut off his opportunity. Like Jesus, if we can say, “He has nothing in me.” And if Jesus could live with zero access for the enemy to penetrate His life and dominate and control Him, we can follow that same principle. The enemy only has as much access as we give him when we are in Christ.
Walking in the Light: The Key to Overcoming Temptation
Now, there’s an important passage in 1 John 1:5-9. And again, if we can get this right or start getting it right, start improving in this area, there is so much downstream stuff we could cut off from the enemy, so much time we could save, so many benefits.
This is the message: “It says in 1 John 1:5-9 that we’ve heard from Him and declare to you, God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet we’re walking in the darkness, we just keep walking in darkness. John says we’re lying and we’re not practicing the truth. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
It’s important that we walk in the light and have fellowship with one another. The Scripture continues: “If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins”—oh, thank the Lord for this—”if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Walking in the light means that we bring hidden attitudes and compromises and sins out into the open. We confess them before the Lord primarily. There may be times where, as it says at the end of James, we confess our faults and our sins to one another, and healing comes in that way. But we’re allowing God’s light to do a reset in our inner person.
Progressive Alignment, Not Perfection
It’s not about perfection, okay? When Jesus said, “You need to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” the New Testament word for perfection is complete or mature or whole. It’s not like a perfection complex—totally sinless. What it is, though, is about progressive alignment, moment by moment, with the Lord.
Where Spiritual Warfare Really Begins
Real spiritual warfare starts—where does it start? Where do you think it starts? On the inside. It’s not outside of us. True, there are dynamics external to us which are manifestations of spiritual warfare, but it starts on the inside, in the realm of our thoughts, our emotions, and the choices that we make.
Things like anger, bitterness, lust, unforgiveness—all of these things will give the enemy territory in our hearts. And our heart, we know, shapes our personal world. Proverbs tells us to pay attention to our heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life.
Don’t Give the Devil Ground
Paul says in Ephesians 4, when he’s talking about anger, for example—and I want to talk with you about anger because that’s one of the primal sins. If sin were a river, anger is up at the headwaters of it. I want to talk with you about anger. But Paul says, “Be angry, but sin not. And do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Come to a place of settled resolution the day of. And he says there, “Do not give the devil ground,” or topos in the Greek, which means—we get our word topography from it—it means do not give him an opportunity or do not give him ground.
Something like anger, which we see as early as Genesis 4 with Cain killing Abel—and I just happened to be reading in my own devotions this morning out of James 1, where it says, “The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” There it is. Anger is sort of this parent sin, and there are all kinds of downstream or derivative sins which flow out of a baseline of anger and vexation, of living in a fallen world and living in a fallen condition.
All kinds of things flow out of anger—incredibly corrosive things like unforgiveness, for example, or bitterness or murder. Cain killed his brother. Hatred comes out of anger. We don’t want to give the devil an opportunity. This is what we’re talking about today: don’t give him ground. Cut him off.
The Authority of Being Clean
In Psalm 19, I believe it’s verse 9, David says, “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.” Wow. Talk about lasting power. Being clean has lasting power, both now and forever. The fear of the Lord—there’s authority in being clean. This is what we’re talking about today: dominion in being clean.
Our title of this episode is “The Authority of Being Clean: Living Beyond the Enemy’s Reach.” Not living beyond his reach in the sense of you’ll never be tempted or attacked, but living beyond his reach in the sense of you will not be dominated. He will not come in and control you and take over.
So being clean—we want to be clean because from time to time, especially, we have to move in the authority of Christ. We’ve got to speak to that mountain. We’ve got to pray over somebody that needs healed. We have to mitigate against some vile thing. Something wicked this way comes, right? We have to mitigate against it in prayer. We want to have the authority of the Lord, and being clean is a prerequisite to moving and living in the authority of Jesus Christ.
Victory Begins and Is Consummated
I love this thought from Francis Frangipane. He’s exactly right. He had an early book called The Three Battlegrounds. I highly encourage it. Here’s his statement: “Victory begins with the name of Jesus on our lips, but it will not be consummated until the nature of Jesus is in our hearts.”
There it is. It’s one thing to say His name, to confess Him as Savior and even Lord, but it’s another thing to allow His nature through time to be progressively conformed to His image, to His nature. Romans 8:29, right? Every thought, attitude and choice—the Holy Spirit begins to put His finger on things and begins to ask for change and maturity: come out of that, be delivered from that, and build this into your life. And so, as the nature of Jesus is built into our hearts, into our lives, that’s the consummation of victory. Victory begins with the name of Jesus on our lips at conversion; it’s consummated as the nature of Jesus is developed within us.
The Devil Has Been Dusted
I don’t know if I want to develop something about trash-talking the devil. You know, like in the National Football League, especially American football, there’s this thing that goes on on the field called trash-talking. If you’ve ever seen a funny video where somebody’s miked up on the field and you can hear it, it’s hilarious, it’s humorous and sometimes maybe a little abrasive. Trash-talking is the idea of getting into your enemy’s head.
I don’t know if I want to develop something on how to trash-talk the devil, but let’s just say this: you’ve heard this street phrase, “being dusted.” When somebody’s dusted in street language, it means they’ve been defeated and wiped out.
Well, in Genesis 3:14, right at the fall, God comes and speaks to the serpent with this sentence of death and dust. The Lord said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals. On your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life.”
So he’s been dusted, and it was a prophetic humiliation. My friend, Jesus would put it this way later: He said that we would trample on all the power of the enemy. That’s the authority of Christ. We want to be clean to do that.
Operating from a Position of Spiritual Authority
The devil’s realm is dust level. He’s not in your head. He can’t be in your life. He’s not above you. Our authority is above him in Christ. Ephesians 2:6 says that we’ve been raised up with Christ and seated with Him in the heavenly places. So as we walk in alignment with the Lord, as we really game up our obedience and purity, we operate from a position of spiritual authority.
We can pray, in a sense, down into earthborn situations from our authority of being seated with Christ. We don’t want to compromise that. Let’s just see this principle. We’ve mentioned it several times, I think, on this podcast. 1 Peter 3, when it’s talking to husbands: hey, if you don’t treat your wife as a joint heir of the grace of life, your prayers will be hindered. What? Our prayer life can be crimped and hindered by sin? Yeah, it can. If you’re married and you treat your wife like that, it will be.
But there are many ways that we can crimp our prayer life, and we don’t want that. We want to be able to pray down into earthborn situations from our true authority of being seated with Christ and out of the enemy’s reach in heavenly places. We’re living above the line.
“Be Killing Sin or It Will Be Killing You”
John Owen, I think from the 1600s, was a Puritan theologian. He has a famous book called The Mortification of Sin. And here’s his powerful statement: “Simply be killing sin or it will be killing you.” There is no third option, my friend. It’s very binary. Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
Be encouraged with this: our obedience to Christ is where the enemy’s domination ends. I’m saying this—our obedience to Christ is where the enemy’s domination ends. Our obedience to Christ is not where temptation ends. It’s not even where spiritual warfare ends or spiritual attacks. But it is where the controlling domination ends, where we do not yield, where we live victoriously. And the more we do this, the easier it will become. We can step into our position and watch his grip collapse.
Three Practical Steps to Remove Footholds of the Enemy
How can we do this practically? Today happens to be Halloween, October 31, 2025. We know that this is the high unholy day of Satan and demons and witches and warlocks, and they’re cursing and they’re doing their things, everything they do, and they build up to this throughout the month of October. It’s their high unholy day, we could call it. In some sense, Halloween is every day because we live in a broken, fallen, disgusted, dark world. So no matter when you’re hearing this, there is application. What can we do practically? What are just maybe three practical things that we can take away?
1. Do a Personal Spiritual Audit
Number one: do a personal audit. Do daily and weekly reflection. How are you doing? Is there something that needs to be brought into the light and confessed and abandoned in terms of sin? It can be thought sin, attitudinal, motivational sin, or actual action, actual conduct. Sin is not only sins of commission; there are also sins of omission. What should we be saying that we’re not saying? How should we be acting that we’re not conducting ourselves in that way, not being obedient to the Lord?
So do an audit. David put it this way in Psalm 139: “Lord, search me, know me, see if there’s any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.” So we want to be open to allowing the Holy Spirit to do audit work in our lives.
Be in connection with sound core members of the body of Christ that hopefully you can develop a trust level with and a communication level where you’re fighting for each other, you’re helping each other win. As it says in James 5, I mentioned it: “Confess your sins to one another so that you may be healed.”
There are some things that we need to bring out into the open with another member of the body of Christ, and we’re really confessing it to the Lord, but we’re also bringing it before one of His members. And there is power in that. There is victory. If you’re being tempted and you feel like you’re in a silo and you don’t know if you’re going to make it, you better find a member of the body of Christ. You not only need to call out to the Lord for help and deliverance from that temptation, but you need to find a member of the body of Christ that you can bring this out into the light. The Lord honors that, and you can be healed from it, and you can be held accountable. Reflection and confession and doing audit work.
2. Be Self-Aware and Notice Footholds
Number two: be self-aware. Notice footholds in your life. Is there bitterness, anger, any kind of repeated compromise? What is your speech like? What are you doing? What are you not doing that you should be? How are you relating to people? In what ways should you be relating to them?
Identify areas where the enemy is trying to get a hook into you, trying to grab you, trying to get a door open into your life where he can really come in like some kind of a crazed animal and wreak devastation in your life. That was actually the word picture in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament. In Genesis 4, when God confronts Cain, He says, “Look, if you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?” But He said, “Sin is at the door and its desire is for you.” And in the Hebrew language, it’s a word picture of like a lion outside or some kind of a gorilla or some kind of a crazed animal that can hurt you. God said, “Its desire is for you.” And then He said, “But you must master it.”
There it is. That thing is not to dominate you and me. We are to dominate it. Everything is on the line. Do not sell your birthright for a single bowl of food like Esau did. You may know some of these—you may have some things in your family or some patterns you’ve seen in your own life that you know this is a particular weakness or vulnerability. Notice footholds.
3. Lock the Door. Replace Openings with Obedience.
Number three: lock the door. Lock down those doors. Close off those openings. Actively replace them with obedience. Use the power of confessing God’s Word out loud. Use the power of praying Scripture—prayer architecture. Lay it over your life and pray the inspired, authoritative words of God.
And what about worship? Get your hands up in the air. Lift up your head. Your salvation is waiting for you. Praise God. Declare His dominion. I’m going to do something about this. I talked about trash-talking the enemy, but one of the ways we can trash-talk the enemy is finding the scriptural language which is high octane, that actually declares the dominion of Christ as King, and speak that over the situation and over your life.
In a sense, what you’re doing is you’re reminding darkness what the future holds for them and for us and for Christ. We’re on the winning side. Use the power of God’s Word. What did Jesus do in the wilderness? He used God’s Word. Every time three waves of temptation came against Him, three times He confessed Scripture from Deuteronomy and declared the Scripture out loud to the enemy.
Closing Prayer
Can we pray just for a moment? Jesus, we progressively align ourselves with You. May we be conformed to Your nature. Our position, Lord, our desire is that we yield no standing to darkness in our lives. Holy Spirit, teach us. Empower us to walk moment by moment. May our lives, Lord, be a space where darkness finds no landing strip, no foothold in Christ. May You be comfortable dwelling in us richly.
We’re going to remember that victory starts on the inside. We’re going to cleanse our heart. We’re going to walk in the light. We’re going to trust that our authority in Christ is above the enemy.
Take Action Today — The Authority of Being Clean
Do something today. What is one little thing today? Look for one area today and then this week that you can progressively align with God and remove footholds from the enemy in your life.
Now, if this episode encouraged you or challenged you, share it with someone you think would value it, maybe somebody you feel needs it. And you can subscribe to Jesus Smart everywhere podcasts are heard. We’re seeking to uncover Kingdom dynamics that empower our walk with Christ. I appreciate you. Let’s live in victory, and I’ll catch you next time.