Romans 16:20 NKJV says, “And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.”

Everything God gives to us and expects of us is for our benefit. Love, joy, peace. Love energizes faith to receive the promises of God. Love tells the world that we are His disciples. Love has great benefit. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Joy invigorates, energizes and drives away weariness. Joy is beneficial. Peace may be the most powerful reality of the three. Peace enables us to register the moment by moment witnessing of the Spirit of God within us, the witness that affirms, corrects, refines or rejects the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Love, joy, and peace are weapons of spiritual warfare. Love disarms those who would be our physical enemies. Love enables us to see them as God sees them, helpless, hopeless, on slippery slopes, a breath away from hell; cruel sinners, yet the objects of His mercy. Joy announces the victory before it is seen. Joy in praise and worship releases the angels to ambush the enemy. Peace is the consummation of victory even before it is manifested. Peace may very well be the highest level of faith, bringing the greatest possible results.

The children of God must gain and maintain peace.

Natural medicine maintains that healing comes when the individual quits warring against his own body with poor diet and improper or insufficient exercise because the body was made to heal itself. Healing of the heart and mind comes when we quit warring against the Word of God with sinful thoughts and habits. Healing comes because God’s words heal. Peace is the result of a healed heart. When peace prevails, Satan is crushed.

For most people, it seems that peace is that numb period in between conflicts. For the child of God, peace is the manifested reality of the finished work of Christ. Peace is the outworking of His righteousness in us.

7 The work of righteousness will be peace, And the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance forever. Isa 32:17 NKJV

Sin is always related to fear. Sin is unsettling. Sin strips our confidence and exposes the frailty of the flesh. Righteousness undergirds our confidence and makes us strong with peace. Righteousness is not only the right thing to do…it is the smart thing to do.

I teach my students that, in receiving the gifts of the Spirit, they must have peace.

The old Pentecostals used to talk about ‘praying through.’ By this, they meant that they would stay in prayer until the peace came until the glory of God broke through like the sun on a rainy afternoon. Some situations seem to require a ‘quantity’ of prayer, for lack of a better term, before the glory of God can break through. Daniel had to fast and pray for three weeks before the angel got to him. Moses went up on the mount for forty days, came down, then went right back up again. Paul literally and figuratively prayed through the hurricane, and everyone’s lives were spared because of it. Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness. But when He came back, He was ablaze with the Spirit of God. In spiritual warfare, you have to pray through until the answer of peace comes…

God will crush Satan under your feet as He releases peace and answers into your heart. Expect the answers to come when you pray. Expect and pray until the peace comes. You will never know how close you were to victory if you quit. Pray through to peace, and watch Satan get crushed!

Remember, dear ones, we must be about our Father’s business…