There’s a heavenly courtroom.

God as our Judge.
Jesus as our Mediator.
Satan as our accuser.

Satan is seeking whom he may devour. This adversary is the power of darkness, prince of evil spirits, deceiver, father of lies, and thief; and he desires to sift you as wheat.  In the Greek, this means he begs to be given the power to torture you by inward agitation to try your faith to the verge of overthrow. (1 Pt 5:8, Luke 22:31-32)

As a defeated foe, he can only stand on the ground we legally give him.

By sin in our life, have we given legal right to the enemy to torment us? It could be something large or small, but something in our life that allows the enemy the legal right to accuse and torment us.

Like a squatter who can stay on our property as long as they want until we take legal action to remove them. We can go to hand-to-hand combat against the squatter, or we could go to the judge himself and revoke his legal right to be there.

Likewise, if the enemy is legally sifting us, we shouldn’t waste our time in hand-to-hand combat.

Instead, we need to go to the Judge in the courtroom of heaven and:

• Demand the enemy reveal to us through the Holy Spirit what legal ground he has to stand in our life.
• Once it’s revealed, confess the sin.
• Repent.
• Put it under the blood of Jesus and ask for Jesus’ blood to speak on our behalf and cancel the legal claim of the enemy.
• Ask the Righteous Judge of all the earth to issue a restraining order in the name of Jesus and to silence the enemy’s accusations and attacks.
• And then, as in a courtroom, we give our testimony. Against the lies of the enemy, we proclaim a counter case of truth from what Scripture says.
• This is how we overcome: By the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11).

We are in a battle.  We wrestle against principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places. (Eph 6:12)

We are arrows of light to dispel darkness; and the more of a threat we become in the kingdom of darkness, the more opposition we can expect.

If we give legal ground to the enemy, this power of darkness will come and rest on us and will begin to torment us. He will take our fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance) and our Christian armor (truth, righteousness, peace, faith, the Word of God, and if possible even make us doubt our salvation).

He will get in our mind with lies, incite apostasy, and hem us in by his wiles. But, by God’s resistance, he is overcome.

Our victory is found when we walk in the Spirit in obedience to the Word of God.

(I wanted to clarify something. The Lord allows us to see in part now things we one day will see in whole.

Perhaps spiritual truths are like a diamond – so many angles and sides to the whole.

Giving legal ground to the enemy may just be one side of the full truth. While there are other sides, equally true.

An example, in Matthew 4:11, Jesus was led into the dessert by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil, even though He was without sin.

In John 9:3, Jesus answered that a man was born blind, not as a result of sin, but that the works of God would be revealed in him.

There are many verses revealing truth in the Lord Himself trying, testing, and pruning the righteous.

People are victims of persecution and even martyrdom, not necessarily because of a sin in their life, but because of the evil around them.

There are times we are affected by temptations of this world and the evils of men, outside of us giving legal ground to the enemy.

But I do believe we can leave room for spiritual oppression by an unrighteousness in our hearts or lives that can be alleviated once it’s confessed and repented of.)