Why some attacks keep coming back. You prayed, and it lifted. The heaviness broke, the fear let go, and for a few days you could breathe again. Then it was back, the same torment, the same accusation, as if it had never left. You prayed harder, and the cycle repeated. You may not be facing a stronger enemy. You may be facing an open door.
Scripture warns that a believer can actually give the devil something, and as long as it stays given, the same attacks keep finding their way back in. Close that door, and they have nowhere to land.
Chapter 1: The problem of an open door
You prayed and it lifted. The heaviness broke. The fear let go. And for a few days you could breathe again. Then one evening it was back. The same torment, the same accusation, the same dark cloud as if it had never left.
So you prayed harder. You resisted it. You stood against it. And it lifted again only to return a few weeks later.
If that cycle sounds familiar, you may not be dealing with a stronger enemy. You may be dealing with an open door.
The Bible names one thing a believer can give the devil. And as long as it remains given, the same attacks keep finding their way back in.
Stay with me because in this teaching you will discover what that door is, how it gets opened without our even noticing, and how to close it in a way that lasts.
Here is the verse from Ephesians 4:26-27.
Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil.
Neither give place to the devil.
In this teaching, you will see what the word place means and why it matters so much. You will see the doorway apostle Paul names in that very sentence and why it is the one most often left open in the lives of sincere believers.
You will see why Jesus said a house can be swept clean and still invite trouble back. And you will learn simple practical steps to close the door and keep it closed.
There are important guard rails here because not every hardship comes through an open door. And there is a special word for those whose grudges have had many years to settle sin.
I taught that the love of God placed in the believer at the new birth is stronger than any hatred around him or her. And as you will see, that love is the very thing that shuts this door.
Chapter 2: Identifying the open door
Let us begin with the problem because many believers have been fighting the wrong battle for years.
Picture an old farmhouse on a hot July evening with the screen door propped open. Insects house flies drift in all evening long. You can stand in the kitchen with a swatter and fight them one at a time. And you may become very skilled at it, but as long as that screen door stands open, the flies will keep coming.
That is how many Christians live. They resist the fear, rebuke the oppression, and pray against the heaviness. And each time it lifts for a while, but they never look at the door.
They become experts at swatting and strangers to the latch. And the reason we do not look at the door is that it rarely announces itself.
Very few of us would ever say, "I am harbouring bitterness." We say, "I just do not talk to my brother anymore." We say, "I am over it." While our stomach still tightens when that person's name comes up at the dinner table, we say, "I forgave her years ago." And yet we can still recite every word she said at the funeral.
The business partner who cheated us, the spouse who walked out, the church that wounded us, the grown child who broke our heart. The wounds were real and some of them were grievous. But the resentment we carry from them can become a door left open in a house we thought was locked.
And so the believer misdiagnoses the problem.
He / she assumes the enemy is unusually strong or that he / she needs a more powerful prayer or that God is not listening.
Meanwhile, the enemy keeps returning through the same doorway because the doorway was never closed.
Apostle Paul warned in 2 Corinthians 2:1 that we must not let Satan get an advantage of us. For we are not ignorant of his devices.
Many of us have been ignorant of this one device, not because we are careless, but because no one ever showed us how ordinary it looks.
Chapter 3: Biblical teaching on anger
So let us go to the Word. The word translated ' place ' in Ephesians 4:27 is a very ordinary Greek word. It means a spot, a location, a piece of room, and by extension, an opportunity, or a foothold.
Picture a door-to-door salesman who slips his foot into the doorway before you can close it. Once his foot is in, the door will not shut, and he has a place from which to keep pressing.
That is what apostle Paul is describing. The devil has no rightful place in the life of a believer.
Colossians 1:13 says, "The Father hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear son."
But apostle Paul warns that a believer can give devil a place, a foothold, a foot in the door. The enemy cannot take what you have not given, but he will gladly use whatever you hand him.
And notice what apostle Paul names as the doorway in that very sentence.
Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil.
Anger in itself is not the sin. There is such a thing as righteous anger. And apostle Paul says plainly, "Be ye angry and sin not."
The danger is anger carried past sunset, nursed overnight, and hardened into a settled grudge. Picture the sun going down over a quiet field. As the light fades, a choice is being made in homes all across the land.
Either the offense will be laid down with the day or it will be tucked into bed with us and wake up beside us in the morning.
Apostle Paul says that anger which outlives the sunset gives the devil a place. He continues a few verses later in Ephesians 4:31-32.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
Chapter 4: The power of forgiveness
Notice that he does not stop with what to remove. He tells you what to put in its place.
Bitterness goes out and kindness comes in.
Wrath goes out and tenderness comes in.
Malice goes out and forgiveness comes in.
And notice the measure of that forgiveness even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
We do not forgive out of our own small supply. We forgive out of the ocean of forgiveness God has already poured over us. And tucked between those two passages is a verse that shows how tender this matter is to God.
Ephesians 4:30 says, "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption."
The Holy Spirit is not an influence or a force. He is a divine spirit who lives in you and bitterness grieves him.
He does not leave for you are sealed until the day of redemption. But a heart full of resentment is a heart where he is grieved, instead of welcomed and where the enemy finds room to work.
When you close this door, you are not only shutting out the devil, you are making room for the Comforter to be at home in you again.
Apostle Paul shows the same truth in 2 Corinthians 2:10-11, where he urges the church to forgive a man who had repented. To whom ye forgave anything, I forgive also. For if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ, lest Satan should get an advantage of us. For we are not ignorant of his devices.
The phrase get an advantage means to overreach, to gain the upper hand, to take more than belongs to you.
Unforgiveness hands the enemy the upper hand in a situation where Christ has already given us the victory.
That is why the attacks keep coming back. The victory is real, but the door has been left open.
Chapter 5: The root of bitterness
Hebrews 12:15 adds another picture. Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.
Anyone who has kept a garden knows about roots. You can cut a dandelion off at the surface, and the lawn looks clean for a few days, but if the root is still in the ground, the weed comes right back, often stronger than before.
Bitterness works the same way. We trim its surface by being polite, by avoiding the person, by changing the subject of conversation, but the root remains and it springs up again.
And Hebrews says it troubles us and defiles many. A grudge rarely stays private. It shapes the way we talk to our children, the way our grandchildren see that relative, and the atmosphere of an entire family.
The book of Proverbs gives an older picture of the same truth.
Proverbs 25:28 says, "He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls."
Picture an ancient city with a gap torn in its wall. The gates may be strong and the watchmen faithful, but as long as that breach remains, raiders can slip in whenever they please.
Unresolved anger and nursed resentment are breaches in the wall.
And James 3:16 shows how wide such a breach can grow. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
Notice the words "every evil work." Strife does not let in one problem. It lets in a whole procession of them.
That is why some households seem to lurch from one crisis to the next. The breach in the wall was never repaired.
Jesus Christ told a story about this in Matthew 18. Peter
Chapter 6: Jesus' warning on forgiveness
Apostle Peter asked in Matthew 18:21, how often he must forgive his brother till seven times.
Jesus answered in Matthew 18:22, "I say not unto thee until 7 times, but until 70 times 7."
Then he told of a servant who was forgiven a debt so large he could never have repaid it in a lifetime and who then went out and seized a fellow servant over a small sum and refused to forgive the poorer servant.
When the master heard it, Matthew 18:34 says, he delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him.
And Jesus Christ concluded in Matthew 18:35, "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye (plural for you in archaic English) from your hearts, forgive not everyone his brother, their trespasses."
This is one of the most sobering warnings Jesus ever gave, and we should let it sober us. Whatever else it teaches, it shows that unforgiveness and torment travel together.
But notice the root of that servant's problem. He received an enormous forgiveness and never let it change him.
Jesus Christ told the story not to frighten his children, but to free them.
So, how does a person forgive what was truly wrong, not by pretending it did not matter, and not by summoning up feelings he does not have.
A believer forgives out of his / her identity.
Colossians 3:13 says, "Forbearing one another and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye."
You are a forgiven person and forgiven people forgive, nor are you left to do it in your own strength.
Romans 5:5 says, "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."
The New Kind of Love, on this truth that the love of God placed in the believer at the new birth is the answer to the wounds human love cannot heal.
And in the two kinds of faith, I gave believers words to say, "He will enable me to walk in love because greater is love within me than jealousy and hatred around me."
Greater is the love within you than the hatred around you. That is not wishful thinking. It is the new creation speaking.
There is a second reason attacks come back. And Jesus explained it plainly in Matthew 12:43-4.
Chapter 7: Filling the empty house
When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and find none, then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out. And when he has come, he find it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in, and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first.
Picture a house that has been cleaned from top to bottom. Every floor swept, every window polished, and every room left empty with the front door unlocked. That is an invitation.
The problem was not that the house was dirty. The problem was that it was empty.
Deliverance without filling leaves a vacancy. And vacancies get filled. So closing the door is only half the work. The other half is filling the house.
Ephesians 5:18 says, "Be filled with the Spirit."
Philippians 4:8 gives you the furniture for your thought life.
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things and fill your mouth as well.
Right after the warning about giving place, apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:29, "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth."
The believer's words should be born of love and filled with love.
Gratitude is especially powerful here because it is very hard to be thankful and bitter at the same time.
1Thessalonians 5:18 says, "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." A house filled with the word, with worship, with gratitude, and with words of love has no empty rooms for the enemy to occupy.
Chapter 8: Steps to close the door
Anger and unforgiveness are the door apostle Paul names in Ephesians 4. But the same principle applies wherever a believer deliberately yields ground.
Romans 6:12-13 says, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof, neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God."
Whatever we keep yielding to, we keep giving room. Some believers also dabbled in things years ago that they never renounced. Fortune tellers, horoscopes, Ouija boards, or other practices God warns against. In Deuteronomy 18:10-12.
When the believers in Ephesus came to Christ Jesus, Acts 19:18 says that many that believed came and confessed and shewed their deeds. And Acts 19:19 says, "Many of them brought their books together and burned them before all men. They did not leave those doors a jar. They closed them decisively and in the open." And Acts 19:20 says, "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed."
So how do you close the door? Begin by asking the Holy Spirit to show you where it is.
Because the doors we cannot see are the ones that stay open longest. Pray the prayer of Psalm 139:23-24.
Search me, oh God, and know my heart.
Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting.
Then sit quietly and let Him answer. Do not go digging through every memory looking for something wrong. That leads to anxiety, not freedom.
Simply ask and notice the name or the memory that rises with a familiar ache. The Holy Spirit is not a harsh inspector. He is a gentle helper and he shows you the door so that you can close it.
Chapter 9: Practical forgiveness
Then forgive specifically, not in general, but by name. And for the particular debt.
Picture a drawer full of old IOUs, each one recording what someone owes you. An apology, a repayment, an admission, a lost year. Forgiveness means taking those slips out one at a time and tearing them up. You are not saying the debt was small. You are saying you will no longer be the one who collects it.
And here is a remarkable detail. Apostle Paul uses the very same expression, give place in Romans 12:19, but there he tells believers to give place unto wrath. For it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord.
You will give place to something. Either you give place to the devil by holding the grudge, or you give place to the justice of God by handing the case to the righteous Judge.
Remember what He did with your own debt.
As Colossians 2:14 says, "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross."
You can pray something like this. "Father, I forgive my brother for what he did. I release the debt. I will not hold itagainst him. And I ask you to bless him." Then thank God because the door is closing. And do not be discouraged if the feelings do not change right away.
Forgiveness is a decision before it is a feeling. When the memory comes back next week and the old ache rises with it, you have not failed. You are simply being given another opportunity to forgive.
And Jesus Christ said 70 times 7. Each time say, " I have already forgiven that and I release it again."
Then take one more step because it seals the door.
Jesus Christ said in Luke 6:27-28, "Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you."
Pray a blessing over the one who hurt you. It is very hard to keep a grudge alive against someone you are sincerely blessing before God.
And notice how closely Jesus Christ tied this to prayer itself. In Mark 11:25, right after his great teaching on faith in the mountain, he said, "And when ye stand praying, forgive if ye have ought (anything) against any, that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."
When ye stand praying, forgive. Jesus Christ knew that a believer could come to God with a mountain moving prayer on his lips and a grudge still lodged in his heart and he would not let those two things stand side by side. Forgiveness clears the path between your prayer and your Father.
Many believers have wondered why their prayer seemed to hit the ceiling when the hindrance was a name they had not released. Let me make it concrete.
Chapter 10: Maintaining a closed door
Suppose a woman has not spoken to her sister since their mother's estate was divided 10 years ago. Every holiday season, a heaviness settles over her.
She feels it in December like clockwork and she prays against depression and discouragement every year. The heaviness lifts for a while and then it returns.
One evening she asks the Holy Spirit to search her heart and her sister's name rises immediately with all the old hurt attached. That night, she forgives her by name and for the particular wounds.
She tears up the IOU. She prays a blessing over her sister and her family.
The next week, she mails a simple card that says, "I have been thinking of you and I love you." Her sister may or may not respond, but the door on her side of the house is closed, and the heaviness that used to slip through it no longer has a way in. Then keep short accounts.
Make the sunset of Ephesians 4:26 a daily checkpoint. Before you sleep, ask yourself, is there anything I am carrying into the night? If there is, lay it down.
And if the Holy Spirit shows you something in your own conduct, a harsh word, a resentful thought, an unkindness, do not let it fester either.
1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
A door that is closed every evening never has time to swing wide. And once the door is closed and the house is filled, notice how different resistance becomes.
Book of James 4:7 says, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."
Resistance from behind a closed door is a completely different experience from resistance with the door wide open.
Before , you were swatting flies in a kitchen with the screen door propped open. Now the latch is fastened and the few flies that try to get in, find nowhere to land. The enem===============================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================y may still knock, but he no longer has a foot in the door.
Chapter 11: Establishing guardrails
Now let me set some guard rails in place because this truth can wound people if it is misused.
The first guardrail is that not every hardship comes through an open door. When the disciples saw a man born blind and asked whose sin had caused it, Jesus answered in John 9:3, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."
And Jesus said in Matthew 5:45 that the Father sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Illness, aging, loss, and grief come to faithful believers who have no open doors at all. So, never use this teaching to search yourself into anxiety. And never use it to diagnose someone else's suffering. The Holy Spirit will show you a door if there is one. If he does not, rest in his love.
The second guardrail is that forgiveness is not the same as excusing, forgetting, or returning to danger. To forgive is to release the debt to God. It does not mean pretending the wrong was acceptable and it does not mean trusting someone again who has not changed.
Romans 12:18 says, "If it be possible, as much as lay in you, live peacebly with all men." If it be possible, sometimes reconciliation is not possible or not safe. And Scripture does not require you to put yourself back in harm's way. If someone has abused you or is endangering others, forgiving them does not mean staying silent. Reporting harm and seeking protection is right. And if the wound is deep, a wise pastor or a Christian counselor can walk with you through the process. Forgiveness closes the door to the enemy. It does not have to open the door to the abuser.
The third guard rail is that we must not overstate what this teaching promises.
Some have taught that unforgiveness is the hidden cause of every illness and that is not something scripture says.
Bitterness certainly burdens the whole person and releasing it brings real peace. But keep your doctor's appointments and take your medicine with a clear conscience. And if you have just realized that a door has been opened for years, there is no condemnation in that discovery.
Romans 8:1 says, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." The Holy Spirit did not show you the door to shame you. He showed it to you so that you could close it today.
Now, if you have lived a good many years, this is for you because some of our grudges are very old.
Chapter 12: Healing old wounds
The sun has gone down on them thousands of times. A quarrel over an inheritance 30 years ago. A brother you have not spoken to since your mother's funeral. A word said at a wedding that no one has ever apologized for. It may feel too late to do anything about it.
But it is never too late to close a door. Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery when he was 17, and he did not see them again for more than 20 years. Long after he had risen to power in Egypt. When his brothers feared he would finally take revenge, Joseph said to them in Genesis 50:20, "But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive."
Joseph did not pretend the evil was good. He simply refused to let it have the last word. and think of what your forgiveness could mean for the generations after you.
Many families carry feuds that began before the grandchildren were born and the children simply inherit the silence. Some of the saddest scenes in this life take place at funerals where brothers and sisters sit on opposite sides of the room. You have the years and the standing in your family to close a door that has been open for a generation. A phone call, a letter, or a simple word of blessing from a grandparent can begin to soften what decades of silence have hardened.
Even if the other person never responds, your side of the door can be closed. And your grandchildren will remember which way you chose. And for some of you, the open door is not a grudge against someone else. It is a grudge against yourself. Regrets about how you raised your children, about a marriage that ended, about years you wish you could live over again. The enemy loves to return to that door with the same accusations night after night.
But hear what God has done with your sin. Psalm 103:12 says, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us."
If God has removed them, you do not need to keep them. Know that righteousness permits us to stand in the Father's presence without the sense of guilt or inferiority.
Receive his forgiveness for yourself and close that door, too. Now, here is the truth I want to place in your hands.
Chapter 13: Living in freedom
The door was closed from heaven's side long before you ever found it. When Jesus died on the cross, he forgave you a debt you could never pay, blotted out the handwriting that stood against you, and stripped every power that once had a claim on you. The enemy has no rightful place in your life. The only place he can occupy is a place that is given to him. And the moment you forgive, as you have been forgiven, hand the debt into God's keeping and fill your house with his love and his word. You are simply agreeing with what the cross has already accomplished. You are not closing the door in your own strength. You are latching it with the hand of a forgiven child. And the love of God poured into your heart is stronger than any hatred that ever wounded you. The attacks that kept coming back were never stronger than Christ in you. They were simply using a door. Close it and they have nowhere to land. So let us gather up what we have seen. Ephesians 4:27 warns that a believer can give the devil a place, a foothold, a foot in the door. And in that very sentence, apostle Paul names the most common doorway.
Anger carried past sunset and hardened into a grudge.
Unforgiveness grieves the Holy Spirit, gives Satan an advantage, sends down a route of bitterness that springs up again and again, and travels hand in hand with torment. Attacks also return to houses that are swept but left empty.
So, closing the door must be followed by filling the house with the spirit. the word and words of love. Close the door by letting the Holy Spirit search you by forgiving specifically and tearing up the IOUs, by giving place to God's justice instead of the devil's foothold.
By blessing those who hurt you, and by keeping short accounts every evening.
Keep every guard rail in place. Not every hardship is an open door.
Forgiveness never requires returning to danger. And there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And remember that you forgive not as someone striving to be good, but as someone who has already been forgiven.
Picture that farmhouse kitchen again on a summer evening. The swatter hangs on its nail. The screen door is closed and latched.
And through the screen, you can see the sun going down over the fields. Nothing is being carried past that sunset. The house is full of quiet, the smell of supper, and an old hymn playing softly on the radio. The flies still buzz against the outside of the screen, but they cannot come in. That is the peace God intends for your life. And remember, this entire teaching is written out for you word for word on our . Read it again, copy it, print it, and share it with someone who needs these words today. If this truth has shown you the door, then declare it.
Write these words, "I am forgiven and I forgive."
That is not a feeling you have to manufacture and it is not a formula. It is agreement with the finished work of Christ who forgave you everything and has poured His love into your heart.
Write it now.
And once that door is closed, your prayers can rise from an entirely different place. So in the very next teaching I will show you the kind of prayer that stands in heaven not on your own merits but on a right Jesus Christ handed his disciples on the night before he went to the Cross.
