Mark 3:20-27   Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.  But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind.”  And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebub,” and, “By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons.”  So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan?  “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. “And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.  “And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end.  “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house.

There’s always the danger that we miss what God is doing and attribute it to the work of the devil.  Several respected revivalist preachers and theologians of that time condemned the Azusa Street Revival. G. Campbell Morgan described the activities on Azusa Street as “the last vomit of Satan.” R. A. Torrey declared that this movement was “emphatically not of God, and founded by a Sodomite.” H. A. Ironside said in 1912 that the movement was “disgusting … delusions and insanities … pandemonia were exhibitions worthy of a madhouse or a collection of howling dervishes,” causing a “heavy toll of lunacy and infidelity.” W. B. Godbey saw the movement as a result of spiritualism and that the participants were “Satan’s preachers, jugglers, necromancers, enchanters, magicians, and all sorts of mendicants.” Statements like these were made because they didn’t fully understand what God was doing, it shock their foundations, jealousy, and bigotry.

A kingdom, a house and even a church divided cannot stand.  We will never be effective if we allow the devil to be in control. 

·        We need to “Come together in unity, and nothing we plan to do will be impossible” (Gen 11:6)

·        Put to one-side those things we don’t quite understand.

·        Learn to listen to the Holy Spirit and use the gift of discernment.