How to have AUTHORITY wherever you go

You want authority. 
You want powerful influence.
Freedom to speak and act.
Respect.

How can you have these wherever you go?

To have authority, you must be under authority.

 

 

But first we must answer three questions:

1. What is authority?

2. Where does it come from?

3. How do we use it?

 

AUTHORITY IS THE POWER TO COMMAND AND BE OBEYED.

Once a soldier (a "centurion" in this historical context) wanted the Lord Jesus to heal one of his beloved servants.  Here is what happened according to Matthew, one of Jesus' chosen ambassadors:



 

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help.  “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”

The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.  For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

 

Notice what the centurion says.  He felt confident that Jesus had authority to heal diseases, and he believed authority meant the power or ability to command and be obeyed.  In other words, because Jesus had authority over diseases, he had the ability to command diseases in the same way that the centurion had the ability to command soldiers under his authority.  The centurion would say, "Go," and his soldiers would go; he would say "Come," and his soldiers would come; he would say, "Do this," and his servant would do it.  That's authority:  The ability to command and be obeyed.  The ability to have happen what you want to have happen.  But where does authority come from?  Jesus and Paul tell us.

 

AUTHORITY COMES FROM GOD.

This is what Jesus said after he rose from the dead: 

"All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth."

 

Paul, Jesus' ambassador to all who were not of Hebrew descent (Gentiles) said this:

"Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God.  The authorities that exist have been appointed by God."

 

The centurion we've been focusing on said he was "a man under authority."  And he assumed Jesus was under the authority of God, and thus had the ability to command diseases to leave and they obey him. 

 

To have authority, you must be under authority.

God's authority.

Directly or Indirectly.

 

This means you are either in authority, from God, or under the authority of someone who has authority from God.

 

For example, I am a father, and fathers have God given authority from their God given identity, as Moses said,

 

"Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long on the earth."

 

Paul also says, "Children obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord."

 

As a father, I have the right to command my children and expect obedience from them.  I have authority over them because I am in authority.  They have authority when they act under my authority. 

 

Authority comes from God.

You are either in authority right now, as you read my words, or you are under someone's authority as you read my words.  When you act under the authority over you, you have authority. 

 

If you are at work, and your manager or supervisor tells you to do something, you have authority to do it.  This means you do it in the name of your manager.  You can say, "My manager says to do this," to whom every you must interact with.  Your manager is your enforcer.  If you are resisted, he or she is the one being resisted, and he or she is the one to enforce his or her authority, given to you. 

 

Authority is the ability to command and be obeyed.

Authority comes from God.

You use authority by speaking and acting in the name of authority.

 



(Click HERE for part 2)

The ONLY Thing Necessary for YOU TODAY

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. Acts 4:13

The only thing necessary for you today is to be recognized as one who has been with Jesus.  Not what you know or don't know.  Not your status in life.  No matter where you are life, you will have power and boldness as His witness.  Only start and continue your day with Him, letting His Spirit be recognized in your life.  You do this in two ways, in the same two ways that Peter and John did them:

Do everything in Jesus name, and do everything by His Spirit.

DO EVERYTHING IN JESUS' NAME.
We say grace and pray, and at the end we say, "In Jesus' name."  But we don't realize what we are saying or why we are saying it.  The apostles were strictly forbidden to teach or preach in Jesus' name.  Evidently their enemies knew the significance of using Jesus' name, so much so that the first interaction with the apostles after a great healing was this:

"They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: 'By what power or what name did you do this?'" Acts 4:7

By what power they asked?  By what name?

The name of Jesus on your lips, in your prayers, and in your life, means that you say and do everything under His authority and for His glory.  To obey and display Him.  When this is the case, people will  recognize that you have been with Jesus.  They will recognize His Spirit in you and with you.

DO EVERYTHING BY HIS SPIRIT.
It is written,

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.  Romans 8:14

This is your birthright, your identity, your normality.  If you believe in Jesus, you should do NOTHING unless the Spirit is leading you to do it.  NOTHING.  Jesus told the 120 followers to stay in Jerusalem until they had been "endued with power from on high."  His apostles had been with Him for 3 years, even performing miracles.  They saw Him risen and ascending into heaven, and all they really were supposed to do is go and tell people what they had seen and heard. Yet even they were forbidden to start their mission without the Spirit.

So are you.

Here you are.  You're awake.  You pray to the Father, in the name of Jesus, by the Holy Spirit.  You read the scriptures, or words based on scripture, as your  spiritual food for today.  The Spirit impresses on you the need to focus your mind on why Jesus came to earth:  to seek and save the lost.  He shows you that your number 1 priority for today is to be a witness of the Lord Jesus by imitating Jesus in all you do.  You ask God to fill you with His Spirit so that you may imitate Jesus.  You thank God for the power of His Spirit, because you know you've asked that which is God's will, and that God will grant prayers that agree with His will.

So you go. You imitate Christ to the best of your knowledge, at home, and when you leave, doing the one thing in your own mind that you know without doubt is an imitation of Christ.  You feel the power of the Spirit giving you further insights into how Christ would speak or act in your exact situation. And people recognize that you have been with Jesus, because they know it is not your education level or status in life that gives you such boldness as a witness of the Lord Jesus.  They see the same power and boldness in us that they saw in Peter and John.

• We have no power as witnesses of Jesus without the Holy Spirit leading us. 
• You and I have the same Spirit that Peter and John had, bearing witness to the same Jesus.

Enter your day in the name of Jesus, under His authority and for His glory.

Enter your day by following His Spirit, doing only what He leads you to do.

 

The only thing necessary for you today is to be recognized as one who has been with Jesus.

 

 

The ONE THING NECESSARY To MEET with GOD (Part 2)

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.  1 Peter 2:9

GOD CONSECRATES HIS MINISTERS
By the blood of Jesus and the presence of the Spirit of God in us, individually and collectively, we have been called and chosen by God as those who intercede for unbelievers in this world.  This is our royal priesthood, our access to the throne of the King of Kings, The High Priest in the Order of Melchizidek.  We the church are now the nation set apart on earth that God specially owns for this purpose:

We declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.

We alone can do this as the royal priests of God on earth.  All of us are now consecrated priests of God, intercessors.  Christ our High Priest intercedes for us, and allows to enter God's direct presence with the fear of death that Aaron the first high priest had.  Yet the Holy of Holies is still sacred, and we dare not enter apart from the blood of Jesus.  We dare not enter by the flesh, which is defiled and hateful in God's sight.  We come covered in the blood of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, holy ourselves. 

We have the one thing necessary to meet with God:  Consecration.
Be consecrated.
Belong to God alone.

The Source of Everything You Do (And How to Impact It!) Part 3

If you will be like the teacher that I wrote about in Part 2 and guard your will against boundary breaches like the student who came to his house uninvited, you will discover the source of all your God given power, and you will change your life starting now. 

Jesus Himself said these words,
"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me."  Revelation 3:20

Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, to whom God the Father gave all authority in heaven and on earth, doesn't just barge into our houses, though He could.





Or He could just use His key, like house keeping does in some apartments when they do maintenance.  They just come right on in. But not God.  Even God respects the freedom of your heart enough to knock and wait for you to invite Him in.  If God does this, so should every one else in your life, and so should you in everyone else's life.

By respecting the boundaries of God's supreme will, and by respecting the boundaries of your will and the will of people, you will find the source of everything you do, of every relationship.  The only will you absolutely always resist is Satan's will.  And the only will you absolutely always submit to is God's.  Knowing these two things alone, who to always submit to and always resist, gives you enough power to relate to any and every one, any and every situation, making you a powerful person.

• The source of everything you do is your heart! 
• You impact it by guarding it!

Above all else, GUARD YOUR HEART!

 

The Definition of Sin (And How to Overcome It)

"Whosoever commits sin also transgresses the law of God:

for sin is the transgression of the law of God."  1 John 3:4

What is sin?
TRANSGRESSION

What is being transgressed?
GOD'S LAW

What is God's law?
GOD'S WILL.

So sin is ultimately when we don't respect boundaries.

We supremely dishonor the  boundaries of the Creator.

We dishonor the boundaries of His creatures.

 

Think of the first two  of the 10 Commandments, God's law, God's will for us:



1.  I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt.  You shall have no other gods before me. 

The boundary:  God's Unique Identity.

2.  You shall not make graven images to worship them.

The boundary:  God's Unique Qualities

 

When God created the heavens and the earth, He distinguished, categorized, named, and separated some creations from other creations. 

• Light from darkness.  Day from night.
• The waters above (clouds) from the waters below (seas)
• The land, called earth, separated from waters, called seas.
• The greater light to govern the day (the sun) from the lesser lights governing the night (moon and stars)

To disregard God's supreme distinction is sin.

To disregard the distinctions in creation is sin.

We overcome sin by changing our minds, and thus our actions:  Repenting.

We stop thinking and acting like we are our own Creator and all creatures are subject to us, and we start thinking and acting according to the truth, since "we exchanged the truth for the lie and worshipped the creature instead of the Creator," according to scripture.

How do you feel when your unique feelings and perspectives are disregarded, treated as though insignificant, as though your unique existence makes no difference?  Remember how you and I have lived most of our lives treating God like exactly like this. 

Remember of how we've resisted the boundaries of our own identity.  We don't set limits, nor so we respect the limits of others.  We hate limits.  We want to be what we are not and do what we can not!  We want someone else's wife or boyfriend.  We want someone else's life or job.  We want to look like our favorite celebrity instead looking the way God made us to look.  We want any and everything except the life God gave us, or to be the person he made us to be.

But if we begin right now to accept what we are NOT, and what we ARE, by realizing who God is, and who God is not, we will overcome the essence of our sin in every situation: 

Boundary transgressions.

Choose to accept the boundaries of God in your life.
Say,

"God, you alone are God.  I am what you made me, nothing more or less.  I accept that everyone is yours, not mine, to be what you made them to be.  From now on, I will not cross the line of who you are, or who they are.  Nor will I allow anyone to overstep their boundaries with me."

• To overstep boundaries is the essence of sin.
• To over come sin, respect the Creator's boundaries supremely, and each of His creature's boundaries impartially.

(Image from phoenixajournal.wordpress.com)

 

What does it mean when we say "In Jesus' Name?"

When we pray, cast out demons, or heal the sick in the name of Jesus, it means we do these things in His authority, for His glory,  and according to His reputation. 

IT MEANS SUBMISSION TO JESUS' AUTHORITY

The Lord Jesus said all authority is given to Him in heaven and on earth.  When we act in His name, or according to His will, we are acting on the supreme right of God's Son to rule all things in our lives.  We can know that Jesus Himself will enforce our words and deeds if they are done in submission to Him.

IT MEANS SEEKING JESUS' GLORY

Who are we focused on when we pray?  Who do we want to get the credit when we heal?  What name makes demons afraid?  Only the name of Jesus.  We want all attention on Him.

IT MEANS HONORING JESUS' REPUTATION

When I was in college, an under classmen wanted to rent a car.  But he didn't have a credit card.  I did.  He wanted to borrow it.  I said, "Now when you use my credit card, remember that it's in my name.  Everything you do with this car will reflect on me.  So don't do anything with this rental car that I wouldn't do."  My reputation was on the line.  When we use Jesus' name, so is his.

• We who believe in Jesus have the honor of approaching God the Father in the name of His Son. 
• When we say, "In Jesus' name," we have authority at the throne of God; we seek the glory of His Son, and seek to honor His Son's reputation. 
•  This is what it means when we say, "In Jesus' Name."