Authority Rules!

Children need parents, people need governments, and workers need bosses. What do these needs have in common? Leadership. Parents, governments, and bosses all represent formal forms of leadership in our lives. Another word for leadership is authority. As Christians our authority is none other than Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior who embodies and is also God. On top of all that, God is our undeniable and, frankly, unchallengeable, creator who is over all of us — His created beings and our rightful Holy and Divine authority. In His great wisdom and awesome genius, God has ordained structure and organization: families, governments, churches, and so on. The key to the effective working of these organizational structures are recognition and obedience, submission if you will, to God’s authority in our lives which leads to respect for the organizational structures that He has ordained for us to follow. Even when Jesus was on Earth and lived among men, He did not flaunt His divine authority at any point of His ministry of reconciliation while on Earth and, if He so desired, He had every right to and frankly, no one on Earth or in Heaven could have stopped Him. What sets our God apart is the example He established. He had a divinely-ordained purpose for His presence on Earth. So, if our Lord and Savior had a divine purpose from God His Heavenly Father who is our Creator and we His created beings, likewise don’t believe for a second that WE DON’T have a divine purpose! We are told the following in Genesis 1:26-31, “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.” So, the next logical question we typically have is of the billion or so people currently inhabiting Earth and those who have inhabited the Earth and are deceased, what is my unique purpose from God. Great question! And the answer is simple: Ask Him! Truth: many of us are living outside of our God-intended purpose because of Sin. Sin deceives, lies, steals, kills, and separates us from God. All we need to do is humble ourselves, and ask our Heavenly Father to guide us in knowing and executing His Holy and Divine purpose for our lives. After all, He went through the effort to create us, shouldn’t we demonstrate respect and seek His guidance about why we are here. The short answer is because He loves us.

Amen!