Purpose And Power Of Authority (7 page)

It is one thing to know that God created you in His image and likeness, but there is something beyond the act of creation itself, and that is why He created you and what authority He has given you to accomplish your purpose on earth.

As the Ultimate Authority, the Creator is the Source of the authority within you, within me, and within everyone else in the world. We need to recognize and exercise the authority He has placed inside us and carry out what He has authorized us to be and do.

In the Physical World

To begin to recognize and exercise the authority within us, let’s explore one of the foundational principles of authority that we noted in chapter one: Everyone and everything is designed to fulfill its purpose. We can also word it in this way: The purpose for which a product is designed determines the design of the product itself. Everything (at least, everything that is well made) is designed so that it will fulfill the purpose for which it was created.

This foundational principle is built into all of creation. Everything was made because there is something that the Creator wanted on earth that required its existence.

For example, in the physical world that He created, God needed something that would prevent people and objects on earth from drifting off into space, and so He established gravity, with its associated laws.

God knew He would need something to produce light rays that would cause photosynthesis in plants, and so He built this capacity into the sun.

God’s purpose was to perpetuate life on earth, and so He provided for the sustenance and perpetuation of life in a number of ways.

Although many flowers are beautiful to look at, and although appreciating beauty is valuable in itself, there is more to flowers than their beauty. Certain insects are genetically designed to respond to certain colors of flowers, and those colors are connected to what the insects need to feed on for survival. When the insects feed from the blossoms, they pick up pollen from the plants and then transfer that pollen to other plants. This causes the plants to create blossoms and fruit, which produce new plants so that life can be carried on through subsequent generations. God was therefore not only thinking about the beauty of the plants but also of the new plants that would come later as a result of them. He has created everything for a purpose, and He has given everything its own authority to carry out that purpose.

God created the human body with various purposes in mind, and so He designed it to function according to certain processes. For example, He knew the body would need a method of taking in oxygen while breathing out carbon dioxide, so He first designed plants with the capacity to take in carbon dioxide while emitting oxygen. Then, He created the human body to produce carbon dioxide, which the plants need, so the plants could produce oxygen, which the body needs. He also designed human lungs to act as an exchange mechanism for this process. He made everything because there was something that would require its existence.

Every aspect of the human body was designed with a specific assignment so that it could function in a healthy way. The entire world was created to function in such a manner that everything had what it needed to sustain life. And the Creator has been keeping the world going ever since.

For by [God] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.(Colossians 1:16–17, emphasis added)

In the “World” of Human Relationships and Vocation

God planned not only the interactions and interrelationships of the physical world according to His purposes, but also human relationships and human vocation according to His purposes. By vocation, I do not mean just people’s “jobs.” I am referring to the concept of vocation as “the special function of an individual or group” or “a summons or strong inclination to a particular state or course of action.” There is something that God desires to accomplish that made your existence necessary and valuable. If you’re ever tempted to feel that you’re not important, remember that your purpose is what caused you to be born. God has an assignment in mind that made you essential.

I believe that every single person on the planet—now approaching seven billion of us, young and old—was created because there was something God wanted done that required that person’s existence. Your birth is evidence that God wanted to accomplish something that He had to create you to do.

Everyone was created to have dominion over an area or a specific “territory” of life that only he can “govern.” When you find the area or territory that you’re supposed to oversee, you will find the secret to your fulfillment in life and to your particular contribution to the human race. This territorial assignment is your authority.

A Greek word for “authority” in the Scriptures is exousia, and one meaning of this word is “delegated influence.”

Therefore, your authority determines your influence in the world.

This means that whatever you were created to do is your territory, or area of authority. Your unique gifts and qualities are the special tools that allow you to function in your authority.

Authority Is from the Author and for the Author

Authority is therefore an inherent purpose of human beings. Moreover, along with authority, we have been given the ability to fulfill the intent of our Author, or Source. Thus, authority is both from the Author and for the Author. Authority is fulfilled successfully when the Author is pleased. When you manifest your authority, that is your measure of success.

The Creator supports His delegated authority. He is responsible for making sure that the authority He gave you is successful. One who has true authority will never abandon those to whom he delegates authority. He will enable them to fulfill it. “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me” (Psalm 138:8).

A Matter of Reputation

One of the reasons the Creator supports the authority He has given us is that His reputation is on the line. For example, in the commercial world, the products you buy are supported by the manufacturers because their names are on them, and they want to protect their reputations in the minds of consumers. A company wants its products to succeed and to sell well. Its name and its image are synonymous in the customers’ minds, and therefore, if a product is faulty, the company’s name can be tarnished—sometimes to the point of causing the business to fail.

When the Toyota company had technical problems with its popular energy-conserving car, the Prius, as well as other models, their previously excellent name in the automobile business was weakened. In addressing the situation and trying to regain consumers’ trust, one of the things they did was to run television advertisements saying that they were working hard to correct the problems. To further protect the brand name of Toyota, the company sent the president of the company, who is the grandson of the founder, to meet with the Congress of the United States to discuss the issues directly and to explain the steps the company was taking to resolve the problems and to manage quality control. All of this was done to protect the name of the company and to regain its authority in the marketplace.

When the international banking industry took a tailspin through, among other things, poor lending practices, causing banks to fail and prompting governments to offer grants and loans to help banks weather the crisis, some banks displayed signs on their buildings stating that they were “Bail-out Free.” They wanted their customers to know that they had not engaged in risky banking policies, were in sound financial shape, and had not needed to accept governmental funds. The signs were one attempt to protect their names in the minds of their customers.

Similarly, whenever there are issues with the quality of certain foods or with an outbreak of food poisoning, some grocery stores and restaurants post signs that indicate that their products were not affected by whatever was causing the problem. They want people to know they still have quality goods for sale, so that their own reputations won’t be affected by the problems of other companies.

These examples are a reflection of the fact that a responsible source or manufacturer of a product desires to guarantee the quality of the product so that it is safe and functions according to design.

The Creator backs up the authority He has given us as we operate according to the principles He has established for humanity. He tells us, “I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled” (Jeremiah 1:12), and “The Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake” (1 Samuel 12:22 kjv).

As it was established by the Creator, authority is inherently good. It allows us to fulfill our collective and individual purposes as human beings. Yet, historically, we have seen how authority has been abused by those who were supposed to be its custodians, as well as by those who usurped authority for their own purposes and selfish goals. Again, false authority has hurt some people so badly that they reject the very concept of authority.

In our contemporary world, because of our negative experiences with “authority figures,” we face the issue of needing to be friendly with authority to get along in life but never quite trusting it. We don’t want to accept any vestiges of absolute authority. Nevertheless, we find ourselves in a dilemma: as human beings, we were created to operate under legitimate authority and its principles, and our lives can’t function properly without them; yet, at the same time, we’re afraid of authority.

In the face of this dilemma, how do we recover genuine authority in our lives? The Creator says, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). Therefore, let us move forward to discover how to recapture the true nature of authority for ourselves and our world.

Chapter Four

Our authority is found in what the Creator planned and designed for us to do, but most of us are not living according to our personal authority. To recapture our true authority, we need to discover how humanity’s confusion about authority began and why it persists. We have to start again at the beginning.

God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.(Genesis 1:26–27)

When human beings were made in the image and likeness of the Creator, they were designed to be like Him, act like Him, and function like Him. Just as He rules, humans were to rule the earth—under His ultimate authority, His established principles for the earth. This authority did not belong to human beings; it was entrusted to them by the Creator. A shared authority was delegated to them.

You can never “take” true authority. It is always delegated and therefore can only be received with gratitude and acted upon. You can seize power, but authority has to be given to you. Moreover, if you transfer some of the authority that you have received to someone else, then he, too, can only receive it. He can’t take your authority from you.

We noted in the last chapter that true authority corresponds to the principles and laws the Creator has established concerning humanity. If we fail to follow these principles and laws, we will find ourselves outside of the protection of His authority, and therefore we will be at risk. Whatever is not authorized by the Creator can’t be guaranteed to function as designed.

Unfortunately, the first human beings went outside of the parameters of the authority that the Creator God had given to them and did exactly what He had told them not to do. Why? Because they desired power more than authority.

God has an enemy, Satan (meaning “accuser” or “adversary”), also called the devil, who tempted them to do this. Satan is a created angelic being who rebelled against God’s authority himself. His goal is to cause human beings to lose their true selves by forfeiting the precious life and authority that God has given to them. He tempted the first human beings by asking them, in effect, “Wouldn’t you like to be like God?” Yet Adam and Eve were already like God; they were created in His image and reflected His nature. They had His delegated authority. But Satan wanted them to doubt who they inherently were and to become something else, something unnatural. And this is exactly how he has been tempting human beings ever since.

This is how the initial temptation transpired:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”…Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.(Genesis 2:15–17; 3:1–6)