Bucking Authority

Humans in general, are in a state of confusion when it comes to knowing what to say yes too and what to say no too.

What to believe and what not to believe.

Who to listen to and who not to listen to.

We are asked to do enormous amounts of things, be at all sorts of places and attend zillions of meetings, parties and get togethers.

Zing, zing zing… So many, many things to ding, sing and ping.

Then, on the other hand- We are constantly being bombarded by messages of “do what feels right for you” or “do what makes you happy” or “go with your truth” Now, I am not saying these messages are inherently wrong. (Except the whole “your truth" is completely wrong. There is a “A” truth but not a “your” truth.)

However, the agenda behind them is a bit selfish. The pendulum has swung from: beating our brains out in our effort to people please and fostering a work acholic’ lifestyle-  to the other end of the spectrum in doing whatever it takes to feel like we ourselves are not over doing it because we are burnt out.

We get burned out when there isn’t enough balance in between our work and rest. We get burned out if we are in jobs we weren’t created to do. We get burned out when we are bored or angry or spinning our wheels in a confusing mess. And sometimes, we get burned out because we want an excuse to just stop whatever it is we are doing.

It’s a standard demonic tactic. That swinging of the pendulum from one extreme to another.

The messaging is telling us “You have had enough! You are in charge and no one is going to tell you differently”.

It literally pushes us to the brink and then pushes us into a state where we want nothing to do with anyone telling us what to do.

Please note, Mental health is important. Taking care of our body is important. Our family and friends are important. This is all true.

But- May I put forward the idea, that the pendulum keeps swinging out of balance because we aren’t correctly aligned with God and listening to his ideas and plans for our lives?

God wants us to be healthy and happy and filled with joy, and He also wants our obedience.

Obedience… A horrible- awful word these days. In fact, I dare say some of you reading this may be bristling at the word right now!

Here is the thing. Emotionally healthy and happy follows obedience to the Lord. We are often putting the healthy and happy part ahead of the obedience part and it doesn’t add up. We want all the goodies of life without putting in the discipline of obedience to God.

This is an authority issue.

We are not just having problems obeying the authority in our lives, we are having a hard time even recognizing the authority! We have lost sight of who is in charge so badly that we have decided we ourselves are in charge.

But- We believers must recognize authority.

Who authority belongs to and who can use it, how it should work. And we have to respect it. It doesn’t mean we always have an easy time of agreeing with it. (Perhaps, some places of authority need to be removed, but abusive authority isn’t what we are talking about here.)

We have a love affair with the idea that our feelings matter more than what is right and wrong.

They do not.

And because so many of us have been feeding the monster of “feelings” we have taken wrecking balls to the authority that God has installed to specifically help correct us when we need correction or give us trusted advice when we want it.

Many of us, either subconsciously or knowingly will literally remove ourselves from relationships that may have the possibility of accountability in them. This is done so we ourselves can be in control and not be told what to do or not do by anyone except ourselves.

Now- just because most of us reading this are “adults” doesn’t mean we actually “grew up”.  Some of us adults are still running around in footie pajamas with sippy cups, the only difference is there is an alcoholic drink in the sippy cup. (And what an awful picture that is- a drunken child.)

Many of us have issues with authority because we want to be our own authority and everyone else’s as well. We never learned what it means to surrender and to work under someone else without undermining.

Correction is an important part of life. Discernment can grow from a desire to be one with Christ and we need discernment to hear when God is trying to correct us. I dare say, if God attempts to correct us and we are not in alignment with Him, we will not tolerate it one bit! In fact we will incorrectly saddle the messaging agent as controlling, uncaring, unjust and a basic fool.

The real fool is obviously ourselves, and still God lets us make our own choice. Foolish people despise correction and authority. You can take that to the bank and- its also in the Bible.

But love- Love does give correction because when we love, we care enough to set aside the idea that we might be rejected just long enough to deliver a message.

Look- if there is nothing to correct and it was all a false alarm, a person who is healthy and in alignment with God will not despise someone trying to help him out.

My husband had to talk to a young man who came forward after church one Sunday. The young man was a visitor from another city and had a laundry list of wrongs he thought we had committed during the service that day. He had nothing positive to say, only negative things. The young man told my husband not to feel “real” special as he had to do the same thing to another church the week before! My husband thanked the man for his concern and they both went their ways. However, we did stop to ask the questions, did we do something we shouldn’t have and if we did, should we change it? Both my husband and I sensed this young man was out of alignment with the Lord, but nevertheless, we examined his criticism briefly and then moved on. We knew this young man was sure he was called to be a policeman of sorts to the church, but that didn’t make his mouth right. We respected him regardless of his conviction. Bottom line- We didn’t despise him. And we used discernment to decide if we needed to make changes based upon his criticism. And then- we move on with our lives. No drama, shouting and leaving the church over it.

The word “leader” is often seen as a specialty position. But I would like to put forward the idea that every single one of us are born leaders, just in different spaces, places and seasons.

A mother may be leading her children and later grow into a different position of leadership. Perhaps a high schooler is leading a theatrical team and later he will lead in government. You don’t have to grow up to lead, children do lead other children. We used to play a game when I was young called “Follow the Leader”. There was one person in front, and we all followed wherever the leader went, doing whatever they did or said without question. Then, we took turns. I actually enjoyed following rather than leading.

We all need to understand that Leading, does not mean we are leading people in the right direction.

If we are all “leaders” on some level, the question then becomes:

Who am I leading? And where am I leading them?

This is good for us all to review from time to time.

A leader with no awareness of the direction they are going is going to end up leading people exactly to that end. Nowhere.

Some leaders expect other leaders to rise. Gads… (This is almost as bad as the word obedience.)

Leaders who have expectations of those around them to grow, can run into a lot of conflict. Especially, if you’re in ministry. It’s one thing if someone’s paycheck is on the line and a whole other ballgame if it’s a volunteer situation.

“Well shoot! If He’s gonna tell me what to do and how to live, I’m outta here!…" (Please- do leave. And I feel bad for the next community that has to deal with your ugly behavior.)

It’s as if believers have this idea that the grace of God is supposed to somehow cover their butts from doing a poor job, complaining, living double lives, fostering laziness and presenting a general disrespect of the church authority.

Out of all the people in the world- Believers should be setting the absolute best example of working as if they were working and living unto the Lord.

But what I have seen largely is an attitude of rebellious nature. What a lot of us seem to be delivering up is a selfish- narrow minded view of what the church is here to do in the first place.

We have seen some of the results of absolute truths get ripped away from the foundation of our culture. And now, we believers are dragging in the same attitude into the church community. We do not want to be told what to do, how to do it or to be corrected in any way. How is this working out for all of us? I’ll tell you- Poorly.

When we exercise an attitude of “my way, my rules, my truth”, many people pay the price. The Kingdom of God suffers because that kind of attitude causes many divorces in many ways within the body of Christ. Literally, we leave trails of made up stories, ugly legacies, gossiping and murmuring among the people. And the people who should Know better, are the very ones perpetrating it.

How are we any better than the Israelites who saw- with their own eyeballs- miracle after miracle and yet still, they couldn’t stay focused on who the authority was and how to follow it?

God established authority. And if the people walk away from authority (as we have seen this happening in our world) we are walking away from God’s design. We will and are paying the price for this attitude.

The kids are watching us adults.

We are setting the example for future generations because we are leaders of the next generation.

What choices are they watching us make?

What things are they hearing us say?

What are our kids reflecting back to us from ourselves?

God is the ultimate authority. But he also has installed leaders for us in each other.

We must come back to a place of alignment with what God says. That includes- obedience to God and respecting and valuing covenant relationships with each other.

We- of all the peoples in the world- the Believers of the one and only God should be the outliers of what the world says is normal.

When the church goers’ have no better track record and sometimes worse than the world, we have got problems to solve. There is no way, the Bride of Christ can move forward if we cannot all be living in harmony with each other and working through things with each other.

The breakage must come to a halt.

The sneaky snake of arrogance must be caught and killed, and we must move into humility where we are able to expect and accept the authority that God has given over us.

We must be kind, solid and wise. All of us- in whatever position of authority we hold.

And hold it steady- results will come from persistence in growing with the Lord.