Greetings;
There is a war in the nations. What is that war? It is a war against authority. Only authority gives life. Power alone will always produce some form of dysfunction and death. True authority doesn’t contain measures of control or manipulation. It only contains measures of life. True authority is seen with fathers living for their children and children living for their fathers. True authority is a testimony of nobility, where everyone lives for the purpose of God’s kingdom and the wellbeing of others. This even happens unknowingly when people embrace the life-giving, life-empowering, and life-protecting boundaries of authority. It is not bound to or limited to people who know God in their hearts.
Authority is a measure of a substance of life given and received for the sake of others. It is never something taken from another, but it is a freewill exchange of the heart. That life can be life sowing, life growing, life maturing, life protecting, and life expanding. Anything without true authority lacks the ability to do these things and thus any system propagated by them results in developing a culture that seeks to take things from others for their own survival. This is nothing less than a cancerous culture of death. A cancerous culture puts its own needs above the destiny of the generations and thus life is cut short. It lacks a multigenerational plan and it lives for the self-needs, self-gratifications, and self-expectations of individuals who seek to band together based upon common interests and goals that meet their own personal needs. When we exchange life-giving authority for self-gratifying power we embrace a way of living that dishonors others. Only a culture of life-giving authority and exhibit the true attributes of a culture of honor. Any culture that exalts men above women exhibits a war against authority. Any culture that exalts women above men is a war against authority. Any culture that values adults above children defies the authority of life. When sex becomes more important than love that produces the fruit of life there is an authority problem. Authority contains a willingness to accept the responsibility aiding the lives of others.
We don’t get our identity from our authority. We get our identity from who God created us to be as His children. Authority is a measure of responsibility given by God to bring life to the world. Everyone has an authority. We need to learn to be who we are and we need to learn to live in the measure of authority given to us by God. Who one is determines their identity and who one is determines their ability to be given measures of authority. In this sense, Identity is connected to authority. In truth, our authority measures our doing and our authority can empower us to do many things. Where authority is missing true identity is missing too, because true identity is a foundation for walking in true authority. Authority is a testimony of inheritance. It is connected to where we come from. Inheritance is a measure of identity and it is something given and received. When it is despised and rejected something less than inheritance is spawned.
I have known for the past sixteen years that we are in a move of God’s grace. That move of grace is being empowered by the Spirit of Knowing (Knowledge – as in intimacy). The Spirit of Knowing is one of seven expressions of Holy Spirit’s perfecting work in our lives and in the earth. I have known that this present move is about love. It is about community. It is about communion and life. It is about the breaking of bread, the giving of life to one another. It is about the drinking of wine, the receiving of the heavenly testimony of the life of the Holy Spirit in our midst. I have known this move to be one of love, but I am coming to understand that true love is a testimony of true authority. It is not mere empathy for the needs of men. It is an honor for the Creator and His children so the earth can be liberated into a greater freedom and liberty of life.
This present war against authority pretends to be powerful in its presentation. Men motivated by this anti-life spirit execute others by removing their heads. They mutilate and disfigure the human forms of men, women, and children. This is a defiance of authority. When cultures disfigure the forms of human lives and treat them as something less than the dust of the earth, that culture is in danger of extinction. It is not the Creator that makes it extinct, but creation. Creation cries out for manifested authority, but when power alone prevails the groans and travails of the earth expel the rooting of the perverted generations of men.
This war upon authority is not just present in the legalistic, controlling cultures of the world. It is also at work in the liberal, promiscuous cultures of the world. These cultures are bound to the administration of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thus they lack the ability to bring the true substance of authority to the peoples of the world.
Where are the princes of nobility? Where are the warriors of authority? Authority is the true measure of love. It doesn’t just empathize with our needs. True authority brings solutions to the needs of men. True authority empowers life. Power alone seeks to take life from others in the form of entitlements, while authority is a measure of substance given that can empower others to propagate life. We must be leaders in the testimony of authority and not mere power. True leaders empowered by the internal kingdom of God are life sowing, life growing, life maturing, life protecting, and life expanding in their measures of rule.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
