Spiritual Warfare: Non-Linear Authority

Spiritual warfare: Angels, demons, possession, oppression, cleansing, healing, casting out, darkness and light.

These sound like medieval issues, and yet we live surrounded by the reality that outcomes of such dramatic battles fill our lives and our media.

So, we look at the encounters Jesus had with unclean spirits, we look at history and texts and journals of our spiritual forefathers, we hear sermons, lectures, conferences and attend services dedicated to healing and wholeness, and we seek to grow. We see and hear words of “command” uttered by those who heal and restore, to banish and exile suffering and torment.

We are struck with a sense of awe and wonder, at the confidence with which words of healing, wholeness, or spiritual cleansing are uttered. “Faith!” we say, and recognize. “Power!” we see and recognize. “Authority!” we realize… and ponder the implications to ourselves, our lives, our prayer, our intercession.

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Being so very human, so very normal in our social structures, culture and relationships, we tend to think of “Authority” in terms of “hierarchy”, like the military, or the law… in a line, descending from top to bottom from the Lord on High, downwards through Jesus, through Spirit, through “saints”, through “Christians”, and on downwards from there. Divine Authority seems, to us, a great “Trickle Down Theory” of godly economy, with each tier subject to the next.

Such a view seems affirmed in Jesus’ praise of the faith of the Roman Centurion in the Gospel of Matthew (the event is also reported in Luke 7):

⁵ And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, ⁶ and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.” ⁷ Jesus *said to him, “I will come and heal him.” ⁸ But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹ For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” ¹⁰ Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. ¹¹ I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; ¹² but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ¹³ And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment. [Matthew 8]

I mean, that certainly SOUNDS like “military”, “straight-line”, authority, right? But look… Jesus didn’t have to speak TO the illness to heal the servant. The servant was healed in the moment of interaction between the faith of the Centurion, and the presence and willingness of Jesus. Would the servant have been healed without the interest, petition, and conversation of the Centurion? Who, then, “did” the healing? Who then, exercised “authority”?

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Well, we know that all True Authority rightly vest in and from God. But… but… then what? What “path” does it follow in its “downward trickle”?

Slowly, looking at scripture, watching and listening to Jesus, I’ve realized a rather strange thing. It would seem that “God’s ways are not our ways”, and that He doesn’t wire things quite the way we do.

The Pharisees also struggled with the nature of Jesus’ authority, and one day they asked Him about it, point blank. The answer He gave, I had always thought of as “rhetorically clever”. But in recent years I’ve come to realize that He wasn’t being “mysterious, clever, and obfuscating”… He was, in fact, giving the only correct answer to the question that can be given.

²³ When He entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him while He was teaching, and said, “By what authority are You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?” ²⁴ Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. ²⁵ The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?” And they began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ ²⁶ But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the people; for they all regard John as a prophet.” ²⁷ And answering Jesus, they said, “We do not know.” He also said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” [Matthew 21]

Now, was Jesus simply being coy and clever there? Or perchance did He actually answer them with not only a truthful, but an accurate answer? Were they asking a question that did not HAVE an answer of the type they were looking for?

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I want to leave you here with some passages to look at, and a “thought”. This is not so much an “answer” to all this, as simply a “response” from my own spirit, heart, mind… to/for your spirit, heart, mind. If it leads to your own “answer”, great. If not, the mysteries play on.

Have a Look at:

• John 10:16-18
• Matthew 28:16-20
• John 14:8-10
• Philippians 2:5-11

Go ahead and “run the word ‘Authority'” through your tools or concordances, and ponder all that as I did when I “paused” in my posts on Spiritual Warfare…

Ask yourself the question Jesus asked of me after all that study, saying…

“OK, now that you’ve seen all that…. Who currently holds the ‘Authority of Kingdom’? God the Father? Me? The Holy Spirit? The Bride? You individually? You collectively? The Father had all authority, gave it all to Me, I submitted utterly to Him, the Spirit judges… So… like ‘Button, button, who’s got the button?’… or the other child’s game of ‘Hot Potato’… Who NOW holds the Authority? Where did it come to rest?”

Now, that was the question… I STILL do not have what I would call “An Answer”, but I think I may have gotten the Point.

I have come to rest in the belief that this is a Trick Question. This is a question with no answer. The Point rests in “Oneness”. God, utterly and entirely, IS His own Authority. Christ is in the Father, Father in the Son, Spirit in Both, Spirit in Us, Christ in me, I in Him, together we in the Father, All of the Body, All of the Bride, All in Him, Him in All…

The Authority resides in Him, and in all the Oneness with Him in which we engage. This is “Non-Linear” Authority. It vests in the Oneness into which He draws each of us, and when we (individually or corporately) rest in His grace, His will, His words, His works…. His authority is present and effective. When we do not, it isn’t.

This there is no one at whom we can point and say, “HE has/speaks with God’s authority”…. or “SHE does”… by virtue simply of who they are, what they do, what office they hold, or what claims they make.

That authority vests in moments, in persons and events, where God’s will in love, grace, wholeness, healing, truth… is clearly expressed. No more, no less.

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That is how I have come to “see things”. I may be right. You may see things differently and you may be right. And perhaps we both are. Far more important than whether I (or anyone else) is “right”, is my prayer that laying this out this way, looking at scripture and pondering the love and nature of God, opening to the teaching of the Holy Spirit, brings all of us greater love, light, and truth in our own walks and lives.

Joy, blessings, and grace to all!

The Little Monk

 

Journey — Zenith to Nadir

And Jesus was saying to them, “Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”

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(Here we see the Lord in an amazine ONE DAY journey from the Heavenly to the Demonic!)

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Six days later, Jesus *took with Him Peter and James and John, and *brought them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His garments became radiant and exceedingly white, as no launderer on earth can whiten them. Elijah appeared to them along with Moses; and they were talking with Jesus. Peter *said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three tabernacles, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” For he did not know what to answer; for they became terrified. Then a cloud formed, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is My beloved Son, listen to Him!” All at once they looked around and saw no one with them anymore, except Jesus alone.

When they came back to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. Immediately, when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up to greet Him.

And He asked them, “What are you discussing with them?”

And one of the crowd answered Him, “Teacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it.”

And He *answered them and *said, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!” They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. And He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?”

And he said, “From childhood. It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!”

And Jesus said to him, “‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.”

Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.” After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, “He is dead!”

But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up.

When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?”

And He said to them, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.” [Mark 9:1-8; 14-29]

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Another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, so that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand. [Revelation 8:3-4]

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I know that is a really LONG passage to open with, Gentle Reader. But you probably know the narratives fairly well, and perhaps you rather skimmed over them, which is fine. The matter at hand here is the “weaving together” of love, faith, and PRAYER.

At the close of the day, when Jesus appeared at the fire pit, He asked me to go to my pack and bring Him what appeared at the top of “my stuff”. What I found was a pouch with three spools of thick thread inside. One spool was of gold, like yarn. One spool was black. The last was clear.

The Lord said, “You have a friend who has spoken of the ‘loom’ of his spiritual life. You’ve used a similar paradigm for years of the weaving of a tapestry in your life, and My ability to weave the threads of time through My Matrix of Creation. Now, in this pouch are three types of the threads you give Me to weave, that you and I weave together in the tapestry of your universe.

“The Gold thread is grace, blessing, and light in your words that you offer up to God and to others, that reaches God. The Black thread is hurt, cursing, shadow in your words that you offer, usually to others, but also reaches God. The Clear thread, is nothing at all… this is doubt, unbelief, empty words that have no significance or power to them at all.

“Little Monk, I’d like you to ponder this for a bit, then consider keeping only one of these spools.”

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Now, Gentle Reader, I’m not going to belabor this post with the “Rose View” the Lord granted me as I pondered this challenge in my life. I will simply say that those ponders centered on the verses shown above. The “shorthand” connections, particularly for those who may find these of interest or who preach or teach, a couple notable points were:

• You cannot “parse” the tapestry of prayer. Prayer, love, faith, belief, and authority are all bound up together as a phenomenon in God. We can “discuss” different facets or aspects of the experience of prayer, but the Reality Itself cannot be “dissected” in that way.
• The Single Day of the Transfiguration and the Epileptic Healing, is (was) an extraordinary day.
  • Jesus had revealed His approaching Crucifixion
  • Jesus took his 3 strongest “faith partners” with Him
  • They all heard the voice of the Father
• It was the “Remnant Disciples” (those who chose NOT to go with Him), who failed to cast out the demon.
  • The boy’s father lacked faith
  • The demon did not immediately obey Jesus
  • Jesus explained the difficulty to the disciples

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And ALL of this, is bound up with “the Power of Words”, which is not a discussion for this post. But…

“Prayer” taps in to the very “authority of God Himself”, but only insofar as we have woven it with love, faith, belief, and “focus” on God and His presence. If our tapestry were made like a “quilt”, of squares we prepare… if those squares are shot through with threads of “unbelief”, or “unfaith”, they will appear incomplete, as if there were bald spots there. Empty words do not bind “power” into the prayer.

Oh, as to that last little passage, from Revelation… Jesus showed me this strange thing. Every prayer uttered… EVERY WORD addressed to or about God… is raised before the Throne to Him by angels. Jesus pointed this out as a matter I’ve never noticed before. For better or worse, this is how Prayer works, and it seemed a relevant point right here.

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Bottom Line: If one is to “pray always”, then there is accountability for the threads one binds on the loom. I chose to leave behind my spools of Black and Clear thread. I’ll not generate words of curse or of unbelief. Let me weave only with the Gold Thread.

What are you leaving behind, Gentle Reader?

Grace to thee — The Little Monk