…and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you. Acts 27:23
When you walk in authority, you can save all within your sphere of influence. Your sphere of influence is determined by your ability to love. One man or woman can save a nation, but it must be the right one. What qualifies you for authority is the level of love and maturity you walk in. Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. Love launches your level of authority. Between 2016 and 2019 Carl and I visited over fifty cities in the USA to find the man of peace. It was challenging! We were stopped by police, we confronted tornadoes, we had guns drawn on us as we witnessed door to door, and that was all in the first city we visited – Jacksonville. Welcome to USA Outreach! We went many places with no contacts at all, but prayed and reached out and saw many miracles. Indeed, the ministry of house churches growing all over the fruited plain is a direct result of that outreach. But the thing it did for me in my heart is reawaken and increase my love for America and its people. It must have done the same for Carl as he now leads the house church outreach in the USA. Love drives faith, it drives authority!
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – Benjamin Franklin
We want to get to Luke 10:19 but I want to set some of the great background of the authority that we walk in. The times are perilous that we live in and we must understand authority to save ourselves, our loved ones, and even the unsaved, like Paul did on the wheatship. Consider Ephesians…
Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power 20 which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. 22 And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Eph 1:15-23 NKJV
…your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints…
Denominations have destroyed the ‘love for all the saints’ because they always divide us into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The ‘them,’ meaning your brothers and sisters in Christ, are always inferior to the ‘us’ and are to be avoided. How can you love all the saints with a paradigm like that? You must break out of that thinking to begin to really love. There are so many paradigms – the money, the education, the race or tribal paradigm, and many others – that must be crushed by the love of God in you in order for you to rise up in authority. Your parents can influence you with ungodly paradigms as they raise you up as a child. I had to break out from under that influence by the blood of Jesus and the mercy of the Lamb of God. Ask Him to help you!
…and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe…
There is a vast difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge. My head says I BELIEVE but my heart says otherwise. The only way I know to change head knowledge to heart knowledge is through action guided by wisdom and worked in love. Find someone who has done what you want to do and learn from them. When I can see something demonstrated, then I can grasp it and do it. Human nature is such that if I don’t get repetition repeatedly, I can lose whats been imparted. This is the greatness behind training programs like we do with our Holy Spirit Seminar teachers over a six month period. Teaching, training, inspiration and repetition to build new paradigms and faith levels that bring greater fruit – that’s what training is all about!
The exceeding greatness of His power is such that we should never lose a battle. I recently wrote to all our school directors, hundreds of them, instructing them to set up prayer teams to prevent untimely deaths and accidents among our students, teachers and administrators. Love releases authority and power. I told them…
“Dear ones, we will not have premature deaths and accidents among our students, teachers and administrators. When someone is sick, they will be immediately reported to the prayer team and prayer will be made until they are well. When someone travels, or is in a precarious situation, this will be reported to the prayer team and prayer will be made until they are safe. Prayer will be made by prayer team volunteers over all students, teachers, and administrators continually, and all will prosper. Amen.”
…and He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all…
And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. Rom 16:20 NKJV
All of Him in all of us, individually. Christ IN you. All things under His feet, and all things under our feet in Him. Think about that! 1 John says that as He is, the risen, ascended, victorious Son of God, so are we, you and I, in this world. That is an effectively incomprehensible position of power and authority and yet, we can comprehend it through the Spirit’s intuition and instruction, and the carrying out of our personal calling in Him. It’s in carrying out what you are called to do that you learn so much. We are going to study this great verse seventeen in Luke 10, but we must understand that it is set in the context of men and women carrying out their calling, whatever that may be.
After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go. Luke 10:1 NKJV
Jesus sent them out, with classic instructions and imparted authority, and they came back, thrilled and victorious. Note that no one had a car accident while out on ministry under Jesus’ authority. No one died from sickness, and things were just as vicious then as they are now. This is what NORMAL looks like!
Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.”
18 And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. 20 Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:17-20 NKJV
Have you ever asked yourself, what was Jesus doing with the Twelve and the Seventy? Both are numbers of governmental authority. Twelve is the number of governmental perfection while seventy is the product of seven times ten; ten being ordinal perfection and seven being spiritual perfection. What was Jesus doing? He was setting up the governmental structure of His Kingdom which would have gone into place if the nation had accepted Him. These guys would have had rulership over cities, towns and villages, the same ones that they visited, under the Master – again, had Israel accepted Jesus as Messiah, the Christ.
Under that governmental structure, He gave them authority over every demonic realm, authority to enforce the rule of the Kingdom of God, the authority to not only cast out demons but to crush their power and authority. Understand this…if you have spiritual authority and use it rightly, then physical authority becomes a secondary thing. I love the scene from the movie THE WAR ROOM where the two ladies are confronted by a punk with a knife. The lady with spiritual authority rebukes the punk and he flees. I’ve done that! I shouted out loud in the theater when I saw that…we were having church in the theater!
…and nothing shall by any means hurt you…
Luke 10:19 can be applied by us as His governmental leadership on earth during the church age because Ephesians One, which we have looked at, tells us so. These words in the Greek text are some of the most emphatic words in the GNT. There is a double negative here meaning ‘no, absolutely not! When you walk in your calling, which is the governmental structure of the Church in the world, you have authority to enforce the rule of the kingdom of God over your sphere on influence and no demonic power will have authority over you or to resist you. This is the power of prevention, an ounce of which, as old Ben wryly noted, is worth a pound of cure. Amen? Love you!
Remember dear ones, we must be about our Father’s business…