Our Authority – One Identity, One Job
When I started praying about what the Lord wanted us to share, I was leaning in a different direction. We’re still at home, and sometimes you need some encouragement that we’re never isolated from the Lord.
Deuteronomy 31:8 – And the Lord, He is the One who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed.
He never leaves us or forsakes us. And all that is true. However, we’re in a new season, and rather than milk, I believe the Lord is giving us some meat to chew on. Our pace of life has slowed down, we’re no longer as busy, and in this season of quiet, we have the perfect opportunity because we have fewer distractions.
So we want to challenge you.
Galatians 3:27-28 NASB – For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
You are NOT your job title, your ministry title, your denomination, your local church, your family name, your heritage, your illness, your political affiliation, your gender, your ethnicity, or even your nationality. All of those take a back seat to our true identity, and responsibility, as ambassadors of Christ.
Acts 1:8 NASB – but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.
I believe the Lord is asking us these questions – Are we acting as his ambassadors? And how are we spending this time? What are we flooding the gates of our hearts with? With no sports, and most activities canceled, we have the ability to get quiet before the Lord, and hear from Him, where previously the noise of our lives might’ve drowned it out.
1 Kings 19:11-13 Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
What are we doing here and now? How many of us have said “if I only had more time, I’d pray more or read the Word more”? We currently have the time. Are we doing what we’d said? Are we taking advantage of the time we’ve been given?
We need to be taking this time to power ourselves up. To build our faith! To learn our true authority in Him. To listen when He speaks – and just like Elijah, He will speak to us in that still small voice.
Matthew 17:14-21 – And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
You often hear ministers talk about the faith of the mustard seed. If you just have that “mountain moving” faith then you can move your situations. Yet Jesus has to encourage His disciples that yes, they have that faith, and yes, they can do the same miracles that He was doing. They’d been around Jesus, they’d been hearing him teach and heal, yet they were still expecting Him to always do it. What Jesus is saying here is that the disciples couldn’t rely on Him to always be there standing beside them in the natural to cover challenges they couldn’t.
Churches have been pushed beyond their walls during this time. Instead of expecting people to come to us, we’re being launched out to go to them. When this is over, are we going to stay launched? Or are we going to retreat to the old way of doing things.
Matthew 9:15-17 And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
As a body of believers, as the hands and feet of Jesus, we have the opportunity. We can’t go back to what was comfortable and familiar. When Jesus gave us the great commission, we were told to go out.
Matthew 28:18-20 NASB – And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
We are in a season where people are hungry for something – anything that fills the God-shaped void in their lives. If we truly listen to what God has for us, we can be powered up and ready to launch when things settle down.
Matthew 9:37-38 – Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
Let us be the laborers, let us be the ones that gather those lost souls into the Kingdom! Let’s be His ambassadors!
Philippians 3:20 – For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We want to leave you with this verse, that it may encourage you the same way that it’s been encouraging to us.
2 Corinthians 2:14-15 – Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.