Authority: How to Gain and Use It

By Brenton Williams

Authority or power -- which is greater? Where does authority come from? How do we gain it? How should believers respond to worldly authority? These are some of the questions this book tries to answer.

Jesus taught and ministered with authority. That dumbfounded the religious establishment of his day. His disciples did the same thing after his resurrection. Did they understand things that we have forgotten?

This book will equip you with truths to let you serve authority without conflict and use authority in your every day life and ministry. Applying its principles will make you a man or woman of authority.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenton Williams
• Release date: Aug 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370202485

Brenton Williams

Brenton Williams was born in 1947 to non-christian parents and, apart from attending a local Sunday School, had no Christian faith or beliefs.He met his wife, Coral, in 1970 who was a member of The Salvation Army and converted that year. He joined The Salvation Army as a member and in 1975 felt a call from God to full-time ministry. He and his wife trained and became Salvation Army Officers for 11 years moving around New Zealand to various posts.His search for truth led him to question some of the tenets of the Army and in 1984 he left The Salvation Army to start a small charismatic group where he still ministers today.The truths in his books are based on first-hand experience and a desire to discover a real and true faith. Central to that is a close and intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ. His heart desire is to help other believers come to know Jesus as a friend and lover and thereby prepare them for an eternity of wedded bliss with their chosen bridegroom.

Book preview

AUTHORITY

How to gain and use it

Brenton Williams

Copyright © 2016 by Brenton Williams

All rights reserved, including translation. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, electrostatic photocopying, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the permission of Brenton Williams.

Published by Brenton Williams,

6 King Street,

Petone,

Wellington 5012,

New Zealand.

Unless otherwise stated, scriptures are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishers. All rights reserved worldwide.

Distributed by Smashwords

Edited by Paul Corrigan's Editing Works!

Cover artwork by Stefan Jurczenko

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

ISBN: 9781370202485

Table of Contents

1. Eternal occupations

2. Authority or power

3. Authority’s source

4. Spheres

5. Gaining authority

6. Jesus and authority

7. Worldly authority

8. The exception

9. Delegating authority

10. Responsibility and accountability

11. Authority in the church

12. Functional authority

13. Relational authority

14. Building a relationship with Jesus

15. Living words and authority

16. The Great Commission

17. Spiritual warfare

18. Binding and loosing

19. Women and authority

20. Healing authority

21. Supernatural insight

22. Final thoughts

Other books by Brenton Williams

Chapter 1

Eternal occupations

And he who overcomes, and he who keeps my deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron… [Revelation 2:26-27 — NASB]

The last trumpet has sounded; the dead in Christ have risen; those alive at the coming of the Lord have met him in the air; the millennium rule is finished. Jesus has thrown Satan, death, and hell into the Lake of Fire; a new heaven and earth have replaced the old creation; the Marriage Supper of the Lamb has happened. All the events foretold in the Bible are now history and the Bible itself is obsolete. Jesus and his bride prepare for an eternity of marital bliss.

You are there. Eternity stretches before you. Now you must fulfil the role God redeemed you for. What will you do? How will you spend an eternity of sinless perfection? Most of us don’t think about such questions. That’s because time and space bind our thought processes. We live in a realm governed by natural laws. Time regulates every moment; gravity governs what we can do; physical boundaries surround us on every side. That makes considering anything outside those boundaries difficult. We enter this realm as mortal beings with clear starting and ending points. We can each identify our birth-date and have some idea of our death-date. We can expect to live 70-80 years unless something unusual happens [Psalm 90:10]. But our mortality limits our view to 70-80 years. We don’t give much thought to things beyond our mortal life.

God isn’t like that. He is immortal and eternal. That means he has always existed and will always exist. He has no starting and ending points. Time doesn’t constrict him as it does us. Peter says, ‘… with the Lord a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.’ [2 Peter 3:8]

He sees before and beyond our 70-80 years. That makes his view of things different from ours. He sees from eternity’s viewpoint whereas we see things from a mortal viewpoint. God wants to change our viewpoint to his so that we see things as he does. We need to gain an eternal perspective on our mortal existence. Then we can more easily understand why things happen and what God wants to achieve through them.

The first step towards doing that is to understand our true position.

We are immortal beings living in a mortal world.

When we turned from our sin, responded to the gospel, and believed by faith in Christ’s atoning death we were ‘born again’ with God’s life. We became like him — immortal and eternal beings. We ceased to have a starting and ending point. How do we know that? The Bible explains that as God hid Eve in Adam so he also hid believers in Christ before the foundation of the world [Ephesians 1:4]. Jesus is immortal and eternal. Those hidden in him must also be immortal and eternal. Our new life is an eternal life — it existed before our mortal birth and continues on past our physical death.

Jesus is the pattern for every believer. He existed with the Father before anything else was. For about 30 years he stepped out of eternity and lived in the mortal realm. When he had achieved all the Father’s purposes for the mortal phase of his eternal existence he stepped back into eternity.

We are to follow his example. God always meant us to be eternal beings, but for 70-80 years he has placed us in this natural realm. That’s because he wants us to work with him at reconciling the world to himself.

He needs eternal beings who will live in the natural realm and help him achieve his goals there.

We are those eternal beings. Peter says that we are ‘foreigners and exiles’ [1 Peter 2:11]. We don’t really belong here. We belong in eternity. While we are here we should be living an eternal life and doing what we will do when we return to the eternal realm.

Now comes the big question. What will we do when we return to eternity? What tasks await us after all the events recorded in John’s Revelation are over? If we can find the answer to that we will discover what God wants us to do here and now. Because we are already living our eternal life the natural realm is where we will learn to practise our eternal occupation.

I have searched the scriptures diligently and cannot find any basis for the belief that we will be playing harps. So, what will we do?

I believe the answer lies in Revelation 1:6: ‘… and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father;…’ [KJV] John uses the same phrase when referring to the redeemed elders in Revelation 5:10. As they worship the lamb in heaven the elders declare that the redeemed multitudes [that’s us] will form an eternal kingdom of kings and a priesthood of priests.

You will be a king and a priest.

A king’s function is to exercise authority. Priests serve authority. So we will rule and serve throughout eternity.

Learning how to exercise and serve authority rightly are two of the most important things we can learn during our mortal life. We will be doing those things forever. As we have already started our eternal life we must start doing them now. We won’t gain those things magically when we leave this realm. God expects us to have them already established when we arrive in his realm. Then we can easily fit into his eternal purposes for our lives.

This mortal life is our preparation time for eternity. In Romans 5:17 Paul says, ‘… those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness [will] reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!’ [Romans 5:17 — italics added] The Greek word used for life in that verse is ‘zoe’ and it has two meanings. It often refers to God’s life or eternal life, but can equally refer to the physical life we enjoy every day. So if we apply both meanings, Paul says that we are to reign in this life and in the one to come. We should be ruling now, not waiting for eternity’s embrace to start doing that. We can say the same about serving. We must learn how to serve now because it will be too late to start when we die.

When we responded to the gospel we ended our old life and started a new, eternal one. We should be using this mortal phase of our existence to prepare for our eternal occupations. Those occupations will involve us in ruling and reigning on behalf of other authorities. We will also have to practise service and submission to those other authorities. Each day of our mortal life presents us with chances to learn how to do that. Each situation we meet will entail a choice between ruling and serving. That makes understanding how to do those things well a vital element of our eternal success.

One day we will share a throne with Jesus Christ and join him in serving the Father eternally. The time left to us in this mortal realm is our training ground. We must use this time wisely in preparation. That’s why I have written this book. I hope that its contents will help you get ready for your eternal role as a king and a priest. As you learn the lessons in exercising and serving authority you will bring your mortal life into order and prepare yourself for eternity. Many of our day-to-day difficulties happen because we don’t understand the principles behind authority and servanthood. Understanding and applying those principles will make our daily living more peaceful and equip us for eternity.

Are you ready to start learning how to rule and serve well? If so, the contents of this book will help you to do that. You must expect to be challenged by some of the ideas because they will point out weaknesses in your own life. When that happens you must tackle those weaknesses and change or you will reduce your mortal and eternal effectiveness. The Bible has much praise for wise kings and good servants but nothing good to say about bad ones. Our goal must be to become the best rulers and servants that we can be so that God’s purposes can be fully achieved through us as they were through Christ.

Chapter 2

Authority or power?

Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall injure you. [Luke 10:19 — NASB 1977]

Before we start to examine the basic principles of authority we must make a distinction between authority and power. It is important to make that distinction or we could mistakenly pursue the wrong thing.

Power and authority are not the same.

Power is the display of raw energy. Authority is the channel through which that raw energy should flow. If we were to pursue power at the expense of authority we could find ourselves in some difficult situations.

That happened to the seven sons of Sceva in the early days of the church [Acts 19:13-16]. They saw Paul ministering and using Jesus’ name to drive out demons. Being attracted to the power associated with Jesus’ name they decided to try and use that power themselves. They commanded a demon to leave in Jesus’ name, but weren’t prepared for the result.

The demon spoke through the person in whom he lived and said: ‘I recognise Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?’ The man with the demon then attacked them, beat them, and chased the seven of them naked from the house. What went wrong? Did Jesus’ name lose its power when Sceva’s sons used it? Not at all. The power was there, but Jesus’ authority wasn’t backing it. Paul had authority from Jesus to minister in his name. When he commanded demons to leave they had to obey his authority and submit to the power that went with it. Sceva’s sons had no such authority. The demon recognised that and refused to obey. It then used its own power to chastise them.

Sometimes we make the same mistake. We see other believers ministering God’s power to the needs in people’s lives. Because we are believers we