STEEMCHURCH- Pray With Authority and Power As A Christian

Dear parishioners of blockchain, greetings to @sirknight, more blessings to you all. I wish to share with you a very interesting topic titled "Pray with Authority and Power as a Christian" I want to use this medium to advise you take your time read through this piece and make your experience known.

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Power and Authority

There are several kinds of prayer. There are prayers of thanksgiving, supplication, intercession etc., but here I want to talk about the Prayer of Authority. Our words have power if there is some  authority structure behind them. For example; a police officer has more authority, when he speaks in the line of his duty, than the average citizen does. Why is this? Because he has a legal structure to  back up his words. When he gets outside of the authority granted to him by this structure, he has no more authority than anyone else. A good policeman knows what authority he has and where his jurisdiction ends.

God has no limits on His authority except those imposed by His own nature. For example; God can not lie because He is truth and no lie can be found in Him. Because God is righteous, He can not use His authority for evil. We find some examples of God's authority in the story of creation. Genesis 1:3, Then God said, 

"Let there be light";

and there was light. Since God has authority over light and darkness, the light obeyed His command. (Genesis 1: 9-10) Then God said, 

"I command the water under the sky to come together in one place, so there will be dry ground" And that's what happened. God named the dry ground "Land" and he named the water "Ocean". God looked at what he had done and saw that it was good". 

Here again we see God exercising His authority over the elements. He simply speaks and the elements obey Him. In chapters 1 & 2 of Genesis, we see God giving certain authority and responsibilities to man. Then God said, 

"Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth....And God created man in His own image... male and female He created them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." 

Then God said, 

"Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;" Then the Lord God took man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die." 

So it was that God gave provisions, responsibilities, authorities, and restrictions to man. As long as man was content to live within the structure that God laid out for him, everything was all right.

Let us now jump ahead and examine the authority of Jesus, the way He used it and how He imparted it to His disciples. The fact that Jesus had authority did not escape the religious leaders. (Matthew 21:23-27) 

"Jesus had gone into the temple and was teaching when the chief priests and the leaders of the people came up to him. They asked, "What right do you have to do these things? Who gave you you this authority? Jesus answered "I have just one question to ask you, if you answer it, I will tell you where I got the right to do these things. Who gave John the right to baptize? Was it God in heaven or merely some human being?" They thought it over and said to each other, "We can't say that God gave John this right. Jesus will ask us why we didn't believe John. On the other hand, these people think that John was a prophet, and we are afraid of what they might do to us. That's why we can't say that it was merely some human who gave John the right to baptize." So  they told Jesus, "We don't know." Jesus said, "Then I won't tell you who gave me the right to do what I do".

The leaders had a legitimate question. They were charged with maintaining order and safeguarding the accuracy of teaching concerning God and His laws; but they were not going to accept Christ's answer any more than they would the answer concerning John the Baptist. Since all authority ultimately resides in God, there is no authority apart from the permission of God. In (Luke 10:22) Jesus said, 

"All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him."

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It is obvious that Jesus received His authority from the Father as part of the "All things" which were handed over to Him. When there is a power structure, there is always a chain of command and there are rules that control that power structure. Except for God, Who is at the top of the power structure and Who invented it, every participant is accountable to work within that structure and to do so according to the rules. 

There need be no rules for God because He is perfect, just, omniscient, righteous, and He is governed by His perfect nature. We do business differently with those over whom we have control, than we do with those who have control over us. We can command those over whom we have control and we suggest and make requests of those who have control over us. We must always remember that our authority rests in the structure that has granted us that authority and that we have absolutely no authority of our own. We must always come in the name,(authority), of someone else who has authority over us and to whom we are accountable.

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Jesus had authority over inanimate forces and objects. We are going to examine these here and see just how He exercised His authority. We will start with the account of the fig tree in (Matthew 21:18-19) 

" Now in the morning, when He returned to the city, He became hungry. And seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it, and found nothing on it except leaves only; and He said to it,' No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you.' And at once the fig tree withered." Notice that Jesus did not pray; "Father make this tree wither and die because it has no figs on it.". 

He spoke directly to the tree because He had authority over the tree and He said; "No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you." Because He had authority over the tree, the tree had to respond according to His words. There is another example of this principle in (Mark 4:37-39 ) " 

And there arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up. And He Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they awoke Him and said to Him, ' Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing? ' And being aroused, He rebuked the wind and the sea, 'Hush, be still.' And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm." In this case Jesus spoke to the wind and sea and just said to them, "Hush, be still."and, because He had authority over them, they had no choice but to obey Him.

So if our Lord Jesus could have authority, we also have authority over all principalities and power, so let's pray with authority, believe and have faith.

THIS IS WHERE I DRAW THE CURTAIN CLOSE FOR TODAY'S LESSON, I HOPE YOU HAVE BEEN BLESSED BY THIS WONDERFUL PIECE, TILL WE MEET AGAIN, REMAIN BLESSED!!!