Of Lords and Monarchs

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Who is ruling you impacts who you can become. So take a moment or two to audit your own allegiances and discover your limitations.

Christians are familiar with the confession, “Jesus Christ is Lord”. That is a key element of personal salvation. Those who wish to be saved by the life and ministry of Jesus Christ must confess Him as Lord of their life. That brings them salvation.

“If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9

Making that statement as a true confession can only be done with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

“….. no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit.” 1Corinthians 12:3b

The problem for people is that they are entangled with many different lords and monarchs, without realising it. The process of coming under Christ’s Lordship, then, is not as straight forward as one simple confession. It must be real and it usually involves a progressive revoking of other sovereignties along the way.

Many Lords

God’s people are frequently entangled with mixed allegiances and other lords who exercise some level of rule in or over their lives. The prophet Isaiah identified this in his prophecies.

“O LORD our God, other lords beside you have had dominion over us: but by you only will we make mention of your name.” Isaiah 26:13

Note Isaiah’s candid admission that God’s people have had other lords ruling over them. He also recognises that only God will be able to deliver them into a pure allegiance only to Him.

This is the predicament of most Christians. They are in practice polytheistic. My son, Stephen, goes so far as to speak of a Pantheon of idols which each culture gives allegiance to. Christians in western culture still hold most the west’s deities dear in their hearts. These other deities are lords which rule over the Christian, despite the confession of Christ as Lord.

Western Idolatry

The west idolises success, money, education, sex, materialism, fame, self-will and independence as just some of its cultural values. These are idols that are worshiped. Some people give their whole life to the pursuit of these things.

When people become Christians they will likely still continue to worship these cultural values. They will worship them as idols. And that brings them under dominion and lordship of those things.

How We Get Lords

When we worship something or give in to something outside of God’s moral order we become enslaved by it. It may be sin or an idol that we worship.

“Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say to you, Whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin.” John 8:34

“Don’t you know that whoever you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness?” Romans 6:16

God is Our Only King

Christians only have one king, The Lord God. Jesus and Almighty God are one God and so I could also rightly say that Jesus Christ is our only King.

Christians in the early church refused to bow to the Roman Caesar, saying that they had only one King and that was God. This put them at odds with the ruling power, since it proclaimed Caesar to be a god.

In the early days of the nation of Israel God ruled over the people through His agents the prophets and judges. God was their king. When the people demanded a human king God specifically noted that the people were rejecting Him from the place of their king.

“And the LORD said to Samuel, Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you: for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.” 1Samuel 8:7

Replacing God as King

When we seek anything or anyone else to rule over us other than God, Himself, we are rejecting Him from the rightful place as King of our life. If we worship money or success, or chase relationships, fame or popularity, we are rejecting God. We are replacing Him as King, with another.

By that means we end up with many lords who have sovereignty over us. But we have not only offended and rejected God we have denied ourselves our own personal sovereignty.

Voiding Our Sovereignty

We have incredible personal sovereignty as subjects of the Living God. If the God who created all things is your King, and you have a direct line of succession from Him, then you are about as sovereign an entity as anything could be. You have pretty impressive personal privilege when you answer directly to God and Christ. That is exactly what we do as Christians.

We are not under the lordship of priests, pastors or church leaders. We are not under the lordship of temporal kings and government masters. Kings and governments serve our social existence, but we do not answer to them. Since the Roman days and back 1,500 years before then, to the days when Moses withstood the King of Egypt, we answer, as God’s servants, directly to God, Himself.

So when we choose to worship any intermediary sovereign, or come under the lordship of any other person or thing we are voiding our sovereignty. When you worship money you decimate your personal rights before God. You subordinate yourself to something lower than yourself. The same is true when you worship success, fame, political ambitions, career, relationships or people who you revere.

Worship anything but God at your peril!

The School Bully

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Imagine settling into a new school and being accosted by a school bully who demands that you pay him money each week. You survive the meeting and then ask others what the story is with this bully.

You find out that everyone is paying money to the bully. You find that the teachers have no plan to stop the bully’s activities. You also find that the bully isn’t regarded as a bully, but just part of normal life at the school.

It turns out that the “bully”, as you call him, has had his place passed to him through generations of bullies. Payment of the bully levy is a tradition that goes back as far as anyone can remember. School teachers rely on the bully to help them maintain order in the school, even though they know he has self-interest as well. They see the arrangement as both normal and appropriate.

When you decide to stand up to the bully everyone looks at you in horror. You are urged to stop your bizarre behaviour and to just get used to the way things are. The whole social order is built on the status quo. Would-be bullies are competing with each other for the honour of displacing the incumbent. The more offended victims have their support groups. A code of penalties has been defined and each new student is briefed in the mechanisms of the school-yard order.

Most alarming in this whole situation is that anyone who stands up to the perverse system is confronted on all sides. You encounter apathy or antagonism from those who should support you; despisement and oppression from the bully system that seeks to rule you; and abandonment from the authority figures who should have stopped this situation long ago.

Now, that’s just a fanciful scenario. But it is an allegory for situations which occur around the world.

At Sydney University in the early 1970’s, for example, I confronted compulsory Student Union membership. The Student Union engaged in many activities which offended my personal values and which I would never engage in. I saw no reason why I should be forced to pay anything to what seemed like a group of self-indulgent people who used their position to peddle their own ideology and morality. However, that was the system. There was no changing it, so it seemed. Thankfully, in subsequent years compulsory student unionism was abandoned.

The same situation may be seen in workplaces where a strong union presence imposes compulsory union membership on anyone who wants to work there.

Yet again, in some cultures the police force is corrupt and imposes various unwarranted penalties on people. I was once pulled over by a traffic policeman who was not interested in giving me a genuine penalty, but sought some “coffee money” from me.

Totalitarian regimes impose this “school-yard bully” system at a national level. Various limitations are imposed on their constituents, which people are powerless to object to.

I am not saying in all this that forced subscriptions are necessarily evil, or that unions, police forces or governments are suspect. I simply use these examples to illustrate a point. I am drawing your attention to the fact that some situations are actually oppressive and out of order.

Now, the correct way to deal with such situations, if it is possible, is to take the matter to higher and higher authorities, until someone resolves what is out of order, putting it right. In many situations even the judiciary is compromised or intimidated and true justice is denied the citizenry. In those situations the only court in which effective appeal can be made is before the throne of God.

Reading the book of Ecclesiastes recently I noted Solomon’s awareness that God is the true Sovereign in all of life’s situations. While men will oppress others and ply their evil agendas, those who trust in God and are not overcome by the evil of others, have the best outcome.

Being consumed in rage at the system means you have been overcome by evil. Making it your life passion to right the wrong system may also be a sign that you have been overcome by evil. You were not created to be moved by your enraged sensibilities, but to fulfil God’s plan for your life. If He calls you to deal with the system in some way, then you will have to do it. But that won’t be for self-gratification or to get even for wrongs experienced, or any other personal agenda. You will be most effective when you can be dispassionate and focus your affections on Him and His glory, rather than being moved along by personal arousal.

School-yard bullies exist in many contexts. You may be called at some point to do something about it. But if you are, it will be God’s call, not yours. The methods and all that is part of the process will be at God’s behest, not your own direction. If you engage in the process with that kind of spirit you will be a worthy instrument in God’s hands to see His Kingdom come and His will done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Promotion to Sovereignty

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Here’s a truism that has some significant implications. The principle I will explain here is the very reason why Susan and I did not ask a man of God to help us recently. This principle explains why you are often standing in the shallow water, unable to upgrade yourself into more meaningful things.

You can rise no higher than the one who promotes you. That’s why you cannot promote yourself. Self-promotion gives you sovereignty over next to nothing at all.

The extent of our own authority and sovereignty is directly related to the extent of the sovereignty of the person whose authority we are under.

I created a silly analogy to bring this to focus. Forgive me if you’ve heard me share this before. Imagine a production manager noticing two men walking around his factory taking notes on what they see. He calls these two men to his office and asks them what they are doing. It turns out that both men are making notes on how dirty the factory is and what health risks might be raised by the clutter.

When the production manager asks the first man, “Who told you to do what you are doing?” it turns out that his friend, the janitor, has often complained about the health risks associated with clutter and dirt, so the man decided on his own initiative to walk around the factory and make his own assessment.

Now, does that man have authority to be doing what he is doing? No! The man has entered the building without authority and engaged in a process that only he, himself, has assigned. His only contact with the organisation is through the janitor. The production manager promptly tells that man to get out of his building and not to come back.

The second man, however, explains that he was contacted by the Managing Director who instructed him to do an independent survey of the clutter and to report directly to the Managing Director, himself. While this second man is doing exactly the same thing as the first, it is not the action that is important but the authority under which the action is taking place. The second man, under the direct authority of the Managing Director, cannot be told to leave the building. He has a level of personal sovereignty in the situation which derives directly from the authority of the Managing Director.

Do you get the principle then? Your personal authority and sovereignty is directly derived from the person whose authority you are operating under. You can rise no higher than the one who promotes you.

OK, that’s my starting point. Now let me show you how that impacts the way I operate. Let’s say, for example, there is a hot prophet in town. Everyone is flocking to his meetings hoping to get a word from the Lord. Some people are making personal appointments or trying to catch the prophet when he is in the elevator or eating breakfast, in the expectation of getting a word from God through the prophet.

All those who look to God speaking through the prophet limit themselves. They are declaring that they do not have the right or privilege of receiving directly from God. They make themselves servants to the prophet, subject to the prophet’s anointing and grace. This is not where God has put them, but where they have put themselves.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that it is wrong to get a word from a prophet. I am saying that to look to the prophet puts you in a lesser place than the prophet.

For example, imagine two men who both need wisdom from God. One decides to go to all the meetings where the prophet is speaking, and even to carry the prophet’s bags, drive him to and from the meetings and explain all about his needs to the prophet, in order to ensure getting a word from God. The other man simply commits himself to God and makes no effort to go to the meetings or to meet the prophet.

On the last day of the prophet’s visit he gives prophetic wisdom to the man who is hounding him for a word. He also gets an impression to pass on a word to the man who did not attend the meetings. Both men receive a word from the Lord, from the same prophet. Both men have their needs met through a word from the Lord. One looked to the prophet and the other looked to the Lord.

Next month both men equally need a word from the Lord again. Situations have arisen that put them both under pressure to gain divine wisdom. The first man desperately seeks out the man of God. That prophet is now travelling overseas and so the only way to catch him is to head off to find him. The second man simply repeats what he did the first time. He prays to God and commits his need for wisdom to God. He is confident that God will find a way to get the wisdom to him, even if he is not in the right place at the right time.

The first man in that made-up scenario is limited in his personal sovereignty and authority. He cannot confidently hear from God. He cannot wait on God. He needs a human agency to deliver God’s wisdom to him. The second man operates in a broader sphere. He goes directly to God and expects God to be his source and provider.

Some time back Susan suggested that we ask a particular man of God to pray for a situation we were working through. We had questions about which way to move forward. It was possible that this man could give us God’s wisdom. For a moment I was inclined to ask for that help, but I quickly considered the spiritual implications. If I go, hat in hand, to another man for God’s guidance, I subjugate my own personal sphere to the limitations of men.

Now, you need to know that God most often speaks to me through human agency. God uses the preaching of the pastors I sit under, the input of prophets, song-writers, authors and so on, to answer the questions I bring to Him. I am not independent of human agency. I am dependent on God. He can then choose which agency He will use. When He does so, I am receiving from Him, via the human channel He uses at that time. But I am never then dependent on that preacher, song-writer, author, or prophet. I am only ever dependent on the Lord. He is my source.

Then, being under the direct authority of the Lord God, Himself, I optimise and maximise my own personal sovereignty and authority.

Consider this further application. In the Catholic Church the members are required to access God via the confessional. They must go through one who stands in their place (which is what the word ‘vicar’ means – the vicarious one). This decimates the personal authority and sovereignty of the worshippers. They can only operate within the authority assigned them by the Catholic Church. The Protestant world, with its emphasis on personal worship based on personal relationship with God and response to personal conscience, has generated many more examples of people who have gone out in God’s name to change the world.

Any pastor who seeks to control his congregation and require that they only do things which he or she approves is robbing the congregation of personal sovereignty and divine authority. That works well for building the pastor’s own kingdom, but it’s ineffective for building the Kingdom of God.

I pray that God promote you to the highest levels of personal sovereignty and authority, not by you being your own boss and walking in rebellion, but by you submitting to God and looking only to Him, while you allow the servants of the Lord to be His channel of input into your life.

Sovereignty Banned!

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As I have reviewed the subject of personal sovereignty with you in recent months I have sought to open your eyes to the special privilege you have of doing business, directly and personally, with the God of all creation. Our greatest authority comes from the highest official – and so coming under the direct authority of God gives us authority that cannot be trumped by lesser beings.
True sovereignty, however, is not found in asserting personal rights, attending assertiveness training courses, defying authorities or the like. True sovereignty is all about you being in direct, personal relationship with God. He is the ultimate sovereign citizen of the universe. No-one can contend with His authority. When you are an intimate friend of God, falling at His feet and living only to do His will, you can walk in the fullest expression of your personal sovereignty.
Much of what others might think of as exercising their personal sovereignty may well be rebellion, arrogance, defiance against authority, self-will and ignorance. Please avoid such things.
Now, as I have pointed out, a person who truly walks in their personal sovereignty is able to exercise power and influence greater than governments, regimes and armies. That is the reason, I suggest, that evil regimes are so determinedly antagonistic to Christian faith and the Bible.
There is no more empowering experience and no more sure way to establish a person’s personal sovereignty, than to have them enter into personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. There is no more empowering resource than the Bible. When people live by faith in God, through Jesus Christ, committed to the Bible as the inerrant word of God, they are empowered and willing to exercise personal freedom like no other people. Evil regimes, therefore, run the risk that divinely empowered people will be able to challenge them in the same way Elisha challenged the King of Syria, or David brought down Goliath. No evil regime wants to have young people in its own domain who can exercise greater clout than the dictator, nor some lonely prophet who can topple their power.
Have you noticed that communist and other dictators are quick to ban the Bible, restrict Christian worship and punish people of faith? It is a trade-mark of many regimes. They ban the Bible and Christianity, because they are trying to do away with personal sovereignty.
Notice this quote from Horace Greeley: “It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.” The ‘human freedom’ identified by Greeley is that right to stand before God. A person who can stand confidently before his maker is the freest person on the planet. He may be in prison, outlawed, or otherwise oppressed by man, but his soul and spirit are free, even freer than the dictators who incarcerated him.
Napoleon also recognised the incredible power inherent in the Bible and the faith that springs from it. He said: “The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it.”
For that reason Bibles have been taken to oppressed people, as part of the process of setting those people truly free. The Bible has the power to liberate souls, and consequently to liberate peoples and nations.
Note, however, that in the West there has been a subtle banning of the Bible. It is no longer allowed to be read in schools as it was when I was a boy. A weekly Bible lesson was conducted in my classes, by the school teacher, as part of the class curriculum. That small inculcation of the Word of God had its effect, especially when combined with the many other places where the Bible was spoken and its teachings propagated. But today much of that sowing of the Bible has been made illegal, and we have a generation more ready to succumb to tyranny than we had before. We have a people closer to losing their human freedom.
I, for one, am keen to propagate the Bible and its teachings. I also encourage every one to explore their personal sovereignty before God. I want whole generations committed to walking with God, according to the Word of God, living by faith in God, obedient to the will of God, empowered by the Spirit of God, so that they can build the kingdom of God and turn back the forces of oppression which aim to enslave them and their children.
I commend to you your personal sovereignty. Don’t let anyone ban it or rob you of it. Pursue God. Read the Bible. Put your faith in Jesus Christ. Humble yourself before God. And live the destiny God has uniquely created for you. I challenge you to do so, in Jesus’ precious and powerful name. Amen.

Sovereignty Reigns Supreme

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One of the awesome realities about our personal sovereignty is its inherent power. We, as sovereign citizens, can exercise incredible, miraculous power. That’s not because of any power resident within us in inherent in our being. The power is God’s power. But we can access that power, as people able to enter God’s presence and do business with Him.
History provides us a number of compelling examples, passed down to us in the historical records of the Bible. We find that ordinary citizens, less physically capable than their opponents, have been able to overthrow their enemies and win against insurmountable odds. The reason they could do so is because they were able to exercise their personal sovereignty. That’s why I say that sovereignty reigns supreme.
Personal sovereignty, when properly understood and exercised in the fear of God, brings people into line with the will of God and gives them access to the power of God. Consequently they end up with more clout than governments, armies and people of obvious social influence.
Consider the prophet Elisha. He had no political privilege. He had no special social influence. He had no army, nor any great store of money to use for productive ends. He was simply a ‘prophet of God’. He lived in a country where the ruler did not fear God and where most of the populace were idolaters. Yet he was a man who knew God. He had diligently pursued the right to do business with God.
So, when the nation of Syria decided to invade his country, Israel, this insignificant man, living in one of the villages in the countryside, was able to know what the king of Syria was planning. He would send intelligence information to the King of Israel. This happened so consistently and so accurately that the King of Syria suspected there must be a traitor among his closest advisors.
When the King of Syria discovered the personal influence of this one, defenceless prophet, he sent his whole army to capture the man of God. Yet Elisha was able to boldly walk straight up to the leader of the invading army and lead them all into a trap. See 2Kings 6:8-20.
One solitary sovereign citizen can exercise greater clout than a king and his entire army. One solitary person who understands their right to stand in the presence of God can call down power and outcomes that cannot be bought with millions of dollars.
David was a lad, but he knew his sovereign right to stand in faith in his God. So David, the shepherd boy, killed the fiercest enemy warrior, Goliath.
King Saul’s son, Jonathan, knew that with God on his side he could beat a group of enemy soldiers, and so he did.
Gideon, reluctantly at first, discovered that a small group of soldiers with God on their side is no match for a huge army without God.
Personal sovereignty reigns supreme. That doesn’t mean that people can be anarchists, because the only way to exercise personal sovereignty is to be in submission to the will and purpose of God, Himself. It also doesn’t mean that people should defy the authorities under which God has placed them. But it does mean that those who will press in to God’s presence, and be the people God wants them to be, will be empowered to work the works of God, despite opposition and every resource that is thrown against them. Some will experience miraculous power and miraculous outcomes. Others, like the many martyrs in human history, will take a stand for God and pay for it with their lives.
Personal sovereignty starts with the realisation that we all have to fall at the feet of Almighty God and enter into relationship with Him, on His terms, for His purposes, despite the personal cost to ourselves. From there, there is no stopping you as you step out and fulfil the will of God in your life.