Power and Authority

The Bible makes a helpful distinction between “authority” and “power”. Some disagreements would disappear, if the terms were defined more clearly and “power” was more carefully delineated.

Jesus had authority due to the wisdom of his teaching, but he had no power to enforce his decisions. He had the power to force out out demons and heal the sick.

The Jewish leaders had authority over religious issues. They had a little bit of power, due to their ability to throw dissenters out of the synagogue, but people could choose to ignore them if they wanted to. The real power was exercised by the Romans. The Jewish leaders needed Roman power to kill Jesus.

The preaching of the gospel led to a shift of authority from the religious leaders to Jesus. However, Jesus had no power, so he had to use his authority cleverly to influence people and challenge them to change their thinking. The authority that Jesus had been given did not last, because when the chips were down prior to the crucifixion, many people gave authority back to the Jewish leaders.

Earthly and Spiritual Authority

We are engaged in a tough spiritual battle, so there will be no end to the struggle until Jesus returns. The spiritual powers of evil will continue to be tough to deal with because they have such a stronghold in church and government affairs. They are not going to go away, because are one of the best weapons the spiritual powers of evil have got in the current age.

Prayer is not always be effective against these government-spirits, if church leaders and political leaders are giving them authority to be there. These human leaders usually have more authority in their sphere than the ones praying, so if intercessors confront a spirit, it will ignore them because people with authority have given them permission to be there.

Prayer is a powerful weapon, but success is not always inevitable. The outcome often depends on who has the most authority in a situation. This is true in the physical too. I cannot command a bad person to leave a house, if the owner of the house has a different view and has given them permission to be there (even if that permission was given without an awareness of their bad character).

We cannot change a situation by prayer, if others have more authority in that institution, because they can use their position to overrule us. If they are already being controlled, the spiritual powers of evil can persuade them to use their authority to overrule us.

More at Prayer and Authority.

God is in Control?

When disaster strikes, like the current Covid19 pandemic, Christians tend to respond by saying, “God is in Control”. This gives them confidence, because if God controls everything, he will not allow anything bad to happen to them. If something bad does happen, it is God’s will, and we just misunderstood it as being evil.

The technical name for the idea that God controls everything is “meticulous providence” or “hard determinism”. This doctrine claims that everything that happens on earth is determined by God. Things can only happen if he wills them. If bad things seem to happen, they are actually good, because God has a greater plan that we do not understand.

The problem with this doctrine is that it is wrong. God does not control everything. God is in control of everything, in the sense that he created everything and set up the world the way that it is. Part of his setting up of the world was giving us freedom to control our own lives and be free to make choices, rather than be controlled like puppets.

I know that God does not control the world, because he does not control me. On several occasions, I have chosen to ignore God’s will and do what I wanted to do. He speaks to me and the Spirit leads, me but am I free to disobey. God does not control me, because he has made free. I am not a tough dude, so if God cannot control me, there will be a lot of others that he cannot control.

When I look around at other Christians, I get the sense that he does not control them either. At times, they seem to do things that he does not want them to do. And when I look at the people of the world who don’t know him, it is fairly clear that God does not control them. Not only does he not prevent them from doing evil to others, he does not prevent them from harming themselves.

God gave humans freedom. He also gave humans control over the earth. The spiritual powers of evil tricked them into disobeying God, and they by default they handed authority on the earth to spiritual evil. So much of what happens on earth is controlled by the spiritual powers of evil.

When I look at life, I see a spiritual battle going on between good and evil. I don’t see a God controls everything.

God deals with evil in three ways.

• God leads followers of Jesus to do his will. His Holy Spirit speaks to us and prompts us to do his will. If I do the wrong thing, he nudges me back to his path, or uses other people to nudge me back, or changes events to push me back to his will. Sometimes he blasts me with such a dose of his presence, that I have no choice but love and obey him.

• He speaks to the people of the world and the powers of evil and persuades them to do what he wants them to do. They are not very clever, so they sometimes follow his suggestions, because they cannot think of anything to do.

  God is smarter than the powers of evil. He is able to confuse their plans on earth, despite having limited authority to act. The Holy Spirit can speak to people who do not know God and persuade them to do things that they might not have wanted to do.

• God works thought groups of people standing together and resisting evil. When Jesus died on the cross, he destroyed the power that the spiritual powers of evil have over us. That gives those who are in Jesus, authority to resist them. We can bind them and resist the harm that we are trying to do.

  God has given us freedom, which is authority in our lives. We have authority to stand against the powers of evil and resist them, if they attack us. Standing against evil in unity with other followers of Jesus that have authority in our lives, because we have submitted to them is the best protection against evil.

I know that God will win in the end. When followers of Jesus proclaim the good news of his Kingdom in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of God advances, bringing people and territory under God's authority. Eventually, all things will be brought voluntarily under the control of God, but we still have a way to go.

More at God’s Sovereignty

Authority and Control

When God made us free, he gave us authority over our own lives, and he will not take that back.

So we can give God permission to speak to us and guide us, and bring events our way, but we cannot give all control over our lives to him. We have to listen to his leading, and choose to obey. And we have to take responsibility for our decisions, and accept the consequences, though he will rescue us from mistakes.

So If we are under attack from demonic powers, he will not deal with them if we remain passive. He expects us to exercise our faith, and take up the authority that he has given us and command them to leave.

Intercession and Authority (6) Holy Spirit

The key to intercession is to be full of the Spirit. However, we must understand that if we are in Jesus, we have the fullness of the Holy Spirit within us. We cannot have half of the Holy Spirit, or a quarter of the Holy Spirit, so we always have his fullness. Thus, if he is limited in his activity, then the problem is with us constraining him from working freely. So, the goal is to be open to his operation, so that he is free to do what he wants to do through us. I am seeking to learn to be sufficiently open to the Holy Spirit so that he can do all that he wants to do through me.

I realise that he prefers to work through small groups of people who are united by love. So, we cannot experience all he wants, if we are stuck in isolation. He prefers to work by giving different people different parts of what the wants to do, ie one has a gift of faith, another has the world of knowledge, another has the gift of healing. So, to experience more of what the wants to do, we must be united with others. Learning to work in small teams in the unity of the Holy Spirit is key.

The gospel is the best means for bringing about social change. Jesus did not tell his disciples to go and intercede with God. He told us to go and heal the sick, cast out demons, and declare the good news of his kingdom. Intercession alone is not enough. So, sharing the gospel, supported by prayer, is the key to changing the world.

Intercession and Authority (5)

Intercession is incredibly important, because it gives God permission to work on earth. I have explained why here.

However, we need to begin in the place where people are. Christians put a lot of effort into prayer, with poor results. They become frustrated, because many of their prayers are not answered. The resulting disappointment undermines their faith, which is sad. They have to shrug and pretend that their prayer not being answered does not matter. These disappointed people need a better understanding of how prayer does and does not work.

Many people, when they don’t have their prayers answered, just shrug their shoulders and say “It was not God’s will” or “That person did not have enough faith”, or “That person is not good enough”, but I am not prepared to do that. I try to learn from the experiences, and the answer I get sometimes surprises me, and other people do not accept it. This can be harder to deal with than just shrugging your shoulders.

One reason that prayers are not answered is that that God has given people freedom, so he will not force them to do things against their will. The Holy Spirit will often put ideas in the minds of evil people, and they will sometimes do what he suggested, because they like his ideas, especially if it is good for them. The Holy Spirit is quite happy to work with this constraint and he is smart enough to get God’s will done despite it.

We can be confident God will achieve his long-term goals, but he does not manipulate and control all human activities. This means that our prayers will only be fulfilled, if they line up with what the Holy Spirit can achieve.

Our prayers are more effective in situations where we have authority. The Holy Spirit better able to intercede on behalf of people who have given us authority in their lives than in the lives of political leaders of other nations that we have no involvement in.

If Christians are praying that God will do everything that is on their hearts and minds, without asking the Holy Spirit what God actually wants to do, then most of those prayers will not be answered. This will lead to disappointment.

We also need to be careful about false positives: things that appear to be linked, but are not, ie situations where what we prayed for happened, but this was not the result of our prayers. Consider a presidential election. Christians will be praying for their candidate: some will be praying for one and some will be praying for another. The group whose candidate gets in will assume that their prayers were answered, when actually their candidate would have won anyway, because God did not care who won, but allowed the people to choose.

When things that we have prayed for happen, we can’t just assume that it was the result of our prayers, because they may have happened anyway. We must be humble about the power of our prayers, because what we asked for may have been going to happen anyway, regardless of whether we had prayed or not.

That said, prayer can have a real effect, if we seek out what the Holy Spirit wants to do in situations where we have influence or authority.

The limitation is not our prayers, but the limitations that God has imposed on himself, by giving humans freedom and authority on earth. It is God that is constrained, not our prayers. The key is to ensure that we are praying according to his will and with alignment to the way that he has set the world up. If we understood, this much of the frustration would go.

Many Christians see currently see prayer as omnipotent, because they assume that God has detailed control over everything (the technical name is meticulous providence). Naturally, they are disappointed when they pray and nothing happens.

Pretending is not faith. However, honest and truth are much better.

Intercession and Authority (4) Deliverance

The one situation where God allows us to use force is dealing with demons. They often have to be forced out. However, God does not really have to force them, because unlike humans, demons are authority serving beings. They always obey the closest voice with authority. So they leave when a voice of authority commands them to go.

We have authority to command demons to leave in the name of Jesus and they must obey.

But even here, there is a catch. If the person whom the demon is harassing has given it permission to be in their life (often unwittingly) and that person does not acknowledge the authority of the person praying, then the demon may say, “I acknowledge the authority of the person giving me permission to be here” and choose to stay. Or it may leave temporarily, and return promptly with other demons that are more evil. One reason that demons sometimes fail to leave is that the person in need does not submit to the authority person praying.

The situation with the Sons of Sceva is illustrative (Eph 17:13-15). The demon recognised the authority of Jesus, and the authority of Paul, but they did not acknowledge the authority of the Sons of Sceva, even though they used Jesus name, and trusted in his power. When praying for deliverance from demons, the authority of Jesus and the authority of the person praying are both essential. The person praying gains authority when the person in need submits to them for help. Many of the people in Ephesus had submitted to Paul, so he had authority to cast demons of their lives.

Intercession and Authority (3) Released by Submission

Authority works the other way too. If I submit to a person or organisation, then I give them authority over my life. For example, if I submit to a government by voting in and election or asking them to provide services, I am giving that government authority over me. They have usually already claimed authority over me, but my submission authenticates their authority.

Likewise, when I submit to the elders or pastors of a church, I am giving them authority over me. They might already claim that God has already given them authority over me, but that is not right, because in the Kingdom of God, authority comes from the bottom up through submission, not by being imposed from the top down. Anyway, if I submit to the pastor and elders claiming authority over me, I am authenticating their authority.

When we submit to the leaders of an organisation, religious or political, we give them authority in lives, which also gives any spiritual powers that dominate them authority in our lives. By submitting to a government (local or central) I give the spiritual powers that work through it access to my life. Likewise, by submitting to the pastor or elders of a church, I give any spirits that have an influence in their lives access into mine.

We should be careful about how we submit in the workplace by being clear that we are only submitting on work-related issues, but not spiritual ones. In our prayers, we should declare to any spiritual power that controls our employer, that we have not given them authority in our lives.

Intercession and Authority (2) Letting the Holy Spirit Speak

Every citizen has a right to ask for an appointment with their king, president or prime minister. They have the right to speak to them. Therefore, I can give the Holy Spirit authority to speak to my king, president or prime minister on my behalf, ie prophets and intercessors can give the Holy Spirit permission to their president or prime minister on their behalf. They can tell the Holy Spirit what they want him to say. He will speak it, if the words are from God. So, the Holy Spirit can speak to kings, presidents or prime ministers, even if the does not have authority to change their behaviour.

I am free to speak to any person I meet. Therefore, I can give the Holy Spirit authority to speak to any person that I mee on my behalf. We should ask the Father what he wants to say to the people we encounter and give the Holy Spirit to speak those words to the person.

Of course, a king, a president, a prime minister and the person I meet on the street are free to ignore the voice of the Spirit, and they often do.

Authority comes through submission. We have authority over people who have submitted to us, as and elder, or by asking for prayer or seeking our wisdom and advice.

Intercession and Authority (1)

Authority works both ways. We need to understand the authority that we have in Jesus, but we must also understand the limits of authority, because people and organisations that have taken it, or been given authority on earth by people submitting to them.

Authority is more important than numbers for effective prayer. Here is another important principle.

We can only give God permission to act on earth
in situations where we have authority

Every Christian has different levels of authority in various spheres of activity. This affects their authority in prayer.

Christian parents have authority in their family, so they can give God permission to work in their family. Employers have authority over in their business, so they can give God authority to work there. Managers have authority over their staff, so they can give God authority to work in their lives. A king has authority in his a kingdom, so he can give God permission to work in his kingdom. Elders have authority over people in their care, so they can give God authority to act in their lives.

When people ask us to pray for them, they are giving us authority in their lives. This gives us authority to speak to God on their behalf. Hannah had submitted to Eli, so he had authority to agree with her prayers. If she had not submitted to him, his agreement may not have meant anything.

Two or three people with earthly authority over a situation will be more effective than hundreds who have no authority. This is a reason why Christians should take up positions of authority that are offered to them. Being given authority in the world gives a Christian wider and broader authority in prayer.

Much of the prayer for cities and nations is wasted, because the people who are praying do not have much authority over the political systems they are praying for. If the rulers of a city are not Christians, they are by default, continuously giving the forces of evil authority to act in their city or nation. Christians can bind these political-spirits and government-spirits and command them to leave the city, but they do not need to depart, if they have been invited to be there by leaders of the city, because the leaders have more authority in the city than the people praying.

Christians should be careful about submitting to political authorities, because when we submit to them, we are vulnerable to the political-spirits that control them. If we are standing to together in unity with other Christians, that may not be a problem, but if we are isolated from spiritual support, we might come under attack. (From Prayer and Authority).

Intercession is only effective in situations where we have authority on earth. Being seated at the right hand of God, in Jesus, does not give us the ability to make people do things that they do not want to do. If it did, Christians would already control the world. Our prayers will not be effective for people whom we do not have authority over, because they have more authority in their lives than we do. Intercessors cannot change the behaviour of a king, president or prime minister unless that king, president or prime minister has submitted to them.

Love and Submission (6) Business

Business authority is free authority. A business begins when some people with skills and spare assets hand authority over them to a business organisation that they create. Pooling assets increases their effectiveness.

Businesses have limited and temporary authority. Investors can sell their shares in the business, at any time. Lenders can terminate their loans, when they fall due. Employees can resign from their employment. No one has to buy the goods and services produced. The temporary authority over wealth and life that has been submitted to the business can be withdrawn at any time. If the business is liquidated, the authority it exercised evaporates.

Employees have to submit to their employer’s authority, but that is the condition of their accepting employment with the business. They agree to submit to their employer for a specific part of their week in exchange for a specific wage or salary. The employer pays for the submission of their employees, so the employees do not have to love their employer. If the employer gets violent, or loses their respect, employees can resign from their position.

Many people feel like their employer has imposed authority over them, but that is not true. An employee can end their employer’s authority in their life at any time, by resigning. This is the difference between an employee and a slave. Slaves cannot resign from their owners. They are stuck under their authority. An employee can resign. It might be economically painful, if they have difficulty getting new employment, but they do have that freedom.

Businesses operate under Free Authority, which is the best type of authority. They can give instructions to their staff, but they cannot use physical force to make them do things against their will. Only governments have that power. A business can only exercise Imposed Authority if it is empowered by a government.

In the modern world, business have colluded with their government to gain additional authority that God has not given. Limited liability and other corporate laws have allowed businesses to become very large with enormous hierarchies of monopoly power. These huge conglomerates provide great opportunities for the powers of darkness. They concentrate their efforts on the senior management, because it gives them control over vast resources. These people tend to have big egos, so the power plays are usually successful.

God prefers family businesses. As the Kingdom of God advances, large businesses will be chopped up and spread around. Smaller family-owned business will abound.

Love and Submission (5) Fathers and Sons

The relationship between a father and a son begins with love, not authority. When a baby is born, all the father can do is love and provide for his son. He has no authority to tell his baby son what to do, because the son cannot speak or understand commands.

As he grows the son submits to his father authority, because recognises his father’s love. The father can reinforce his authority by picking up the son and carrying where he wants him to go. He can also strengthen his authority with sanctions, such as timeout or loss of privileges.

If the father threatens physical force, he might obey his father out of fear, but that is not ideal. Physical discipline creates imposed authority, because the resulting submission is due to fear, not love.

When the son gets older, he realises that he does not have to obey his father, if he does not want to. The father’s authority can disappear, if his son does not understand his father’s love.

Adult sons usually leave their father’s home. They will continue to appreciate their father’s advice, so the father still has limited authority in his son’s life.

Love and Submission (4) Elders and Husbands

The scriptures do not give elders authority. Elders are commanded to watch over people, serve them and protect them. But they are not given authority to control them.

Because we are engaged in a spiritual battle, new Jesus-followers are encouraged to submit to elders. This free action gives authority to the elder (an elder does not have an innate authority). They only have authority that is created when someone submits to them. If the people submitting lose their respect for the elder and withdraw their submission, the elder loses their authority.

Elders often demand that people in their church submit to them. This is a false understanding of authority. If people must obey them, they are exercising domination and control, which is a distortion of true authority. True authority is given freely by submission, it cannot be demanded.

The same applies to husbands and wives. Wives are urged to submit to their husbands (just as husbands have to submit to the will of their wives, because they love them). Husbands do not have an innate authority that allows them to demand that their wives obey them. Demanded obedience is actually domination.

Submission that cannot be freely withdrawn at any time, is domination and control, not true authority.

Christians should stop claiming that they have authority, because they are male or mature, or have been appointed to a particular role. They should earn authority, by loving, serving and demonstrating wisdom.

A person with authority can issue a command and know that it will be acted on. This can occur for two reasons.

• The person with authority has power or the ability to compel the person to obey. The soldier obeyed the centurion, because he knew that if he disobeyed, the whole wait of the Roman Empire would come down on him. This is Imposed Authority.

• The person receiving the command loves and trusts, the person issuing the command and has freely chosen to submit to them. I call this Free Authority. A person gains authority when someone freely submits to them, because they love them. The person submitting actually creates the authority of the person they submit to. That means that they can take the authority away, if they lose their trust, and stop submitting.

Love and Submission (3) Active not Passive

Submission in the New Testament is active, not passive. The Greek word “upotasso” means to place yourself under another. The person submitting actively places themselves under the person that they have chosen to submit to. This is a free action. This gives the person that they submit to authority in their life. It also means that they can remove the authority if they decide not to submit.

Christians often present submission as passive. They assume that a person with authority can demand that others submit to them, but this is a distortion of true authority. Submission is a choice.

If a person has to submit, then they do not have a choice, and they have lost the freedom that God created in them. Demanded submission is domination.

True biblical submission is voluntary. If the person with authority is unreasonable, immoral, or unlawful, the people who have submitted to them are free to withdraw their submission.

Submission has to be earned with love and service. If they person with authority stops loving and serving, they will lose their authority, because people will stop submitting to them.

A person who submits creates the authority of another person. This gives them the power to destroy the authority too, if it goes wrong. Allowing people with authority to demand submission, eliminates this protection, and encourages domination and control. This is wrong. Authority must be controlled by the people submitting. This is the best protection against tyranny.

Authority and Intercession

Evil spirits generally have to respond to authority. They played the authority game to steal authority on earth from humans to get their power on earth. So if they deny the validity of authority, they are undermining their position. Of course, a few are cheats, but generally they acknowledge authority. If they refuse, the Holy Spirit will force them out. (I explain the working of authority in Kingdom Authority).

The power of our intercession depends on how much authority we have in the situation. If a person has given evil spirits permission to be active in their lives, then our prayers might not be effective, because the person has greater authority over their life that we do. If they are tired of the evil and want rid of it, then our prayer will be effective, because their will, our will and God’s will are aligned, so the evil spirit has to go.

There are various ways we can get authority in another person’s life. Parents have authority over children. When we submit to elders, we give them authority in our lives. When someone asks us for help, that gives us authority in their life. When we submit to each other, we give the others authority to resist evil on our behalf. That is why submission is important in the NT.

One way to increase our authority is to bless the other person in some way. They then owe us something, which gives us authority, (the borrower is the servant of the lender). Of course, our motive must be love, and we must not expect anything in return.

Another way to increase authority is to submit to a trusted friend (or two). This gives them the same authority in the situation that we have. If we all agree with God's will the power of our intercession will be amplified.

We should concentrate our intercession of people where we have some authority because they will be more effective. I only have very little authority over a President or Prime Minister, because my only authority is my vote which is miniscule authority. So, it takes a large number of people with a small bit of authority to be effective in intercession for them. On the other hand, I have considerable authority in the life of a friend who asks me for help.

If I want someone to pray effectively for me, I need to submit to them and give them authority in my life. Then when we agree with them and with God, evil cannot resist.

When evil spirits leave, they do not clean up their mess before they go. The remaining mess does not mean that they have not gone. We often need to ask the Holy Spirit to come and restore the damage that they have left behind.

Praise is the Power of Heaven

A common teaching is that praise breaks the powers of darkness. This is stated as truth by many worship songs, but it is not in the scriptures.

Years ago, I attended a large worship service in the city centre. A team of a dozen musicians led the worship in a very polished manner. The singing was enthusiastic and the presence of God could be felt. As we were singing a song about the Jesus seated on the throne in heaven, the Holy Spirit allowed me to hear what the evil one was saying. The voice I heard said:

Who cares;
I am winning.
You can do what you like in here,
I am winning out there where it all happens.
You can sing about heaven as much as you like
I am winning in the world where it counts.

Praise is good. It is the right way to enter God’s presence, but praise does not change the authority situation on earth.

The principalities and powers that dominate a city or nation are there because they have been given authority to be there, by people with authority. They are quite happy for God’s people to gather and praise, because it leaves authority in the world unchanged.

We are in a season when worship has been marvellous, with great new music and songs, but the situation in the world has got worse. More of the same will not change that.

The same season has seen a huge amount of prayer, but it has not been effective in breaking the darkness. It may have prevented the situation from getting worse, but it has not released the massive victory many expected. Instead, many intercessors have been battered. More of the same will result in more of the same slow decline.

The powers of darkness are there, because they have been given authority to be there by people with authority. They will refuse to go while their authority to be there remains. No individual Christian or group of Christians has authority to make them go, because the people who let them in have greater authority in the city.

This is the challenge we need to resolve. It will take more than praise. It will require a greater understanding of authority.

Covenant (14) Purpose 4: Authority Shift

The mosaic covenant changed the authority situation in the promised land. Under the Adamic covenant, men had authority over the land. If they rebelled, they could shut God out of the land, and they mostly did. Under, the Mosaic covenant, men could still sin, but this covenant gave God the right to exile them from the land. They could no longer shut God out of this bit of land. This was a massive step forward in god’s plan to restore his authority on earth. I explain this more fully in my book Kingdom Authority.

God’s Will and Authority

Although humans have authority on earth, and they have surrendered their authority to the powers of evil, God still manages to get his will done. The Holy Spirit uses whatever authority humans give with such wisdom and power that he achieves more than we would expect.

Although only a limited number of Christians are praying according to his will, many others are crying out to him. Their prayers often align with God’s will by serendipity. Even non-Christians sometimes cry out to God unwittingly, eg “God help me”. The Holy Spirit acts on all these prayers, if they are helpful for his purposes.

More at Prayer and Authority.

Authority and Power (2)

For a Christian, getting rid of sickness has two phases. The first requires authority. We command the sickness to leave. The authority we have in Jesus causes the evil spirit that was inflicting the sickness to leave (Act 10:38).

The problem is that when evil spirits leave or stop harassing, they do not clean up their mess before they go. They leave a lot of garbage behind. They do no kill their viruses, before they leave. They do not take their arthritis with them, when they have been commanded to leave. We need the Holy Spirit to come in and restore the body that was sick to the way that God created it to be. He has the power to do that.

If the junk that the evil spirits leave behind is genetic damage or viruses, they can be passed onto subsequent generations.

In many situations, the command “Be healed in Jesus name” will be sufficient to complete both phases of healing. Sometimes we will need to specifically invite the Holy Spirit in to do the full complete clean up.

More at Healing.

Sovereign Capability

If God directly controlled every living being in creation, like a puppet master manipulates his puppets that would be amazing capability. Keeping track of each person and making them act according to a coordinated plan would be an amazing achievement.

However, God does something even more amazing. He sets the puppets free to their own thing. He limits himself to influencing them by making suggestions. A few are committed to doing his will, but most are openly hostile. Worse still, many angels who have rebelled, have the ability to control some of those who are hostile. This looks like an impossible situation, but God is able to accomplish his purposes on earth, without needing to control people.

God is able to achieve this through his amazing wisdom an power.

• God’s wisdom is perfect and complete.
• He knows what is happening everywhere all the time.
• God totally understands human behaviour, because he created us. He knows how we will respond and behave in various situations.
• The Holy Spirit is active throughout creation. He can speak simultaneously to every human on earth at the same time.
• Everything he does moves people and events towards the fulfilment of God’s purposes.
• The Holy Spirit can influence people who are hostile to God, because he knows what suggestions they will respond to.
• Humans have limited imagination and often do not know what they want to do. They are open to the Spirit’s suggestions.
• The powers of evil are pathetic and feeble by comparison. They can only be in one place at a time. They can only influence one person at a time, unless they get hold a poltical leader.
• The powers of evil are disunited, so the often work against each other.
• They often do not know what is going on, so they do things that hinder their cause.

This is amazing capability. God is so great, he can accomplish his purposes with one hand tied behind his back. It just takes a little time.

More in Kingdom Authority.