Seeking The Power And Taking Authority

Seeking the Power and Taking Authority

Pastor Jim May

We live in an age when everyone wants to be empowered. Every segment of our society, every little group of dissidents and every club or organization wants to have the power to control its own destiny. Men and women want the power to just be themselves without having to answer to anyone for their behavior, whether it’s good or bad.

Everyone wants to be empowered to live according to the dictates of his own mind, but this can never be. If every man was free to choose his own course of actions without regard to how it affected his fellowman, we would dissolve into a world of absolute chaos. Just take a look at our public school systems and you will see what I mean.

There was a time when principals ruled and teachers maintained control. Then the federal government passed laws that empowered the students and gave them rights above the teachers and principals. Now anarchy reigns in the schools and education has nearly been destroyed.

Empowerment is not always the answer. Sometimes the answer is submission to authority. God given authority is there for a purpose. God knows our hearts and he knows how quickly the heart of man can turn against his neighbor and against the leadership of God, so God created and set into place certain authority figures to maintain the proper controls that help to create and maintain order in society.

It all began at the Creation when God established the order of authority. Man was created first and given the position of leadership over the woman. That is God’s divine order whether we like it or not. Our families are in trouble today because we have attempted to do away with God’s order. Men won’t be men and step up to the plate performing the duties of husband, spiritual leader and priest of the home. Men have abdicated the position as head of the household and retreated into their own little world of jobs and times with the guys doing guy things. They have left the wife to take the position of leadership in the home.

It’s no wonder then that we have generations of kids growing up with only one parent, and with very little, if any, spiritual training. The priest of the house is off fishing or hunting instead of taking his family to church. Then we wonder why our kids won’t serve the Lord. How can they serve a God that they have never known? It’s high time that men become the leaders of their families; not the Lord of the House, but the leader and priest of the house. The home doesn’t need a taskmaster or a slave driver at the head, but a man who loves God and will love his family and lead them back into the ways of the Lord.

Of course there are families where the woman of the house takes that authority because she is a stronger figure than the man. She rules the roost and whatever she says is law. The meek husband is more than willing to sit back and let her have her way as long as she leaves him alone. What kind of lesson in life is that to his son? Does that son have much of a chance for a normal home as God intended for it to be? I doubt it.

God intended for man and wife to act as one; to be in agreement in how to teach the children, how to support the family and to present a unified front to their children so that the kids would recognize the unity and authority of the parents. Now we have kids who have no parents to teach them. They are left to their own devices and to fend for themselves because mom and dad just don’t care enough or have the time to teach. So the kids usurp the authority and begin to rule the house so get what they want.

Political groups across the country want their “rights”. They want to be empowered to spread their belief system everywhere they go. Its groups like the ACLU and Greenpeace that are empowered by Congress to preach their “gospel of freedom for the individual at the expense of freedom for all men” and “rights of one segment of society above the rights of others”. They are funded with tax dollars to preach a doctrine of “taking care of Mother Earth and worshipping the trees and the dust of the earth”, proclaiming that the creation is more important than the Creator and that the life of a human being, created in the image of God, is less important than that of a bird or a fish that may become extinct. Empowerment of the wrong people only brings disaster and confusion.