Authority. . .

I felt compelled to talk about the authority of the believer this morning. When God created man, He created him with the plan that man would take full authority in this world. His plan was for man to have dominion over every living creature and every living thing. Man then turned around and blew the opportunity and handed the authority over to satan. Thankfully the Father sent His Son to die for us to take that authority back. Jesus did so much more than give us salvation at the cross. He shed His blood in different ways so that we could have freedom from the curse. Some examples of this are:
1. He was whipped, and by His stripes we are healed (spiritually and physically). It says in Isaiah that He carried our sickness and bore our diseases.
2. He wore the crown of thorns which sets us free from poverty. In Deut. 28 it talks about the curse that came upon man after the fall of man. In that curse was thorns in the ground, amongst our crops. In the bible, thorns represent poverty.
These are just a couple of examples. The reason I chose these two were because it has been taught for so long that we are too suffer these things for Jesus sake. We have been taught that this is our cross, and we are too pick it up and follow Him. Let me remind you of something. . .God is not double minded nor is He a respecter of persons. He treats everyone the same. So you may ask, "Well then why am I sick? Why do I have cancer? Obviously that's God's will for my life. . ." God's will for your life is to live life in abundance (John 10:10). Why does God allow these things to manifest in our lives? It's not God. . .it's us who allow God to allow these things to happen in our lives. It is easy to point fingers at God and blame Him for allowing stuff instead of us taking a look at our own lives. We are to be imitators of Christ (Ephesians 5:1). We have been given the authority to walk as Jesus did. He was not a Divine being, He was a man like you and I. He could have given into temptation at anytime but He was so focused on His father and His purpose that He would not sway. If we took the time to pray as much as Jesus did (which He had to, to keep pure), and keep our focus on the Father, we will truly be able to imitate Him. As for authority, we have it. God wants us to take a stand and tell satan where to go. God wants us to stand up, come before Him and ask Him for things (such as healing). We don't want our children ever to suffer for our sake. . .so why would God want His children to suffer for His sake? Bottom line. . .we need to look at our walk. . .we need to look at our faith. Hey, I'm just as guilty as the rest. Right now our little girl has ear problems and she will be getting tubes put in her ears sometime in the near future. It breaks my heart to see how much pain she's in. Is this God's will for her? You figure it out. . .if it breaks my heart I guarantee that it breaks His. We now realize that we need to go to the Father first, which is what we've done and He has directed us to the right people so that our daughter can receive her healing. We as Christians are not supposed to sit back and let God do His thing. . .He wants us to stand up and ask Him, He wants us to exercise the authority He has given us.