Having experience with both following and leading, I often think about the nature of authority; Where does it come from? How does it develop? Today’s passage will help answer these questions. We will focus today’s MwM exploration on the idea of legitimate authority and launch from this inspired sentence:
Take now your son…and offer him as a burnt offering. (Genesis 22:2)
The scripture do not record any reaction by Abraham other than his prompt obedience. There just had to be a “You-Can’t-Be-Serious!!” moment in there somewhere, “Slay Isaac! But God, he is the miraculous fulfillment of your promise to Sarah and I. And—need I remind you? He is the means to the fulfillment of your promise to make nations from my seed. Isaac has brought laughter into our lives, replacing the sorrow of Sarah’s barrenness.” It is recorded that Abraham is God’s friend. Has it ever bothered you how God treats His friends? How about His children, each of whom He scourges?
Words like scourging and discipline sound so Old Testament. But it is the New Testament writer of Hebrews who goes so far as to call us illegitimate if we are without them. Here is a question for those of us who lead; What have we said, by way of our words and our lives, that have helped clarify how discipline works itself out? Or, have our notions of grace undermined the place of discipline?
Legitimate leaders are those whose lives and teachings help clarify this challenging aspect of following Christ. By teaching on pet themes (which often exclude correction), we fail to equip would-be disciples with this essential part of the vision that should be forming in their hearts. Without this understanding of God’s ways, how will the would-be disciple react when the path becomes steep with some discipline from the Lord or narrow with some challenging circumstance?
We should appeal to our pastors: “Please do not just share from the latest book you’ve read (or whatever source of inspiration you depend upon) and expect us to prosper as his disciples.” True disciples will balk at that voice. Unless it is lived truth, it remains a potentially lifeless proposition. Second hand truths do not fan cold embers into fires, nor can they sustain the fires that already glow within hungry hearts.
Speak to us instead from your legitimizing experience with God, those seasons where the Word, through trial and testing, has become flesh in you. Model for us what life with Him and each other is to look like. There are many who are looking and longing for those who can speak to them and live along side them with the authority that only come from life-experience, shaped by God’s Word and His Spirit.
In his becoming a friend to God, Abraham had to let go of the thing that was most precious to him on this earth. Contrary to every fiber of his being, he had to relinquish his rights to God’s promise and entrust that promise back to Yahweh to do with as He pleased. For Abraham and for the author of Hebrews, it boiled down to this:
It is God with whom we have to do. (from Hebrews 4:13)
Those who enjoy friendship status with the Father have been weaned (often through discipline or pruning) from their earthly ambitions. Having let go of their ego-driven agendas they have become equipped with the legitimate authority found only in broken men and women, saints whose false foundations have been demolished, disciples who are progressively resting in Christ alone as their life and are now living for His larger kingdom-agenda.
Father, please raise up authentic spiritual fathers whose lives and words will honor the whole counsel of scripture and help us to understand Your loving heart so that we may process life as You intend us to, so that we might grow up as legitimate children, accurately representing who You are to the world around us. Amen.