16. Let Them Eat Cake, Part II

I quote Napoleon: “History is a set of lies agreed upon.”  Which version of us do you think the demons prefer?

Returning to address that teaching we called out at the top of Part 1: “You need to be more obedient to walk in more authority.”  This is a doctrine of demons, designed to keep us from utterly routing them at every turn like we did before Adam ate the fruit.  Jesus didn’t say any such thing, and in fact gave “all authority” with no qualifications.

“Doctrine of demons” may sound kinda harsh, but I often consider things I hear and ask myself, “Who does this stand to benefit, the Kingdom of Heaven or of darkness?”  That old lesson that Christians cannot have a demon is one of those, which we talked about once before.

Those who teach about “measures of authority” will tell you they’ve “learned it to be true through experience”.  Here’s what happens in their brains that gives them the appearance that what they’re saying is true – this is called “confirmation bias”:

Let’s say Hypothetical Garrison casts out a demon from someone most days of the week.  (i do not, i’m in this right alongside you)  And then one morning I lie to someone, and I feel bad about having done that.  Then I think, “I just disobeyed the Lord,” followed by, “I’m out of his will!  I better not try to cast out any demons, they could roll me!”  All about “how I feel about my disobedience”.

Then I try to cast out a demon that day, while my thoughts reiterate what I have believed, “You just lied. You think this will work?” and I answer, “Maybe? I dunno. I’ve been taught that my authority is tied to obedience.”  And the demon doesn’t react to my words at all because I don’t fully expect him to.  My belief created doubt in me that has robbed me of faith.  I start apologizing to whomever that I couldn’t help them get free. Or worse, I blame it on the person. "They weren't ready to let go of their sin..." Ick.

Then a couple weeks pass with no lies and lots of Bible studies, and I feel like, “I’ve been obedient again for a good while, I‘ve repented and the Lord understands how sorry I am.  I feel like my authority in the spirit is restored.”  All about “how I feel” again.  Then I go out feeling confident and cast out a demon again.  There, now I have evidence that obedience is required to have spiritual authority.

The whole cycle depended on how I felt and what I expected as a result.  And it was all governed by my belief in the law and of obedience to it.  I created shame, my expectation suffered, which means my faith was disabled, and then my expectations were restored through a process of penance that I went through of my own accord.  This repeating up-and-down cycle of crippling and healing, crippling and healing, is what Jude 1:13 refers to as being “wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame.”  My authority was never affected during the cycle – my confidence in my authority was.

Let me be devastatingly clear about that doctrine:  This is called “self-righteousness”.  I convinced myself that my authority comes from my obedience to commands.  Yes, when I wasn’t feeling ashamed, I confidently exercised one of the laws of supernature – but my expectation / confidence / faith was based on how much I align to the law.

Oh foolish Galatians!  Who has bewitched you?  Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?  Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by work of the law, or by hearing with faith – just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

Our authority over heaven and earth is a spiritual law.  It was granted in the Spirit through Jesus.  In the Spirit we are marked with the signet of the Kingdom – taught in Ephesians 1:13, “When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.”  Authority is exercised in the Spirit through the Spirit.  This whole topic – there is nothing more clearly begun and perfected by the Spirit.  And having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?  Righteousness is credited to us through believing.  If you believe in your own actions to grant you a gift of the spirit: self-righteous.

Furthermore, if your authority has strings attached, that means your Father the King’s authority is also conditional.  You carry, and represent as his prince and ambassador, the authority that He has – not the authority that you have!  Authority is not dependent on you.  All that is required of you is to believe it, like Abraham.  Your Father’s authority doesn’t have “measures that you can work your way up through,” and “things you can do to increase it.”  It is 100% authority over all things, with no grey areas and no fractions.  Jesus represented and demonstrated his Father’s authority, and you’re his brother.  Same Father.  Stop acting like the black sheep of the family.

Here is another teaching on it, this time from Moses.  I hope we might agree that authority and dominion are primarily tools to destroy the works of the enemy.  We don’t need dominion to pray to the Father or foster an intimate relationship with him…  We don’t need dominion to love one another…  We don’t need it to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, or to obey the Lord, or learn from our mistakes…  It’s a combat-centric or government-centric gift from the Father, useful for action, right?  A centurion thing.

Let’s read Deuteronomy 9, which explains the authority & dominion dynamic quite plainly.  Here, Moses is addressing the Israelites just before they are to cross the Jordan and enter their promised land – and beaucoup combat.  Look at verses 4-6:

“Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the words that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.  Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.”

Put these words in the context of our enemies, the fallen angels.  They are, after all, the princes that govern and define “the nations”.  (think of Daniel, “the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days,” and, “when i go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.”)

The wickedness of our enemies is what condemns them to utter defeat and obedience to us.  The spiritual law is pretty simple: “They must obey us because Jesus said so.”  Jesus resurrected and restored all dominion to man; He taught this, not me.  We call on his name, not ours!  The LORD drives out demons by our word, drives out disease and injury by our word, and the creation eagerly waits for us to reveal ourselves as confident ambassadors, exercising our authority over it by our word.  None of this is because of our righteousness, for we are a stubborn people.  But if we think that our pure and obedient living is what enables these things to succeed, we must listen to Moses.

Lemme give you a shocking example of exactly how much authority we all have, and how it has ZERO to do with alignment with “the will of the Lord” or obedience of any kind.  Luke 9:52, Jesus goes to this Samaritan village and they don’t receive him, “And when his disciples, James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ But he turned and rebuked them.”  King James adds that he also says, “You do not know of what spirit you are.”

These two kids are full of actual faith; this happens after he “gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases” in verse 1 of the chapter.  They’ve learned what to expect when they speak.  How did Jesus react?  Did he say, “Come here you silly boys, that’s not how this works. You can’t just ask for things that aren’t the will of your Father!”??  That’s what your pastor would say.  Nopeeee - Jesus says something along the lines of, “Shut your mouths this instant!! You must not do that!! You don’t know what you’re about to do!”  He rebukes them because it woulda happened.  This is what our faith and tongues are capable of, and it doesn’t matter which spirit we’re aligned with when we use them.

A second, perhaps less poignant example, would be Matthew 7:22:

“On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

Here are people who actually did the “many mighty works” just like James and John were about to do.  Used the name of Jesus; had the faith; all the things.  And they end up being “workers of lawlessness”.  Does that sound like their prayers were successful because they were “only praying in line with the will of the Lord”?  Does the will of the Father ever produce lawlessness?  No, but they did…

Don’t get yourself distracted by the cliché (but accurate) teaching about this scripture: “You see? He has to know you. You can’t do anything without intimacy with the Father.”  (that’s the current cop-out phrase people have been using when they hear something from scripture that their belief system can’t absorb.)  Back up to the plain fact that these people are literally, actually casting out demons and doing many mighty works.  Takes a measure of faith greater than mine, plus a tongue.  I dunno about you, but my life is not yet full of “many mighty works” no matter whether I’m doing them in tandem with “intimacy with the Father” or with “you do not know what spirit you are of.”  I have faith in cooked eggs.

So here’s why I want us to learn to act like rich, entitled, spoiled brats:  We’ve probably seen at least one film where there’s a prince and princess who treat everyone around them like despicable slaves who are way beneath them.  I mean, watch Cersei and Jaime Lannister in action.  Everyone in every room hates when they come around.  Everyone knows they’ve murdered and manipulated and betrayed, and done all kinds of horrible things, and still they boss everyone around and everyone obeys.  Royalty refers to everyone else as “Subjects”.  This is because, “They are subject to my authority and commands. My rules.”  They expect everyone to be at their beckon call, and to go jump off a cliff if they command it.

We watch the Lannisters and we all feel the ick about people like that.  Nobody wants to hang around them.  But the crazy thing is they actually have a correct vision of who they are compared to the rest of the room.  They have literal authority, and know it – 100% authority no matter who else is there.  They’ve murdered ten people and never doubt that everyone should still be groveling.  Even the other honored titles – Earl and Lord and Duke – are subjects that have to bow and kiss the ring.  “Sandwich, remove yourself from my court!  Earl of Burrito, I’m calling on you to serve me this evening.”

The Prince is a natural manifestation of a spiritual truth that we have not embraced.  If you, in the natural, as a second-class citizen next to a prince, are disgusted-by-but-obedient-to the prince, you understand the position of every demon and principality when we walk into the room.  Is your dad a king?  Yeah, then are you a prince?  Yeah, so then shouldn’t you walk around expecting the demons to grovel and jump off a cliff if you command it?  Does it matter whether you flipped off the old lady driving slow?  Did the authority come with strings attached?  Are the demons disgusted by it, but required to be obedient to you?

Alright I think I’ve made myself abundantly clear.  Now before people get to thinking I teach us not to care about obedience…  Obedience is definitely essential as followers of Jesus.  Amidst the many wonderful arguments made in like hundreds of scriptures, two huge flows of truth rise to the top of my mind.

The first is spiritually selfish – all about “what we can get out of it”.  Look at 1Peter 2:11, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”  Add Satan saying to the Lord in Job 1:10, “Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side?”  Along with Ecclesiastes 10:8, “and whoever breaks a hedge, a snake shall bite him.”

We understand that the Lord has grown a nice, protective spiritual hedge around us – we, who are trees in the spirit.  But it’s also possible for us to break it, so that “a snake” can get in and bite us.  Obedience to the instruction of the Lord is only good for us.  We parents, who are evil, are always telling our kids to obey certain rules because we don’t want them to come to disaster, correct?  How much moreso your Father in heaven wants you to be safe from yourself!

There are millions of aspects of our lives that are spiritual; invisible to our flesh eyes that we trust so much, but clearly visible to all angels both light and dark.  We are already living in both our spiritual body and our natural body, simultaneously.  (talking about what Paul references in 1Cor 15:52, when describing the revealing of our spiritual bodies, after the last trumpet sounds)  We get natural wounds and natural scars – and there is a counterpart to this in your spiritual body.  We’re really, really good at living our first birth and seeing natural consequences but we’re not generally as good at living our second birth and seeing our spiritual condition.  Unfortunately, it’s the spiritual condition that manifests trouble in the natural body.  The spirit comes first and your natural body follows suit.

The Holy Spirit is teaching in 1Peter 2:11 that we can wage war against our own souls – something I’m pretty sure you’d agree isn’t visible with your flesh eyes – by disobeying the Father’s commands.  For example, we can give The Devourer full access to our material worth by disobeying the spiritual law of the tithe.  Try as we might, our soul keeps getting attacked “by something” we can’t explain.  A war is always being waged.  Being self-gratifying – in any way – turns our own sword against us.

And don’t read “passions of the flesh” as a Romans 8:5 person does.  Lying to avoid a consequence gratifies your flesh; Manipulation to get your way in something gratifies your flesh; Fashioning an idol of yourself to represent to others strokes your ego.  Some passions of the flesh are obvious, and some, not so much.

To me, this sounds overwhelming – like, “How could I ever possibly be safe from snakebite, then?  I suck at so many levels of obedience!  :’(  But I don’t want to break my hedge.”  Praise the Lord God Almighty for the gift of repentance!  Praise him for giving us an opportunity to forgive those we haven’t!

Quoting Jesus in Matthew 18:34, “And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”  Jesus is talking to the Church, here, mahboyzzz.  His parable is about a servant overwhelmed by debt (just like me) who is forgiven but then doesn’t change.  He doesn’t repent of the things he had been doing all along – like choking out people who owe him.  Our Father’s forgiveness should lead us to repentance and then to forgiveness in kind.

We’re all headed for snakebite if it weren’t for God granting us opportunity to forgive.  But if we won’t forgive… The anger stirred in our Father over unrepentance is ready to deliver us to jailers.

Or quoting Jesus in Mark 11:25, right after the bit we talked about in Part 1, “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

Repenting and forgiving are the only cleansers, rebuilding your spirit hedge.  This is another one of those qualities about us, as princes, that makes the demons just outright pissed when we walk in:  A law of supernature that they want to cash in on (broken hedge = i get to bite him) is made null and void by our Father the King.  All we need to do is be constantly repentant and forgiving.  (“all we need to do,” easier said than done, i know)  Their opportunity to counter-attack, that should have been there, is removed.

Back to why obedience is essential;  The second main reason is because we love our Father.  I imagine you’ve all heard “more sermons about that than days you’ve been alive”.  We’ll quickly go to John 15 because not only does Jesus explicitly say it, but because it’s worth understanding the dynamic and what’s at stake, too.  

Verse 15:9  “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.”  Note here that it’s not, “As the Father has loved you, so I have loved you.”  The Father loves the Son because the Son has kept the Father’s commandments.  We have not.  So Jesus appears as “something we can touch” to help us feel what the Father’s love could look like.  The Father loves Jesus and Jesus lets his disciples experience that love as a sort of in-store demo without them having bought the TV.  Without Jesus, we’d still have no really great point of reference for who our Father is, and we’d mostly understand him as a nebulous cloud of darkness and fire at the top of Sinai, and there’s like zero chance we’d equate that to any sort of potential to feel loved by him.

Verse 15:10, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”  There, he says it point blank.  God is love, but if you want to be submerged in that river of light and water of life, you must obey his commandments.  Otherwise, you’re outside of that.  Dunno about you, but that’s not where I wanna be.

So, hey, that second one actually sounds kinda spiritually selfish, too.  Our Father gets joy out of seeing us safe, and out of us abiding in his love.  But in my opinion, it seems we’re always getting the better end of the deal when we discipline ourselves and choose obedience!  :D

Do we need a recap?

Abide in our Father’s commandments – we’re choosing life if we do!

Authority, on the other hand, doesn’t have levels or exist in fractional amounts, and is not representative of who we are, but of who our Father is.  Authority over all the power of the enemy is delegated to Jesus, and delegated also to us.

In the name of Jesus I bless us to learn the uncomfortable role of prince, as brothers to the Son of the King of Kings.  I bless us with centurion understanding and expectations.  I bless us with the discernment of spirits, and with a shameless confidence that overcomes them with a word, every time.

Thank you for spending your time with me yet once more.

Garrison