Purpose And Power Of Authority (19 page)

Chapter Ten

Michael Jordan was a phenomenal basketball player who played for the Chicago Bulls. Many consider him to be the greatest basketball player in the history of the sport. In game two of the 1986 playoffs, Jordan threw sixty-three points against Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics, a single-game scoring record for the playoffs that still holds today.1 It almost seemed as if he didn’t even have to look at the basket to make the shots. It was in his blood. When he came down the court and jumped to shoot, he was like a rolling “mean machine.” He was born to do it.

Yet, in late 1993, when he was still only thirty years old, he announced his retirement from basketball. Shortly afterward, he signed a baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox. Here was a man who was extraordinarily gifted in basketball deciding to play baseball.

The most awkward thing I ever saw was Michael Jordan with a baseball bat. Even the uniforms seemed wrong on him. He was so tall (six feet six inches) that his jersey rode up high. While he apparently worked very hard at baseball and learned all he could, it just didn’t seem the right fit to me. Then, after about a year in baseball, he left and returned to the NBA, where he continued his extraordinary basketball career.2

Michael Jordan’s experience is instructive to personal authority because even when you know your gifting, you can lose focus and move into a realm outside your natural domain.

The domain of your personal authority is where you are authorized to function by inherent purpose. When you are in your area of authority, it’s as if an instinct takes over, much like Michael Jordan’s basketball playing. Or, it’s like a reflex. It is an unforced, almost unconscious, part of your nature. You don’t have to work it up.

Therefore, one of the greatest mysteries to me is the fact that most people are living unauthorized lives. They’ve never asked themselves (or they have failed to continue to ask themselves) concerning their jobs or other activities, “Was I created to do this?” We have seen that personal authority is the legal right and freedom given by the Author to human beings (and other living things) to manifest the special ability and power He caused them to have. Manifesting what is within him is what gives a person authenticity. To be authentic means (1) to be (or become) oneself, (2) to manifest one’s true self, and (3) to be true to oneself.

In this chapter, I want to present seven important guidelines that will help you to ignite and to continue manifesting the personal authority within you.

First, in order to function in your personal authority, you have to stay in your own area of gifting. To stay there, you have to know what is not right for you as much as you know what is right for you. Time is too precious to waste on the wrong things.

Because Michael Jordan was away from basketball for over a year, he had to spend months working to recondition himself so that he could return to the top form he’d previously had. Although he still had amazing natural talent, he’d lost the sharp edge on his precision and skills. He’d lost his sensitivity to the game. I saw Jordan play his first three games after returning to basketball, and the opposing players seemed to run all over him because they had never stopped playing and were still at the peak of their abilities.

This is what happens when you move out of your personal authority. When you leave your inherent gift for something else, those with similar gifts who keep using them will remain sharp. And when you return to your gift, you’ll have to work to “catch up” to them. You have to make sure you stay in your conditioning and your area of skill.

Your domain of authority is where you can prosper and work with joy. As we have seen, even though it will include discipline and effort, it will seem easy to you in many respects because you were built for it. Paul of Tarsus wrote, “Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation [“state” nkjv; “condition” nasb] God called him to” (1 Corinthians 7:24). For the word situation, we might also substitute the word position, or gift. This verse is saying, in effect, “Stay in the authority the Creator has given to you. This is your responsibility to Him.”

In order to stay in your own area of authority, you must not allow other people to pressure you into doing something that isn’t right for you according to your inherent purpose. If you give in to them, you won’t be able to be truly authentic. Paul encouraged his readers in first-century Rome—as well as us today—to find their unique domains and to stay in them by not conforming to false ideas or yielding to the pressure to follow a path contrary to the Creator’s established principles and laws.

Do not conform [be molded] any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. (Romans 12:2–8)

Paul was talking about discovering your own personal gifting from God. When he wrote about “different gifts, according to the grace given us,” he was referring to the authorized abilities that we have been given by our Creator. Jesus equated our understanding of authority with faith (see Luke 7:8–10), so the “measure of faith” Paul mentioned above can be seen as our understanding of and full acceptance of the authority God has given us.

Move against the Flow of Unauthorized Opinion

What does it mean for you to keep from being molded to the pattern of the “world” in terms of your personal authority? It means not to follow the standard perspectives and conventions of the general culture around you, through which (sometimes well-meaning) relatives, friends, educators, unauthorized authority figures, and others will often pressure you to conform to what they want you to be and do, or to what they think is important and worth pursuing in life, rather than your God-given dreams and ideas. The world’s mind is often already made up about us, and we have to work against the flow of that opinion if it is contrary to our personal authority.

Trying to be what you weren’t born to be is likely the most frustrating experience you could have. Did you ever have a teacher say to you, “You’d make a good ___________,” and you felt pressured to pursue a certain vocation, even though it was the last thing you wanted to do? Or, sometimes, parents will say to their children, “I always wanted to be a ___________, but I never was able to, so you’re going to become one.” The children have no interest in these occupations, but they go into them because their parents want them to. For example, a father may tell his son, “I always wanted to be a lawyer but didn’t have the money. I worked my hands to the bone in the factory, so, no matter what you say, you’re going to be a lawyer. You’re going to be what I always dreamed of being.”

What a tragedy it is that we have such a large mass of unauthentic people in the world. We cannot follow the dreams of others but must instead follow the dreams the Creator has implanted within us. Therefore, when you attend school or go to your business or organization, don’t try to be “accepted.” You are too unique to be accepted as one of the crowd. That doesn’t mean that we should try to offend others, but if offense comes by the fact that we are being authentic, we have to realize that this sometimes comes with the territory. When a person ceases to be authentic just so that he can be accepted, he has broken faith with who the Creator has made him to be. No one should compromise who he is in order to gain acceptance from anybody else. You are not like anybody else. You are authentic. Authority is the right and the power to be and to become who you are.

Sometimes, people don’t try to steer you toward a different direction in life but seem to dismiss your worth or capabilities outright. Don’t accept this rejection of who you are and the purpose for which the Creator has made you. Paul wrote, “We speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began” (1 Corinthians 2:7). There is a “secret wisdom” that is in God. In the context of your personal authority, there is something God destined for you to become, for you to accomplish, that was hidden in Him before the world began. And it’s a secret. Why? Because only God knows what He created you to do.

Human beings need God in order to discover and fulfill their purpose for living. It is not, as some believe, because we should be “religious.” Religion is a sad reason to come to God. God wants you restored to Him so you can have a relationship with Him, and so He won’t lose what He put in you to manifest on the earth. Jesus’ coming to earth and dying on the cross for you is a measure of the treasure that is inside of you.

Yet it’s very difficult to become what you were born to be when you are around people who are “toxic” toward you. By their negativity and criticism, they damage your environment for developing your gifts and ideas, and they thwart your pursuit of your dreams. Certain environments are just not good soil for the seed of your authority. If your mother keeps telling you that you are nothing and will never amount to anything, and your father keeps saying he wishes you’d never been born, the chances are slim that you will fulfill your purpose. You often have to remove yourself as much as possible from that type of environment if you’re going to become who you were born to be.

Sometimes, God will take us away from our familiar environments because the people who grew up with us believe they know everything about us, even though they don’t. People who know our pasts can interfere with our futures. They enjoy feeding us information about our former mistakes and failures. They may even actively try to stop us from becoming what we were born to be. However, all they know is what we’ve shown them so far.

It’s interesting to note that, in certain biblical accounts, when God called a person for a particular purpose, He told or caused him to leave their homes and go elsewhere so he could have the training and experience he would need to fulfill his calling. For example, Abram was called away from his homeland so that a new nation could be born. (See Genesis 12:1–4.) Joseph was separated from his family so that he could mature and become a wise ruler. (See Genesis 37:23–28; 50:18–21.)

You should never go into the future looking in the rearview mirror. Instead, look at your dream, based on your authority. Take your eyes off your past and look at the vision and the assignment that God has put in your life.

“None of the rulers of this age [we could substitute “none of the authorities of this world,” whether teachers, employers, parents, or other relatives] understood it [this wisdom that is destined for you, this treasure]” (1 Corinthians 2:8). People don’t always understand the wisdom of God, especially if they are not in relationship with Him. This is one of the reasons why, when others tell us that we can’t do something, we have a tendency to rebel against what they are saying. We know, deep inside, that they’re not qualified to tell us our limitations.

It is true that some people can give us good advice and help us to understand the gifts within us and what we do best. Moreover, in chapter 11, we will see that others also can help to release our authority. Yet nobody has a right to tell you what you cannot do if God has placed it within you to accomplish.

For example, a person may tell someone else, “I don’t think you’re good at such and such.” That may or may not be the case. That person may not yet have fully accessed his authority. He may be a late-budding artist or teacher or engineer. We don’t really know who others are on the inside. Perhaps, ten years ago, people wrote you off concerning something, and now you’re doing exactly what they told you that you couldn’t do. People develop physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and psychologically at different rates, and they even begin to manifest their true authority at different times. It’s important for all of us to seek to discover who we were created to be so we can be developing ourselves toward those ends.

A young man gave a testimony in my church saying that he had been a “hard drug addict.” Then, he added, “Look what God has done.” Therefore, in spite of any present conditions, don’t give up on yourself. And don’t give up on your children’s futures. Don’t cancel your hope for your son if he is using drugs. Don’t reject your daughter if she is pregnant out of wedlock. Within your children are treasures that God gave His Son to reclaim. That is why we must continue to tell others the good news from the Manufacturer that everyone has personal authority within him, that he is valued and unique in the Manufacturer’s eyes, and that he can be restored to the Manufacturer by the gift of the Authorized Dealer.

Paul paraphrased Isaiah 64:4, saying, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). I believe he was indicating that no one has seen the real you yet! People may size you up and dismiss you, tell you that you’re a nobody, that you’re just a waste of time and a miserable irritation to them. They may express negativity all the time. Yet the Scriptures say that those people can’t see, hear, or imagine what God has in mind for you.