Most of us have sometime day-dreamed about being a great authority in some subject or other or conducting a great orchestra, holding people spell¬bound, and people coming and asking our advice. We long to have authority, power to command respect, attention and admiration. But I’ve got news for you.
If you’re a Christian you can’t have authority over anyone. You can only be under the authority of God. The only authority you can effectively channel is the kind that comes by humbly serving people in love. ‘But they’ll walk all over me if I do that, I’d just become a door mat’. Jesus says, ‘Yes and they could even crucify you, but didn’t I tell you at the beginning that if you will follow me you have to be prepared to take up a cross?’
The authority of Christ never needs to be bolstered up with external props or threats. Its very strength is its defencelessness. Its power is its weakness. Its authority is in suffering love and selflessness; there is no greater authority in the world.
The authority of God is never the authority of a steam roller relentlessly crushing flat all opposition, but the authority of love which, like running water, flows to its lowest level and if blocked, either flows round an obstacle or overflows into new channels.
Of course Jesus said this much more simply and profoundly. Read Matthew Chapter 20 verses 25 to 28 and you will see what I mean.