The Authority of Image-Bearers

Recently my partner Ted and I learned something about the authority we have in Jesus as God’s image-bearers.

We were co-leading a Bible study for men (post-abortive recovery) at the crisis pregnancy center where we volunteer in Fredericksburg, VA. Ted was on a business trip in Boston. No biggie, we both have iPads, he could just FaceTime in. I’d set my iPad on a box in Ted’s chair, and it’d be just like he was in the room with us.

The night of the Bible study though, we discovered the wifi at Ted’s hotel was really bad. Not just sort of bad, like three-day-old-leftovers bad. But really bad, like rotten-eggs-sulphur-smell bad. We had been trying for like 10 minutes, but the connection was so sketchy it was dropping literally every 30-60 seconds. This was just not going to work, and it was completely out of our control. Or was it?

We prayed, “Lord, by the authority of the blood of Jesus, we take authority over the bandwidth of this connection, and we ask that you line up angels, wingtip to wingtip between Fredericksburg and Boston, and just shuttle the packets back and forth so we experience no more dropouts.” From that moment on, we had a two-hour connection without a single dropout.

When we finished, we thanked the Lord for protecting our connection, and prayed that he could release the angels now with our gratitude. Within 20 seconds we lost the connection.

Skeptics call that a coincidence. But when you see enough “coincidences” you start to believe. I’ve got a graduate-level degree in mathematics, and I know enough about network engineering to know that what we experienced that night was, without the intervention of God, something statisticians call “statistically impossible.” In other words, it takes a lot less faith to believe that God intervened supernaturally in that situation, because we asked him to, than to believe it was just a “coincidence.”

The point of this true story is that we, as God’s image-bearers, have authority over the natural world. We should use it. It’s who we really are.

Genesis 1:26-27 peeks in on God talking to himself as he made people:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

So often we just skip over that without thinking about what it really means. But it’s amazing! God created us in his image, his likeness, with his authority over the natural world. Yeah, we gave that authority over to the usurper, Satan, during the Fall in Genesis 3, but Jesus restored it through the cross. We have authority in his blood. Everything submits to his name.

Jesus clearly had authority over nature, calming the storm in Matthew 8:23-27 and Mark 4:35-41, and walking on the water in Matthew 14:22-33. But that was Jesus not us!

Oh yeah? Peter walked on the water, too. And c’mon, if big-mouth Peter could do it… Seriously.

Jesus himself said that we would do even greater things than he did (John 14:12). And the Bible says of itself that these things were written down as examples for us (1 Corinthians 10:11). Examples of what’s possible. Examples of what we should expect. Examples of what should be Normal Christian Life 101.

Action Step: I’ll be sensitive to when things in the natural world need changing, and realize I’m God’s agent of change in that situation. I’ll take authority by the blood of Jesus and command the change that needs to happen. I won’t let fear of it not working hold me back. That’s God’s problem.

How about you? Tell us your story in the comments. What have you seen happen? What prayers over the natural world have you seen God answer? And please share if this would bless someone else.