What do the Lord’s soldiers in the battle need to know? When you are under spiritual assault and conflict, especially on the physical level, you need to know the way to get out from under it. There are aspects of authority presented in the Scriptures that you need to understand. A good illustration is the commission Jesus gave to His disciples before His ascension.
But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:16–20.
The commission that Jesus gave His disciples was based on the declaration of His authority. All authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Christ—all authority in heaven and on earth. The King James translation reads, “All power has been given unto Me.” However, there is a difference between the Greek word for power (dunamis) and the word for authority (exousia). Jesus was emphasizing the fact that all authority (exousia, meaning “privilege or delegated influence”) had been given to Him in heaven and on earth. Therefore they could go and make disciples of all the nations. That commission, which is based on all authority in heaven and on earth, is given to us too.
Everything that you are doing in the will of God will be more effective if you are aware of your commission and the authority behind that commission. That is the authority which enables you to do what the Lord tells you to do. You do not have to wonder whether or not it will work. You do not have to prevail by your own strength. All authority in heaven and on earth is behind you. Use that authority!
Someday some people will truly believe this Scripture. They will believe that we can make disciples of all the nations, that we can bring every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that Jesus is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). Some will believe that they have the faith to move mountains, and they will move them! Someday people are going to move on the level where they believe in that authority which is behind us—all authority in heaven and on earth.
A familiar passage in the book of James shows the relationship between our humility before the Lord and our effectiveness. “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. James 4:6b–10.
According to this Scripture, two things will happen. One relates to Satan and the other relates to yourself; however, both are based upon the very same condition of heart. You submit yourself totally unto the Lord, not in a passive manner, but with the recognition of all of His claims of His position, having all authority in heaven and on earth. You submit to Him, laying every bit of what you are at His feet. In your submission, you have humbled yourself before Him. This is a very aggressive humility. When you submit yourself that totally to the Lord, two things happen: Satan flees from you, and God exalts you. Satan flees from you because your submission to Christ has positioned you in His authority—all authority in heaven and on earth.
Here is the key: In spiritual warfare, our submission must link us to Christ’s total authority. We can break out of satanic oppression and harassment through this simple formula. We humble ourselves before the face of the Lord so that we can get out of the way and bring His authority into the situation.
When Jesus’ disciples worshiped Him after the resurrection, He told them, “All authority is Mine in heaven and on earth. You go and you make disciples.” His control of the nations is dependent upon our obedient submission to His authority. If you think, “I will submit myself to the Lord, but I can’t do anything,” you do not have the submission Jesus was talking about. Having that obedient submission to His authority means that when He tells us to “go therefore,” we can do it. Do not say that you will be submissive unless you believe that you can do anything you are told to do. You can say, “All authority in heaven and on earth is behind me; I can go therefore…”
God is not looking for the ridiculous self-abasement that says, “Well, I have to submit, so I’ll go down in a hole and eat worms.” He only wants you to renounce your selfdependence, your motivations, your own way, and your own seeking—and say, “I totally submit to You as the Lord of lords and the King of kings, the One who has all authority in heaven and on earth.” By this process, not only do you yourself come down humble before Him, but in that submissive humility, your faith allows Him to be as great as He really is. He is absolute Lord, with all authority in heaven and on earth. If you believe that, then you go therefore and you make disciples. Therefore you resist the devil and he will flee from you. Therefore you are in a position where God can exalt you, because you know that He is everything and you are nothing.
Let us apply this principle to spiritual warfare. Any problem or battle that we go through is not won simply by dealing with the devil, or attempting to deal with the devil. As far as Satan is concerned, everything that happens to us is set to destroy us. But as far as God is concerned, everything happens so that He can be greater in our sight. He is to be exalted; He is to be Lord over all—Lord of lords and King of kings to us (Revelation 17:14). This will not happen to the world until it happens to us. We cannot make disciples of all the nations until He does a work within us. Before we can make disciples, we must be totally His disciples, following the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
Is the enemy afflicting you? Is he bringing a deep assault against you? Then humble yourself, with a new sense of Christ’s authority over you. Do not allow one thing in your mind that speaks of defeat. Everything that happens will make the Lord greater in your sight. God has one motive; Satan has another. He would like to destroy you. So he comes against you and puts you through a lot of things. But God says, “All things work together for good to those who love Me, to those who are called according to My purpose” (Romans 8:28).
I am not worried about what the devil is trying to do; he is actually serving God, though not intentionally. I am more concerned about what God wants to accomplish through the things the devil is doing. Satan is not just teasing you a little bit; his purpose is deadly. He would destroy us all, if he could. But God sets boundary lines on that. He says to us, “I am going to twist around what the devil is trying to do, and it will work for your good. Everything is going to work together for good, because you love Me and you are called according to My purpose.” After you have gone through some very difficult situations and spiritual warfare, you will have humbled yourself before the Lord. That humble, broken spirit before the Lord is one thing that He insists upon.
Do you want to be a winner? Then you had better be a broken winner. Let your spirit be humble and tender before the Lord, easily entreated. Otherwise, you could become bitter about things that happen to you. One thing is true about brokenness: You cannot be truly broken without having a greater revelation of His greatness. You have to see Him as the Lord of lords, with all authority in heaven and on earth.
A great deal of what the Lord Jesus Christ really is to you is determined by His revelation of Himself to you. You might think that you are really serving the Lord, but that can be vague. You can intercede so loudly that your spirit is not really seeing His greatness. Be careful that you do not out shout your revelation. The greater your revelation of Him, the more you fall at His feet. That is the goal we are looking for. We are anticipating the day when His presence becomes so awesome that we are slain like an army before His face. We want Him to be great, but not just so that He can do things for us. In this battle, we are not looking for the mechanics of victory as an end in themselves. We want to come forth as those prophets of God who are going to serve Him, please Him, glorify Him, and magnify Him, wherever we are. We want the revelation of His greatness, and then we want to carry that greatness by commission.
Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth is Mine. Now I want you to go and preach. You go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.” How do we do that? Do we tell people that Jesus saves, and that they can speak in tongues? Do we encourage them to try and pull together a little more? Do we preach the little-Jesus-meek-and-mild gospel to them? No, this is the true message: “He is Lord. He is the One who rules. All authority in heaven and on earth is His. I have submitted to Him, and now in the name of the Lord, you will submit to Him, too.” The message is the Lordship of Jesus Christ. With every step we take in this, we will receive a greater revelation of Him to our own hearts.
Do you have a weakness? In your weakness, look up to the Lord’s strength. You will be able to throw off your weakness, not because you are struggling with it, but because you are striving for the Lord to be greater. You are striving to let His greatness come through. The Lord may put you through a severe testing, but He does not do it just to see if you can hold out in some endurance contest. Each battle can be prolonged or cut short; but God is after the successful conclusion of that battle. He wants you to come into a fresh revelation of Himself. When the Lord’s greatness overwhelms you, you throw off any weakness.
What should you do when the devil opposes you? First you come into that awesome, humbling revelation of the Lord; then you resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Why should the devil flee from you when he has been harassing you, trying to destroy you? Because the humbler you are, and the more you seek for humility, the more the Lord’s authority comes through. You are not just aware of it; you are blanketed with it. You are actually walking in it and exercising that authority. When you humble yourself before the Lord, and the revelation of His greatness and authority comes, it will overwhelm you—not just as a concept in your mind, but as an appropriation of your spirit. Then you walk in His authority.
When Peter and John were going up to the Temple at the hour of prayer, they saw a lame man and healed him (Acts 3:1–7). Peter said, “In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk.” The disciples had not received ten lessons on how to work a miracle. Rather, they had humbled themselves and they were walking along before the Lord. When they healed this man, they were exercising the authority of the Lord over all of the enemy—over every aspect of the enemy (Matthew 10:1).
This can be the key of your breakthrough—today! Humble yourself before the Lord. Have faith. If you do not have much faith, draw some from the Lord. He will give it to you. He is the author of your faith (Hebrews 12:2). He gives to every man a measure of faith (Romans 12:3). Do not stop to consider how strong you are or how much you can pump up your faith. Faith is not something that can be pumped up. Faith is a quality of spirit which dares to believe that God is great. In fact, you never see the Lord’s greatness without faith. Your revelation of who the Lord is and what He tells you to do is basic to your faith.
John 20:19 tells us that after Jesus was crucified, the disciples hid behind closed doors for fear of the Jews. A short time later, they suddenly became bold. Acts 4:31 says that they spoke the Word of God with boldness. What changed those disciples? They saw that Jesus was alive; He had been resurrected. He stood there on the mountain with them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth is Mine. Now, you go therefore…” When they saw how great He was, it was a matter of appropriating that authority and doing what He told them to do.
I believe that we can cast off the works of darkness as we humble ourselves under that authority. Your effort to be humble without having a revelation of the Lord’s greatness will be an exercise that is largely a human effort. Humility is not achieved by humiliating yourself and saying, “See, I’m humble.” There is no real humility without a corresponding revelation of the Lord’s greatness. Until you see how great He is, you cannot be as humble as God wants you to be.
Some people are naturally a little less aggressive. But this does not mean that they are more humble; they are just more passive. You do not become humble by being less aggressive as far as your ambitions are concerned, by quieting them down and trying to subdue them. That is not humility. Humility is very aggressive—but not by human motivation. You can become very aggressive, but with humility.
A passage from the book of Ruth will show us exactly how this humility works and what happens to us as a result of it. When Boaz had eaten and drunk and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain; and she (Ruth) came secretly, and uncovered his feet and lay down. And it happened in the middle of the night that the man was startled and bent forward; and behold, a woman was lying at his feet. And he said, “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth your maid. So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a close relative” (or, “redeemer”).
Then he said, “May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you whatever you ask, for all my people in the city know that you are a woman of excellence. And now it is true I am a close relative; however, there is a relative closer than I. Remain this night, and when morning comes, if he will redeem you, good; let him redeem you. But if he does not wish to redeem you, then I will redeem you, as the Lord lives. Lie down until morning.”
So she lay at his feet until morning and rose before one could recognize another; and he said, “Let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.” Again he said, “Give me the cloak that is on you and hold it.” So she held it, and he measured six measures of barley and laid it on her. Then she went into the city. And when she came to her mother-in-law, she said, “How did it go, my daughter?” And she told her all that the man had done for her. And she said, “These six measures of barley he gave to me, for he said, ‘Do not go to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’ ” Then she said, “Wait, my daughter, until you know how the matter turns out; for the man will not rest until he has settled it today.” Ruth 3:7–18.
We are concerned about ministering to the Lord, just as Ruth wanted to minister to Boaz. She lay down at his feet. Boaz was startled when he awoke in the middle of the night and saw her, for women were not supposed to be at the threshing floor. Then Ruth asked him to cover her with part of his cloak. This was a custom which we may not understand. Yet from this story the Lord is trying to convey to us an important truth. Ruth had humbled herself before Boaz. Then he, in turn, took the initiative; and Ruth’s situation—the oppression of her widowhood and her poverty—was solved within a short time. Naomi had said, “Wait until you know how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest until he has settled it today.”
Boaz was a man of great wealth, but how was Ruth able to share his wealth with him? By humbling herself, she placed herself in a position where she soon became his wife, and eventually the great-grandmother of King David. That was quite an important position. We might think of Ruth as a great, wonderful woman; yet we ought to acknowledge too what a great man Boaz was. In his way, he had a greatness that is illustrative of the Lord Jesus Christ and His greatness. The Lord has many threshing floors full of grain. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). He has all authority in heaven and on earth. But what brings us into the operation of it? It does not make any difference how rich the Head is if the hand cannot write a check and spend some of the money. As the members of His Body, our humble submission to Him opens the door so that, like Boaz, He does not rest until He has brought us into that inheritance. We are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ; and if so be that we suffer with Him, we will also reign with Him (Romans 8:17).
If we enter into this humility, not only will we see the devil flee, but we ourselves will come into a new spiritual level. Spiritual warfare is not an end in itself. The victory of the Lord Jesus Christ prevailing over all realms is the ultimate goal. You do not go to war just to have a war; you go to war in order to win the victory. You do not kill Philistines and Canaanites and Hivites and Jebusites and all the other enemies just for the sport of it. You do it because you want to possess their vineyards. You want to sit under your own fig tree (Micah 4:4).
It is important to keep the objective in your mind. Encountering the enemy and driving out evil spirits is not the ultimate goal. We want the glory of the Lord to prevail; we want His greatness to be manifested. We do not coax Him into our lives; we humble ourselves and then He draws near. Remember what the Lord tells us in James 4: “You draw near to Me, and I will draw near to you. If you humble yourself, I will exalt you. If you are proud, I will resist you.” If you move into the level where you are humbly exalting the Lord, He draws near to you. He lifts you up. He “pulls a Boaz” on you. The next thing you know, He is heaping the measures of grain on you. You must realize, “The Lord is not going to rest until He has brought me into that oneness with Him, into that relationship with Him, into that victory which is to be manifested when we sit together on the throne and I reign with Him.” But we must be humble or we will never attain that place. We must recognize His absolute greatness, His absolute authority in heaven and on earth.
There are many stories in the Bible, such as the one of Ruth and Boaz, which illustrate how God works in our lives, step by step. Ultimately these steps lead to the conclusion. But we are in a position now where these steps can take place simultaneously; furthermore, they are relative. To the degree that we humble ourselves, to that degree and at that same moment, we can resist the enemy. It is not that we humble ourselves today, and then next week we resist the enemy. We do it as a simultaneous action. We experience a work of the cross, and at the same time we are experiencing a work of the throne. It is not that either one or the other happens. They both do. Several things can be taking place all at the same time in your life. Right in the midst of the dealings of the Lord, you can have a meeting with God. The two can happen simultaneously.
We do not want the Lord to humble any one of us because we refuse to get out of His way. With His grace, we sincerely determine to humble ourselves and become small. Remember, the action is simultaneous. While we are going through a spiritual battle, He is working through us, too.
You may go through a period of disillusionment because the enemy is presenting a false image of certain things. If you are looking at something wrong in the first place, the enemy magnifies a person’s fault and distorts a circumstance, and before long he has you believing that the whole Kingdom of God has collapsed. But that disillusionment is not a valid cause of defeat because at that time you can still say, “Lord, show Yourself to me. Reveal Yourself afresh.” You can come into a fresh revelation. Then you will find that God is simply adjusting you in your goals and motivations so that you can more purely seek Him with all of your heart.
Usually these things all take place at the same time. They all occur simultaneously, and you learn that when you are going through the Lord’s dealings, He is working through you at the same time. Have you ever seen one of those old-fashioned elevators? While something is going up, there has to be something else coming down at the same time. Likewise, when the Lord is being glorified, there has to be something of you going down. He must increase, and we must decrease (John 3:30).
Do you want a real spiritual breakthrough? Have you ever noticed that every time you seem to break down, you also break through? It is amazing how often in the course of a short time the Lord can bring you to the end of yourself. The Lord is bringing us to the end of many things; but every time we come to the end of something in ourselves, we come to the beginning of some great, vast area in Him that we had never experienced before. Ask the Lord to be great to you. Ask Him to be revealed and to be everything to you.
We will fight Satan all the way to the gates of hell, and we will submit to the Lord all the way to heaven. The Lord is on your case. If you keep losing enough, He will be everything. The Lord certainly uses good strategy. He is working on each of us until we become smaller and He becomes greater, and in the meantime we are working on the enemy to win for the Lord the execution of all His authority in heaven and on earth. The devil becomes smaller, Christ becomes greater; we become smaller, Christ becomes greater. Soon there is nothing left but Christ, who is all in all (Colossians 3:11).
We are the background of the picture. If we can fade out enough, the Lord will be the only One who is seen. When Jesus was transfigured on the mountain before His disciples, Moses and Elijah appeared and the glory of the Lord came down. But the Scriptures tell us that when it was all over, the disciples “saw no man save Jesus only” (Matthew 17:8). All the revelation of the prophets and the glory passed, and they had a new revelation of Christ alone. The Lord’s presence can be revealed to us now, just as it was on the Mount of Transfiguration. Lord, be Thou revealed to Your people.
Let this be your firm declaration: “I am a believer. I believe in Him who has all authority in heaven and on earth. I refuse to doubt. I put myself at the Lord’s feet and become His disciple. I am His believer with all of my heart.”