Notes from this week's podcast: Rules, Authority, and Trusting God

If we would just follow the rules...

If we would just listen and obey authority, we could get out of this.

The real issue in our lives today: You can trace everything back to authority. > We don't know where to run to for the rules. They keep being changed in the physical realm. What rules do we decide are going to be our authority? And who do they come from?

* Our authority is the Word of God. God is our sovereign God. He rules. He wrote it down at the foundation of time. He spoke by the Spirit of the living God to His prophets, to His patriarchs, to His men of God: "Thus saith the Lord."

You will be a blessing to Father God and those around you. Not that you won't have problems

We have removed ourselves from the principle of authority. We have become accustomed to being our own authority, independent, calling our own shots, but yet when we get in a mess, we want to run to God and we depend on God to bail us out. We can't have it both ways.

* God wants us to come before Him and acknowledge that He is the authority. More and more people are calling on the name of God.

Why do we need God? Because He is the authority; He set the boundaries.

He is the authority and that is good!

Why do we have authority? It's for our protection.

Assignment: Write down one or two issues that you are walking through in life. 

Prayer: God, help me to trace this all the way back to the Word of God, to identify clearly what is really going on here. God, why is this happening? 

 * God does not let anything to touch your life that He's trying to do something. It has to pass by Father God's desk if it's going to touch you. It comes through Him first. Why? Because He's the authority. He is the sovereign God. 

Do we really believe that? We know that we believe it in the way we respond.

How are you responding?

Are you responding in humility, leaning on the Holy Spirit of God to move through the situation to make you better?

God is holy. God is righteous. He does not make a mistake.

Call on the Holy Spirit to know how to respond.

It comes back to humbling ourselves before a holy God, aligning our life, aligning our thoughts, our will with the will of God.

Why do we refuse authority? Because we don't trust God.

God is right with you. He'll let you move in any direction as long as necessary to bring you back up under His guiding hand of protection -- to enjoy the journey, to benefit from the journey, to be all for God in this journey.

God says that truth is to be our pillar. We let independence, self-centeredness, "all about me," hold us up.

Trace it back to authority, to the Word of God -- physical and spiritual.

It will be an opportunity for God to be glorified.

Scripture for further study: Proverbs 8:29, 1 Corinthians 9:27, Psalm 84:7