Why authority isn’t bossy and faith isn’t proud…

“Who am I to ask God for such a thing?”

We sat here at the counter in my kitchen, her contemplating cancer as she sipped coffee, waiting for the test results to come back. 

I could understand her sentiments, who of us hasn’t thought this at one time or another? Who am I? Why on earth should we dare to make such bold requests?

And so we don’t. We embrace “humility” and slump our shoulders a little more, making our best mopey face and offering up a limp “whatever You will” prayer. 

Let me just say this: I’m sure glad my kids don’t act like that.

But I get why we do. We’ve seen entitlement running rampant in our day, and we certainly don’t want to take that approach. Or perhaps we’ve even seen those who (loudly) tout that we must walk in AUTHORITY! We hear them shouting about naming and claiming, we hear them yelling at sickness or commanding God to do things and we wonder if authority really has to be that bossy.

I don’t think authority is very bossy at all.

The last few months I’ve been chewing on this: authority, humility, and faith. 

Jesus clearly gives authority to His disciples to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons (Matt. 10:6). If we have been given authority over these things, we do need to walk in this authority.

But how? By being bossy? Entitled? I believe we receive it by faith. The authority isn’t ours, it’s Christ’s. We’re just running errands for Jesus. The only real way to access that authority is to walk in humility, and that humility is the root of real faith.

Let me illustrate: In Matthew 8, the Centurion comes to Jesus to seek healing for his servant. Up to this point, Jesus has only healed directly, by laying hands on someone, or speaking directly to them. But the Centurion’s faith is crazy-faith, he says that Jesus doesn’t even have to come to his house, He can just say the word and he knows that his servant will be healed. 

He believes Jesus for an unprecedented miracle.

His faith is so crazy He believes for something He’s never seen, something He’s never even heard of, something that’s never been done.

Wowzers! That’s faith. The Luke 7 version of the story tells us Jesus marveled at this man’s faith. Even Jesus was amazed! And notice what’s at the root of this crazy faith? Humility. 

“Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed.” (Matt. 8:8)

His faith grew in proportion with His humility. The smaller his ego the greater his faith.

This man goes on to say he understands authority–he has people under him and he too is a man under authority. In other words, “I get authority. I get what it’s like to be under authority and I get what it’s like to have authority. But more than that I get that YOU ARE the authority, and you can just say the word and my servant will be healed.” 

This guy gets it: Authority, humility, and faith. 

The Canaanite woman demonstrates the same thing in Matthew 15. When Jesus rebuffs her to test her faith, it’s her humility that gives great faith and access into the authority of Jesus. She’s willing to call herself a dog, and recognizes that her bold request is but a “crumb” in comparison to the riches at the right hand of God in Jesus Christ. Her daughter is instantly healed and Jesus marvels again,

“Oh woman, great is your faith!”

Oh how I long to hear Jesus say that to me!

Are we really afraid of offending Jesus with our too-big requests?

Do we really think our prayers are too big?

I’d venture to say, more often than not: They are too small. Jesus NEVER responds to someone, “Whoa! That’s a big request. Can you tone it down a little?” Of course he kindly rebuffs James and John when they want to sit at his right hand and left, but not because their request was too big, but because it was amiss. It was pride-based and rooted in self.

There is always the danger of asking amiss, but never a danger of asking too much. 

And so we must continually come back to the Word of God to see His clearly-revealed will, to line our requests up with His, as best as we know how.

So, over coffee, in my kitchen, we did just that. Like little children, we bowed and asked our Father to just “say the word” and declare a completely clean bill of health. 

And He did. 

Hallelujah.

{I pray you have fresh faith to ask…  Thanks for reading.}