A man built the house he had always wanted. It cost him everything he had, so he insured it carefully — against fire, storms, and every other calamity he could think of. Termites were the one thing he did not insure against. That seemed all right because he kept enough termite poison in the garage to treat the house several times over. Every neighbor on the street did the same thing.
One morning he noticed that the house seemed to be leaning slightly. He told himself it was probably just settling. A few days later, he pulled the front door shut a little too hard as he was leaving, and the whole house shrieked and came down in a heap of sawdust.
Before he could even understand what had happened, he heard the same sound traveling down the street in both directions. House after house was coming down, as far as he could see. A boy playing in the rubble picked up a piece of wood full of holes and held it up.
“Look at the funny squiggle holes!”
And the man understood three things at once. Termites do not announce themselves. They work where you cannot see them. And having poison sitting in the garage does absolutely nothing if you never use it. I have preached that parable more than once, and the houses are churches. The poison is the authority every believer already has and so often leaves unused.
What Did Man Lose, and What Did Jesus Get Back?
In the beginning, man was given rulership over the earth, and he lost it. It was not simply a matter of bad luck. He handed it over and received death and a new master in exchange. From that point forward, the enemy held titles that man had given him and exercised authority over a world that man had surrendered.
Then Jesus was born. He lived, died, and rose again, and the whole arrangement began to come apart. C. S. Lewis put the idea into a children’s book in a way that many theologians have never managed to improve. The White Witch held Edmund by law, and her knowledge went all the way back to the dawn of time — but no farther. It did not reach into the darkness and stillness before time began, where a deeper magic had been written: when someone innocent willingly gave his life in the place of a traitor, the Stone Table would crack and death itself would begin working backward.
That is not merely an allegory laid over the Gospel. It is a picture of the Gospel itself. Death is being reversed, and the rulership that Satan took from man is being restored: those who receive God’s overflowing grace and the free gift of righteousness will reign as kings in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
→ Learning To Reign as Kings In Life works through what was restored and how to take hold of it.
If That Is True, Why Are So Many Believers Losing?
Paul’s answer is neither flattering nor condemning. We are infants. He told the Corinthians that he had to feed them milk because they could not yet take solid food. He was not insulting them. He was describing where they were.
Everyone learns to crawl before standing, to stand before walking, and to walk before running. You fall over. You get bruised. Even experienced runners trip sometimes. None of that means you were not made to run. It means you are still learning.
So the question is not whether you have the authority. The question is whether you have learned how to use it — and whether you will.
Who Is the Liar: You, or God?
God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should change His mind. Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise something and fail to fulfill it? Now set those words beside what He has actually said.
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus. Therefore, go. He said that certain signs would follow those who believe: in His name they would cast out demons, lay hands on the sick, and see them recover. He said that whoever believed in Him would do the works that He did, and greater works. He said, Behold, I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.
Then look at the way most of us pray. I include myself in that. There is only one way to hold those two things together, and it is uncomfortable. We say that we believe God, while much of the time we do not actually believe what He has told us.
One woman drew a line around her house in the name of Jesus, and the men who came to burn it could not cross that line. Floodwater came close to another believer’s home but did not enter the block where she lived, and people said they saw a hand holding it back.
The usual response to stories like these is, Do you really think that happened? That is an honest question. But it is also the very question that keeps many people from ever having a story of their own to tell.
→ Who is the Liar? You or God? puts the question without softening it.
Where Does the Authority Come From, If Not From You?
This is the safeguard against almost everything that has ever gone wrong in teaching about spiritual authority, so let me be exact. The power is in the ring, not in the finger wearing it. A police officer standing in the road does not have the physical strength to stop a truck. The uniform represents an authority greater than his own. You may have known him in school as the boy you could beat with one hand tied behind your back, but when he is standing in the road wearing that uniform, you stop.
The authority he carries is not something he created for himself. It works the same way with us. The Name is not ours. The authority was delegated by the One who had just been given all authority in heaven and on earth. It reaches us through the blood of Jesus Christ and through nothing else.
You cannot earn this authority. That means you cannot lose it simply because you have failed. But neither can you separate the authority from the One who gave it to you. You cannot use it as though it were an independent power that belongs to you. That is why this is not magic, and it can never be reduced to a technique.
→ God’s Ring of Power — told through the story of the son who took his inheritance and went to the city.
What Does Your Mouth Have to Do With It?
More than almost anything else I could tell you. God made the world by speaking. Light be, and light was. When He gives His children authority, He gives it in much the same currency. That is one reason the New Testament has so much to say about the tongue. It tells us that the tongue holds the power of death and life, that we can be trapped by the words of our own mouths, and that whoever says to this mountain, Be removed, and does not doubt in his heart will have what he says.
This is where authority is either exercised or given away, often without the person realizing it. You can spend ten minutes praying in faith and then undo what you have prayed by saying one sentence on the way to the car.
What comes out of our mouths matters.
→ Words! Words! Words! on what we do with them.
What Is This Actually For?
It is not for a comfortable life, and it is not for putting our spiritual power on display. The termite parable is not really about ordinary personal difficulties. It is about churches coming down in heaps of sawdust while the means of preventing it is sitting unused in the garage.
It is also about an enemy whose method is to work where we cannot see him until the damage has become structural. When termites are discovered early, the poison can deal with them. Leave them alone, and eventually they can eat away the framework of the house.
That is the point of this whole teaching about authority. You were not given authority simply to make your own life easier. You were given authority because there is a real enemy doing real damage to real people — and because Jesus Christ has already defeated him and has given His people the authority to enforce that victory.
→ The Parable of the Termites is the parable in full.
Still to come in this series: By Whose Authority? · God’s Very Own Child · Know Your Enemy and the Weapons He Uses Against You · Praying in the Name of Jesus. Each will be linked here as it publishes.
