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The authority that grows in anonymous seasons is deep and enduring because it is not based on positions or possessions that appear one day and are gone the next but on submission to our eternal God.
“Not my will, but yours be done.”
Since others did not give him his authority, others could not take it away. Submission-based authority thrives with or without man’s praise and approval.
When people who cultivate submission to God’s will and Word in the holy place of hiddenness are placed in spiritual positions of authority, the results are world changing! Publicly, they stand before others and lead, but privately they continue to kneel before God and learn.
position + submission = empowering leadership position – submission = abusive leadership
If we have taken the time in unseen, uncelebrated spaces to develop an eternal perspective and submission-based authority, we will find ourselves strengthened to resist corruption in the day of power and influence.
We stop practicing what we preach:
Without the discipline of submitting our plans, thoughts, and actions to God’s will and Word, an uncensored gap forms between what we require of others and what we require of ourselves.
We should be alarmed if we hear ourselves giving others good advice that we no longer personally heed.
We begin specializing in the creat...
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Leaving no room for error drains the very life out of learning. When our goal shifts from growing to not failing, something has become off-center in our lives.
We stage displays of our devotion:
Without the peaceful confidence that submission-based authority provides, we can begin acting as though it is always an election year, continually campaigning for people’s admiration.
We feel deserving of special honor:
Submission to God in the holy place of hiddenness reminds us regularly of God’s acceptance and grace.
When receiving honor is no longer humbling, we need to take note.
We lose sight of the sacred:
We tithe our money but are stingy with our mercy:
We consciously conceal our hypocrisy:
This level of known, willful duplicity is only possible if we refuse to cultivate submissionbased authority.
We overestimate our immunity to sin:
Submission to God’s will and Word brings us face to face with his holiness and our humanity.
That realistic portrait causes us to pause before we belittle others’ weaknesses or consider ourselves immune to others’ failures.
We silence the voice of the prophet and wise man:
position-based leaders have little tolerance for being corrected.
submission-based authority maintains a teachable spirit, position-based authority assumes it has no need for further instruction.
we cannot afford to hold spiritual positions of authority when our lives do not have the authority that is only derived from submission to God’s will and Word.
That dimension of authority grows steadily as we continually submit ourselves to God’s will and Word in unseen and uncelebrated places. Submission-based authority does not need an invitation from either title or position to begin making a difference in a world of need.
If we continue to nurture that stream in quiet, lonely places, submission-based authority will safeguard us in the seductive days of position and title and strengthen us to use our influence for God’s glory, not our own.
It is all right, because when we stand before Jesus the question he is going to ask us will not be, “Were you accurately estimated? Were you appropriately recognized? Were you sufficiently applauded?”
them. I want to be prepared for the day he looks me in the eye and asks, “Did you love me? Did you love others toward me? Did you obey me? Did you submit yourself to my will and my Word? Did you live for what I died for?”
For Jesus in the desert, and for us throughout our lifetimes, there is really only one true temptation in our spiritual lives: to choose against God.
Generation after generation, we continue to crave instant satisfaction, daydream of public admiration, and be hypnotized by worldly power and possessions.
Jesus simply and profoundly obeyed.
Reflecting on Jesus’ long anonymous years and the unprecedented challenges of his documented visible years, we realize that God does not hide us to punish us, but to protect us.
God cultivates strengths that stand the test of time: the anchor of God’s Word self-control an accurate portrait of God an unshakable identity trust in God’s timing a disciplined imagination an eternal perspective submission-based authority Such strengths are not given; they are grown.
How can we welcome our hidden years and fully realize their potential? Wait because he is worthy. Keep the waters of your spirit sweet. Befriend stillness.
Tending sheep in anonymity, David was anointed king as a ruddy teenager by Samuel.
David waited more than a dozen difficult years after his anointing before he actually became ...
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Has it ever felt as though God poured his kingly dreams all over you but left the crown at home?! We are not the first to have God-given but unfulfilled drea...
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Along with stillness, another discipline we must rediscover if we are to fully harvest our hidden years is waiting.
Sometimes we sabotage our future by refusing to wait upon God in our present.
Waiting captures a prayerful posture in our spirits of purposeful attentiveness toward God: looking toward him, longing for him. We wait upon him, not for what we hope to receive, but because of who he is. God is worthy to be waited on, whether or not we hear anything, whether or not we see anything, whether or not our dreams are fulfilled.
The God who is worthy of waiting upon is equally worthy of being entrusted with our dreams.
Keep the waters of your spirit sweet.
mumbling is really an accusation of negligence against God.
When our potential seems stifled, we can easily begin to believe that someone or something is standing in our way: our leaders are nearsighted or our parents are overprotective, that supervisor is just jealous or our spouse is holding us back, the old guard has lost vision or the new board lacks experience, the committee is obviously clueless or the system is seriously ingrown . . . the list could go on and on.
Though we are certainly affected by the decisions of others, in truth only one thing has the power to jeopardize our future: us.
busyness often poses as an imposter for self-discipline.
we can easily mistake being productive for being disciplined when in reality we may just be driven—
