Heb.13:7,17 – Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith…Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
Learning to recognize and submit to spiritual authority is one of the difficult lessons in Christianity. We all know that we each hear from God today and we don’t need an earthly priest or prophet to hear from God for us but….the Bible clearly teaches about spiritual authority in His church. The Lord raises up apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists to equip us for our role in the body of Christ, to protect us from error, and to lead us in a life of spiritual discipline. This is what Jesus was displaying with His time He spent with the disciples. He not only taught them but He displayed in His life what true spirituality looks like. Recognizing the pastors the Lord has brought into your life, following them and submitting to them will make your life more productive and more enjoyable. Here is how Murray describes this.
“Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit to them. Obedience and submission, even to men, for the Lord’s sake; these, too, are elements of the self-sacrifice, which is well-pleasing to God. In the New Testament we have no longer a priestly caste, to intervene between God and men; all God’s saints are priests. But we have a God-ordained ministry with the gifts and the setting apart, and the duties and the authority, of which the Acts and the Epistles teach us so fully. This is no mere human arrangement, but an appointment of Christ by the Holy Ghost, through which He carries out His work as the great Priest over the house of God.”
One of my first lessons in submission to spiritual authority came when I first met the director of the ministry I joined shortly after my conversion. After he greeted me he asked me if I had a job yet. When I told him I didn’t he replied, “Maybe you could get a job if you cut your hair”. When I reluctantly did what he suggested two things happened; first I got a job almost immediately, and next I found myself in a place of safety. That safety came from recognizing the spiritual authority that the Lord brought into my life and surrendering to it. Submission brings peace into our lives and makes those the Lord has put over us have a much more stress free existence.
1 thought on “CONSIDER YOUR LEADERS”
For all the flawed aspects that I came with and literally thousands of others, to have been led to enter the doors and take a seat at our one local church and allow the partnership of God ordained servant pastors do the job of washing the brains and re-educating new borns into what essentially is a new language, as they themselves are learning on the job. What kind of love, what kind of commitment one must lay hold of not by human strength, as I think of this, really a miracle unfolding daily. I truly applaud my pastors, great endurance = great rewards! Praise God.