So therefore I can minister and have influence wherever I go. I'm authorised, wherever I am is part of my territory, so I may be just here and then there's a group, so this is my territory, a temporary assignment. So you'll have permanent assignments which we've talked about - your own body, soul and spirit, your home, your family, your marriage. Then you have temporary ones wherever you are, so you go to a certain place, meet some people and for a short time you're on assignment; God, what do you want me to do? Have a think about this. Jesus stopped at the well, but His assignment hadn't stopped. He stopped at the well, a woman came by, and the disciples had walked past her because they were caught up with what they were doing. He saw someone in need, and in a few moments had a conversation with her that turned her into an evangelist, changed her life. Why is that? Because He had a sense of being on assignment all the time.
We tend to divide our life up, church life, rest of life, rather than saying actually, kingdom life 24/7, wherever I am I'm called to actually bring God there. I'm called to engage with it, and this is my territory for the moment, and so you'll have some assignments are permanent ones, but the majority are temporary. Some last only a little while. I meet a group of people and I have an opportunity to produce something that will bring blessing to them, or I may have a group of people and I'm with them for a longer period of time. Getting the idea? Once you start to see that you think what have you called me to do Lord? What do you want me to do here, what's my assignment here? And Jesus said I do all the things I see the Father doing. It's great isn't it aye?
So now what are your key responsibilities in your assignment? So you have a territory, so the first place to look is to go back into the Garden of Eden, and we'll have a look at what God told Adam to do. Let's get it here at Genesis 2:15. Got it? Then the Lord God took the man, put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and to keep it. So they were given a territory. It's a garden. They were given two primary responsibilities: number one, tend it. Now here's what that means. That means literally to serve. It means to work as an act of worship, so work - there's no such thing as spiritual work and other work, it's all service to God. So when you consider you have a career, or whatever job you're doing, that's an act of worship to God when you give it to Him, and keep Him involved with it - that's your active worship. It means to cultivate or develop, so you have the idea of a piece of land that needs some turning over and some seeds planted in it and watering and it'll produce something.
The second thing he was called to keep it, to guard or watch over it or protect it from an enemy, so that implies that the territory, even the territory Adam had, one, it needed cultivating and developing, and required his creativity; two, there was an enemy which was real and present, and he had to protect his area or his territory from what that enemy could do. So have a think about that. He was given responsibility to cultivate, he's given responsibility to protect, so he failed in his governing when he did these things: he became silent and passive. That's how he failed, and then he eventually disobeyed, listened to the wrong voice - but he was silent. When the devil was doing all the talking to Eve he remained silent, so one of the big problems men have is, they remain silent and passive in the face of the enemy, and end up with huge problems in their lives and their families.
So what were the consequences of a failure to govern his territory? Number one, broken relationship. He damaged his relationship with God, and with his wife; secondly, loss of spiritual authority. The authority he did have that God gave him was now lost, it was yielded up to the devil who claimed and wielded it against Jesus later on. Now here's the thing you need to understand about it: if you give up your spiritual authority, the devil will use it against you, and so a person who does not stand up and lead in the area God called them to lead, will be oppressed in the area he's called to lead. There's never neutral. You arise and stand up in it, or it works and pushes down on you. You have to learn how to stand up, and to govern that area - and so he lost his spiritual authority, it become used against him.
The third thing was oppression and sickness, so once Satan had usurped the authority, then the next thing he used it too and so death entered in, sickness entered in and so on, and finally generational problems. Now we're looking at Adam. Now how about thinking about this; what would you think if I said this: that in your territory you are called to do two primary things - cultivate it to be fruitful; and guard it from demonic invasion? If you fail to guard it from demonic invasion then the consequences are, in your territory, there will exist broken and damaged relationships. You will have a loss of authority and a sense of powerlessness and oppression in that situation, and the problems that come could be generational. In other words your children for generations could be affected by your failure to govern.