Headship and Responsibility (2 of 5)

Mike Connell

God's power is used to uphold things for our benefit, not to hurt us. All good things come from God. The Bible says you meet a person in authority, they are God's minister, on His behalf, for your good, not for your evil. So when God has a thinking, or He's thinking about authority, He's thinking about how He can have order, and release blessings upon people; and we'll see that rightfully used, any person who carries responsibility and has authority has ability to release blessing into that area he's responsible for, if he knows what to do, and how to do it. Men have a unique capacity to release the power and blessing of God into their marriages and family. They also have a unique ability to destroy and mess it up, so one reason that people resist God's authority, or resist God's ordering, is because of ignorance. If we don't know what God expects, then we will find ourselves standing against Him in some kind of way. Now you can be a Christian, you can pray to God, and still never experience the blessing of God in your life, because you actually, inside yourself, are resisting and fighting against the order of God.

So for example, now I'm not going to go here too far, but I just want to throw something out. When we think of giving, most people's concept, immediately, is one of resistance. They think someone's trying to take money away - there it is, the church is trying to get my money. But that's not the concept at all. You see the Bible teaches that we sow, and then we reap; so when you give, or sow, in faith, you are positioning yourself in harmony with God's purpose, so the blessing of God can be released. When you give reluctantly, or don't give at all, you're positioning yourself against God's way of blessing you, simple as that; then you can complain all you like, how come they're blessed and I'm not blessed? You've got to position yourself, so you can flow with the release of God's power. Whenever a person positions themself in harmony with God's order, they find the power of God will uphold them, and bring blessing and benefit far beyond what they could achieve themselves. That's why we want to get in the place where you get blessed.

The second reason people resist the order of God, is just by neglect. The person just fails to do what they know to do. This is one of the most common problems that is faced in marriages, and in families ,and throughout society - people neglect the responsibility. Today the cry is: what rights and privileges; everyone wants their rights, kiddie's rights, women's rights, this rights, that's rights, but the Bible speaks about responsibilities before it speaks about rights and privileges. Rights and privileges go with responsibilities. When you are responsible - every parent knows this - this is the big beef they have with their teenagers. As you show more responsibility, you get more privilege, you know that they go together. If you are irresponsible, you lose your privileges. This is how life works. Even life itself teaches you that principle, for example when a child is born, they have no responsibility for feeding themselves, for cleaning themselves, for anything. They have no privileges either. They just are there, are someone's looking after them.

As they grew they learn to feed themselves. As they become more adult - adult means taking on more responsibility, they get more privileges. But if, as an adult, you break the law and lack responsibility, you lose your privileges, you're in a room, you're locked up, you can't even say when the light goes off. You lose all your privileges. Privileges and responsibility go hand in hand, so one of the reasons that people find themselves resisting, or positioning against, God, is by neglect. This is the most common one in our society today and the third is basically our thinking's wrong, we don't think the right way about God's order. We've got our own thoughts, thank you very much, and we'll follow with what we're used to. We find ourselves in our thinking resisting God. I want to just turn that around, and we want to begin to find ourselves positioning ourselves, so we can come into blessing with God. It's so hard to make it all work without God's blessing. God wants to bring favour, blessing, help, grace, make it easy; so you put a little in, and get a heap out.