74: Practical Authority

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Season 1, episode 74. Today we are talking about the practical authority of the believer. Hello, Father.

[00:28] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:30] Stephanie: Good to be with you. And happy Thanksgiving week in the USA.

[00:34] Marcus: When we’re recording this it’s the weekend just launching into Thanksgiving. It’s going to be a relaxing week, hopefully.

[00:45] Stephanie: You are praying. Yes. And we are just so grateful for everybody who’s listening. And whether you’re in the States and celebrating Thanksgiving or not, we just hope that you are going to have a lovely week, and maybe eat some tasty food.

On that note, we haven’t done a “would you rather” in a while. So for today’s icebreaker, Father, pumpkin pie or pecan pie?

[01:09] Marcus: Well, for me, if there’s enough whipped cream, I’ll go with pumpkin pie. I think what happened when I was a kid, I got some bad pecan pie and it sort of spoiled it for me a little bit. I’ll go with pumpkin.

[01:25] Stephanie: All right. Yeah, I would agree. I like a good pumpkin pie, especially if it’s got lots of whipped cream.

[01:31] Marcus: Yeah, I mean, whipped cream is really the thing. It’s like you can skip the pie altogether.

[01:36] Stephanie: Yes. If you know my father, he very much likes his whipped cream.

All right. Last episode, we talked about various viewpoints regarding the authority of the believer. This episode we want to lay out our perspective, which is a legal understanding of the authority, and then we’re going to land on the practical: What does authority in Christ look like in practice? So, Father, let’s talk about legal authority.

[02:05] Marcus: All right, so why don’t we just start with some Greek, since everybody loves Greek. Exousia and Dunamis are the two Greek words that are at play here. Exousia is the word that is usually translated “authority”, and it’s out of being right. “Ousia” is like the nature of something and “ex” is out of. So something that’s inherent within itself that talks about authority.

And then Dunamis has to do with power. It’s the word from which we get dynamite. And so what happens is that we would put it together that the legal authority of the believer means that we have exousia. We have the authority or the right to represent power. I personally don’t have any power, but I represent the power of the kingdom of God. Demons know that, and so what happens is they want to know if I know that. They want to know, “Do you realize how much power you represent?” They’re counting on the fact that I don’t.

I remember years ago – this story involved you -I remember I was called to meet with somebody and I was feeling a little nervous, because I was being called to somebody’s house specifically because there was demonic activity taking place. And I can’t remember how old you were.

[03:29] Stephanie: I think I was in junior high.

[03:32] Marcus: Junior high, maybe. Yeah. And I said I was just feeling a little nervous about this. You said something to the effect of, “Well, how do you know the demons aren’t more nervous that you’re showing up?” And that perspective was actually quite helpful because I realized, “You know, what? They should be, because someone with the authority to deal with them is on their way over.”

In fact, I had another situation early on. I had just been named president of ICBC, which then became Deeper Walk International. My father was on the board, and he had been called to go meet with somebody who was having a demonic episode. I had pulled up to go visit my dad, not knowing anything about this, and he said, “Hey, perfect time to have the president of ICBC here!” because we were known for our spiritual warfare training.

He said, “Why don’t you come over here with me? Just follow me in your car.” And so we went over to this home. He pulled in, and then afterwards I pulled in. Well, we found out later that there was a lady from a foreign culture that had shaman and witch doctors and such, and she was not a Christian. A curse had been placed on her, and she was acting out, but she didn’t speak English, and she was rolling around the floor and acting out when my dad pulled up.

We were told later that she sat bolt upright and in perfect English said, “Don’t let him in here.” And then I pulled up behind him and she was like, “Don’t let him in here either.” I think what happens is the demons know that we have rights, that we have authority, that we have authority to represent power. And so one of their traditional, typical, stereotypical, whatever you want to call it, strategies is they’ll hide because then you won’t deal.

As long as they think you won’t know they’re there to go looking for them, they’ll hide. Once they are out, though, they turn to intimidation. And intimidation is, “You don’t want to mess with me. You have no idea how powerful I am. Do you have any idea what I could do to you?” That sort of thing. They’re going to go to intimidation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had my life threatened. Right. I’m going to kill you, kill your whole family.

So you’re realizing, “Well, yeah, if it’s you and me, you’re probably right. But this isn’t you and me. This is you against Jesus and the kingdom of God. So if you want to take them, know, by all means,” They’re intimidating to see if you will actually stand up in the authority that you’ve been given in Christ, or if you are going to cower and say,”You know what? Just leave me alone, please. Just leave me alone, please.”

What they’re hoping you will do is take the position of someone who does not represent power, someone who is just so scared that you won’t do anything. And so part of the whole doctrine of authority, if you will, is meant to give us confidence when we go into a situation. Not like I can kick out any demon that I need to kick out wherever I go, but it means if I run up against something demonic, I do represent way more power than they bring to the table.

It’s similar to ancient claims that demons sometimes make. For example, I’ve heard a demon say through somebody before, “We have been here for 100 generations. We own her. We own him. We have a claim to him. We have a right to be here. You’re never going to get rid of us.” And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that, too. You’re never going to get rid of us.

[07:30] Stephanie: “And we have rights.”

[07:31] Marcus: Yeah, “And we have rights and you can’t do this.” And so it was interesting to hear demons say “we have rights” because it’s legal language, to which I would always say, “Well, you may have been there for 100 generations, but the Bible says that in Christ she belonged to Jesus before the foundation of the world. So I think that trumps your claim of antiquity.”

Not that I carry on a lot of conversations with demons, but some of this stuff I’m thinking in my head as opposed to saying out loud, The reality is, ”You may have a claim, but Jesus has a greater claim. You may have a claim based on blood and a ritual or a sacrifice., but Jesus has his own blood claim which is greater than yours. You may have owned this family line for generations, but Jesus has owned them since before the foundation of the world.”

And so everything that we bring to the table here has to do with our ability to represent. That’s the thing that we’ve got to remember. I’m not smarter than a demon, I’m not stronger than a demon. I’m not going to outwit a demon. Like, “Oh, I can be wittier than you.” That’s not even the point. The point here is I represent something they can’t compete with. And so you’ve got to make sure that you keep it about that and not about who’s stronger, me or you.

[08:56] Stephanie: Yeah. So you’ve talked about, we have real authority, we have derived authority, and we have limited authority. Can you unpack that based off of what you just said?

[09:08] Marcus: Yes. Real authority means that I really can represent the power of the kingdom of God, but it’s derived because it’s not inherent in me. It’s not because I’m such a good person or I’m such a knowledgeable person or I’m such a spiritually anointed person. I don’t have any more authority in that sense than any other Christian. My father, your grandfather, he used to put it this way:

He said, a rookie police officer, one day out of the academy, still has the authority to give you a ticket. But somebody who’s been out on the beat for 20 years just has a whole lot more wisdom about how to use that authority. And I think that’s what we’re looking at. It’s not like some people used to come to my dad and say, “Hey, would you pray? Because I think if you prayed, they would listen. And he’s like, “I don’t have any more authority than you do. I don’t have any supernatural standing that you don’t have.

He said, “You are a child of God. You are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. You have legal authority to represent this power. It is derived from Christ’s power.” It is real, it is derived. And when we say it’s limited, that gets the idea that demons do have rights and so I can’t come into a setting where they have a right to be someplace and kick them out. That’s why Jesus talked about binding the strong man first and doing those sorts of things.

Because if somebody has invited a demon to be present in their lives, and they’re unrepentant, I would put casting a demon out of a person like that into the category of miracle. Kind of like the Apostle Paul did with the slave woman who was the fortune teller in Philippi in Acts 16. And he’s like, “Enough!” He turns around and just tells the thing to leave. I think that that was in the realm of, he had maybe apostolic level authority, or else it was just flat out miracle because she hadn’t done anything to renounce it.

The demons had kind of a right to be there, but he just overrode that. I find that people who find themselves in knock-down, drag out battles with something demonic that goes on for 6 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, days, that usually what’s happening there is they are not dealing with permission. And because they aren’t dealing with permission, they’re trying to kick out a demon that’s got permission to be there.

And that’s where we get into this idea of jurisdiction, that it’s limited. So what it’s limited by is my jurisdiction and their rights. If they have permission to be there, we need to deal with that first. And that’s why we start with the idea in spiritual warfare of,  let’s find out what gave them permission to be there. Let’s remove that permission, and then it’ll be much easier to remove the demon.

[12:02] Stephanie: Perfect segue into our practical applications. So what do we have the authority to do?

[12:09] Marcus: Well, I read recently about somebody who was trying to evict a demon from a client, and the demon wasn’t cooperating. It was making it hard. So they were trying to coach the person to call in the name Jesus, but they couldn’t get out the word “Jesus”. It was like, “And in the name of J..”  Just couldn’t get out.

This person didn’t know what to do and said, “Well, why don’t we sing?”, because there’s this idea that demons are afraid of praise music. They’re not afraid of praise music. I’m just letting people know that the praise music may help you, and it may bolster your confidence and your stand against them, but they are not terrified of praise music. But what happened was that it just became a diversion in this case, because now they’re singing.

What she should have done, or what this counselor should have done in this particular case, was simply use the authority to bind the demon. Say, “In the name of Jesus, I bind you from keeping this person from doing what she has a right to do.” And this is the idea, “You may have a right to be here, but she has a right to get rid of you. She has a right to say the name Jesus. She has a right to do this stuff. So that gives us permission to bind.”

The other thing is, especially if I’ve been asked to help, I will often claim that as a person who has been asked to help, they have now given me some rights here or some jurisdiction that I may not have had before. “As someone who’s been asked to help, as someone seated in [Christ] at the right hand of God, as someone with this authority, I bind you. And what that means is you will stop interfering. You will let me talk to this person without interference. You will let them say the name Jesus,” whatever it is.

I’ve seen multiple cases along the way. It almost became commonplace to have to do that at some point in the process where you say, “In the name of the true Jesus who died, rose again, came in the flesh, and loves me and loves [this person], I command that you will allow this person to finish their thoughts.”

So again, some people get sidetracked and derailed because they don’t fully understand the legal nature of how all of this works and how you unpack the legalness of it. And that’s one of the reasons we do podcasts like this, to try to help people learn what they do and don’t have the authority to do.

[14:39] Stephanie: Yes, totally. It’s been striking me this episode. I love how when you pray with people, you do claim authority as helper and you will do things, but if you were praying with a Christian, you are coaching the Christian how to do this for themselves. You’re not just saying, “I’m going to evict this and I’m going to do this,” you’re coaching them to take their own authority. And I think that’s really important.

[15:06] Marcus: Yes, I actually rarely work with non-Christians. Most of what I’ve done has been with Christians who are having a problem. So what you’re trying to do is not just get them free this one time, but coach them through the process of how to stay free and how to win any future battles that may come up, which gives them a tremendous amount of confidence that if this ever happens again, “I know what to do.” And so that’s part of the reason for doing that.

I can’t take credit for it. I learned that from Neil Anderson, from my father, from Mark Bubeck. There were a lot of folks who were kind of doing it that way. And it’s not that there’s never a time for the other, but I tend to think that those are more frequent when you’re dealing with non-Christians who don’t actually have their own authority.

[15:53] Stephanie: So I know a lot of people will write in and ask questions. For instance, the grandmother who wants to know how much authority they have in the lives of their grandchildren or things like that. That can be gray areas or difficult. Can you speak to some of those issues?

[16:12] Marcus: Yes, it’s a gray area. Are we done? What happens is, you’re right, I get asked that almost everywhere I go teach on this, and I tell people we’ll try.  Because honestly, the Bible doesn’t say one way or another on some of these things. So you can try and see what happens, and maybe there’s something going on that will make that work there. But I do think that in general, the principle of jurisdiction means that if I’m dealing with an adult and I’m in the family line, what I can do is I can cut off the influences coming at them.

For example, as a parent, as a grandparent, I can cut off generational things that are coming at them. I can cut off outside curses and things like that that are coming at them. But if it’s something they themselves, as an adult, have given permission to the enemy to do, then what I want to do is my prayers change a little bit to God, “Would you go to battle against these things that are blinding my grandkid? Would you go to battle against these things? Would you open their eyes?” And you could say, “In the name of Jesus, I bind the demons from blinding them to what’s going on.” You’re still praying in a warfare way.

But you’re maybe not necessarily just evicting the demon, because they have a right to be there. They have permission to be there. And again, you could try, but I’ve rarely seen that. I would encourage other kinds of authority prayers like this, what Karl Payne calls offensive. I know our favorite one is, “Go break the demons that have been assigned against my grandkids, the demons that have been assigned against my kids. God, would you just unleash an army against those demons? Would you do battle with them? Would you make them regret taking up this assignment?”

Like, “Go get them!” You’re praying from this aggressive, authoritative, warfare way without actually evicting the spirit. And then you’re also binding the blinding that is taking place, that is keeping the other person from recognizing how much they’re in. And it’s not that you can fix everything and everybody if you just say the right warfare prayer. We’re trying to avoid this as the one size fits all, cure all for every problem. But it is an element in the battle that sometimes we neglect. And so that’s why we emphasize it.

[18:49] Stephanie: Well, oh, man, we could keep saying we have so many podcasts in our future, we will keep talking. But I did want to just quickly address, a lot of your example stories today have seemed more demon manifesting, and authorities in that way, which is great to hear. But we can use our authority in situations where there’s not a demon manifesting. Could you speak to that real quick?

[19:16] Marcus: Yeah, sure. I think I use the manifestation source because it’s obvious what is happening and how it has been resolved, whereas sometimes if it’s not a manifestation, it’s a little less obvious what is resolving. But it can be your thought life, for instance. You’re just getting bombarded with thoughts like, “I’m doomed. This is hopeless. My kids are hopeless.”

My situation is whatever it is. I can be bombarded with thoughts of my own worthlessness, of somebody else’s. I’ve talked to parents who were bombarded with thoughts about their kids’ worthlessness. And so what happens is you begin to realize, there is a battle for my mind taking place. And sometimes the starting point is to call it what it is and say, “You demons assigned to wage this war on my mind, Out! I know who you are. I see what’s going on. In the name of Jesus, you get out of here now.”

And you stop that. If that doesn’t work, then you go to Jesus. You say, “Lord, is there a root to this? Is there something that needs to get healed underneath there?” And so that’s where I go to, like a WLVS or REAL prayer process. What is the wound underneath this that is given a lie that led to a vow that has created this stronghold, that is allowing this assault on my mind?

And that’s where you start going into looking for other root issues. But where I start is just calling it for what it is, telling him to get out of here. And I’ve got story after story after story of people telling me I did that and all the thoughts just stopped. So it sometimes works because that’s the level the battle is at.

[20:59] Stephanie: All right, this has been so helpful. Thank you. I am going to pull a request from one of our listeners now. I’ve got a whole file of questions and testimonies and comments from listeners that have been coming in since the summer. And this one actually came in in the summer, but it’s very applicable now. And this request is to please pray for the peace of Jerusalem. That region is experiencing a lot of trauma right now on all sides. Can we take a moment to pray for them?

[21:27] Marcus: Yes, and it’s spilling all over the world right now, isn’t it? There’s some scary stuff going on in Israel, in Jerusalem, Palestine, and around the world as people are just digging in their heels on this. So let’s pray.

Father God, we are thankful that you are sovereign. We’re thankful that because you’re sovereign, everybody is accountable to you. And in the end, we all have to kind of decide whether we want to be on your side or not. And so I pray that you’ll make it clear to each one of us individually what you’re asking us to do, what you’re not asking us to do, what you’re asking us to, how you’re asking us to pray. And right now we want to pray as the Bible has encouraged us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And we just pray that this war would stop, that the killing would stop, that there would be a better peace that would emerge out of this and not a worse peace. I pray, Lord, that you will do things that only you can do because I know we are not here to give you advice and tell you how to do anything, but we are here to plead in the name of Jesus that you will intervene and bring this to a rapid close in Christ’s name. Amen.

[22:50] Stephanie: Thank you. So at the close of this episode and also the close of our authority series, any final thoughts?

[23:00] Marcus: Yeah. Final thoughts don’t always come immediately, but…

[23:05] Stephanie: I’m always impressed by how often they do come quickly to you.

[23:06] Marcus: Well, I will say, I think one of the first lessons I ever learned, it’s the first lesson I ever learned in spiritual warfare. Age seven, demons show up, and my parents tell me, “If this ever happens again, pray that the blood of Jesus will cover you. And then use your authority and tell them, in the name of Jesus, you have to leave.” And they would say, don’t just plead, “Please leave me.” Don’t just say, “Jesus, please make this thing go.” You’re given authority for a reason, so that you can use it.

So at age seven, it was, “Jesus, cover me, protect me with the power of the blood.” And then I would talk to the demon, “You need to leave in Jesus’ name, and you need to go now.” And I remember the very first time that happened. I got halfway through the prayer, the thing left. It wasn’t because I’m an amazing Christian at age seven, it’s because authority is real, because the power behind it is real.

When it comes to kids, I don’t introduce the word “demon” to children. I will use whatever word they’re using. If it’s a monster, if it’s a scary thing, if it’s whatever. Let’s use that same word. But you command it to leave in Jesus name. And it was very comforting to me even as a child to know that I didn’t have to put up with that.

[24:28] Stephanie: Yes, same. All right, well, thank you, Father, and another happy Thanksgiving to everyone and thank you for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more.

And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review and share with your friends. Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week!