The Secret Place: 21 Day DevotionalSample

CONSISTENCY

Luke 10:9

There is no authority without consistency. The amplified version of this scripture calls out the fact that we have ‘the ability to exercise authority’ and just because we have the ability does not mean that we will actually do it. And if we do not consistently exercise our authority we discredit ourselves. Just like a parent has the ability to exercise authority over their children, if they do not, their children will grow to not respect their authority. So if that parent with no authority decides to discipline their child, due to their lack of consistency, they are unlikely to get anywhere. If you allow yourself to be a walkover in the spiritual realm you will be walked over. If you are sporadically exercising your authority you will have to exert more energy to prove yourself. “If the axe is dull and he does not sharpen its edge, then he must exert more strength; but wisdom [to sharpen the axe] helps him succeed [with less effort]” (Ecclesiastes 10:10) Two reasons for lack of consistency is spiritual laziness and lack of spiritual understanding. First, we’ll address spiritual laziness. It requires effort to take something into prayer and it takes even more effort to take everything to God in prayer. Spiritual laziness could be preventing you from exercising your authority over a given situation. We can make excuses for negative situations in our lives due to spiritual laziness. Instead of consistently praying about our situations, we may pray once or twice and decide it's not that bad, we can deal with it. Whether it is a migraine or a failing marriage, just because you can deal with it does not mean that you should. In Songs of Solomon 2:15 we read that we ought to "catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom." Laziness can cause you to allow the little foxes to run around in your vineyard because it's too much effort to put in the work to get rid of them. Soon they make the vineyard their home and those little foxes become big foxes, with families that will feed on the blossom of your life.

Do not allow your life to become ruined because of laziness, exercise your authority and cast out the foxes. Now let’s look at the lack of spiritual understanding. So in this case, it’s not that you can’t be bothered to exercise authority, but you do not recognise the opportunity to exercise authority. You have not fully grasped that everything has a spiritual root. Not some things, not just big things or the church things but everything. Every. Single. Thing. Has a spiritual root. Failure to understand that everything has a spiritual root can lead to a lack of consistency. If we are naive and think that we can only pray about what we consider ‘spiritual matters’ then things will creep upon you and take root but we don’t see it for what it is and they fester. Patterns that we see that we are not happy about in our lives, our families, our finances, our physical health, our mental health, our behaviours, our temperament, everything. It all has a spiritual root. Take everything to God in prayer.

Authority is not about how loudly we can shout in prayer or how confident we sound in commanding things in the Spirit. It is about how consistent we are in prayer.