God doesn’t have any Lone Rangers by Ron Cottle

I try to read major portions of Watchman Nee’s great book, Spiritual Authority, every year. It stays within arm’s length of my desk in my study.

He wrote: “There is no one who is fit to be God’s delegated authority in the kingdom, unless he himself first knows how to be under authority.” David knew this. That is why he obediently came under the authority of the reigning king.

Watchman Nee also said, “If any one of [God’s] children is independent and self-reliant, not subject to God’s delegated authority, then that one can never accomplish the work of God on earth.”

God doesn’t have any Lone Rangers. He has created a Body as His habitation, and we were created and ordained to function as members joined together within His Body, the Church.

Every high throne of authority or ministry in the Kingdom begins as a humble seat of servanthood in the Church.

Authority in the Kingdom only comes out of ministry.

Ministry is really servanthood, isn’t it?

The greater the servant, the greater the authority.

The greater the authority, the greater the servant.

We can never be in the Kingdom what we do not become in the Church. The way we behave in the local “Bethlehem” church writes the blueprint of what we will be in the Kingdom. I’ve heard many people say, “If I were just an evangelist, or maybe a pastor or an apostle… if I were a prophet, then I’d be one of the greatest.”

Yet they don’t even come to prayer meetings on Wednesday nights, and they don’t even pay their tithes! They don’t even try to influence anybody to come to the Lord Jesus through the local church. If they had the position they wanted right now in their local church, they would be the same sorry thing they are now—that is why God won’t give them that position. 

 We have to prove ourselves here (at home in Bethlehem) before God will put us there (on the throne in Zion).

 © 2023 Dr. Ron Cottle / https://roncottle.com