But this book is really about relationships. It’s about seeing authority not as a synonym for ‘control’, but rather as God’s pattern of ensuring life. Many of us have a love/hate relationship with authority, but I think that this book will help you to discover that ‘authority’ is really another word for ‘love’ – if it’s rightly understood.

By understanding submission and authority, you will

1. Grasp your spiritual authority over the powers of the enemy
2. Improve the quality of your relationships
3. Manage conflict well
4. Know God’s design of order in marriage
5. Relate to authority figures with greater ease
6. Understand God’s design for leadership

This book is especially helpful for members of ministry teams, because the principles I talk about will, if applied, spare both leaders and team members alike a lot of unnecessary pain.

Book Excerpt from Authority — Another Word for Love

A few years ago, speaking at a family retreat, I was teamed with a young leader who was there to minister to the youth, while I addressed the adults. During our short time together, he told me a fascinating story from his own ministry that underscores the truth that real authority is about real love… and real boundaries is about real freedom. He told me that in his hometown he sponsors events designed to reach teenagers. One weekend he had planned a big party, he said, and had committed to picking up a junior high girl from her home and driving her to the event. He asked one of her friends to accompany him. When they drove into the driveway, they noticed her father watering his garden. Soon the young girl came bounding out of the door. She was provocatively dressed, this sprite of a thirteen year-old girl, looking more like a streetwalker than a junior high student. As she approached the car, she passed her dad who was fussing over his roses. “Bye, dad,” she said. He looked up at her and simply responded, “Bye, honey. Have a good time!” When she climbed into the car, she seemed distant and glum.

When they got to the gymnasium where the event was being held, she excused herself to use the restroom. She showed up a few minutes later transformed. The short shorts and plunging neckline were gone. Now she was the picture of modesty, dressed in a nice pair of jeans with a top that was much less revealing.

As he continued telling me the story, he recounted that he was completely thrown by this. Was this not the little vixen dressed to kill that he had picked up just a half hour earlier? He was puzzled so he went to her friend and asked her why the sudden transformation. She quickly responded by saying, “Oh, I know exactly what’s going on. Her father doesn’t love her.” She went on to say that her peers tested their parents all the time in ways like this, just to see if they provided boundaries. She explained that what this other girl was doing was seeing if her dad would love her enough to tell her to change her clothes. “Obviously,” she concluded, “Her father doesn’t care enough to focus on her.”

For these girls, boundaries were a significant part of the language of love. And that is what the Lord wants us to see. He wants to so radically change our thinking about authority that when we hear the word ‘boundaries’, we actually hear the word ‘love.’

I am a writer of songs and books. I have original manuscripts of songs I wrote when I was fourteen, and have taken pains to preserve them through several moves. I have put them in specially marked boxes, and have been careful not to lend the manuscripts out. I also have a number of cassette tapes on which I have recorded original melodies and songs, and which I have carefully preserved. My kids – all who play the piano – know not to tamper with my tapes, lest they inadvertently damage or record over one of them.

Why have I been so precise about these ‘boundaries’? Because I have authored something that I feel is so valuable as to be irreplaceable. I am not motivated to set these boundaries because I enjoy power, or want to control those around me. I am motivated because I keenly desire to preserve what I’ve authored.

God has ‘authored’ you and me. His love is so intense that He sets laws in place, and establishes consequences when those laws are violated. Why? Just as I don’t want my recordings to be erased and recorded over, so God doesn’t want you and me to be destroyed. So ‘authority’ is not about controlling, but preserving what has been created. So, even when God says
‘No’ it really is His ‘Yes.’

Nobody likes to be told “No.” Even though we may know that it’s for our best, it stings a little when someone legitimately blocks our desires. Especially if the one doing the telling is an authority figure. People who tell other people ‘no’ can candy-wrap it in five or five hundred love languages and it still will not go down easy. As a teenager, I would sit there and listen to my parents tell me why the boundaries (read that ’screws’) they were putting on me was all because they loved me. Sounded like a lot of spin-doctoring to me. Like they just enjoyed the therapy they derived from bossing a helpless youth around. “Son, it hurts us more to say ‘no’, here, than it is for you to have to hear it.” Who were they kidding?

It’s hard for us to see this sometimes. But this is how God works with us. He has given us boundaries in His Word. He has delegated His authority in varying degrees to other people and institutions – like civil governments – and expects us to align to those authorities. To us this might smack of control and seem to threaten our freedom. But if we understand – and, yes, even submit to – the authorities God has ordained, then we will experience an inner confidence that we have never known before.

As you embrace the biblical concept of legitimate authority, you will align yourself with God–and reap the blessings of true freedom.

Grace and Peace,

Steve Fry

Warmest Christmas greetings! Let me share a thought or two that I hope will encourage you. Remember one of the most touching parts of the Christmas story?

The teenage girl, blinded by an angel with a startling message, trembled with fear. The very Presence of God was now near her. And was soon to overshadow her. What was more, His Presence was going to
conceive life in her – not an idea, or a concept, or even a singular passion for some noble cause – but His own Life, His very Self. Mary, in the words of one preacher, was among the most powerless people in her society: young in a world that valued age; female in a world ruled by men; poor in a strict class society. But she was to bear the Divine.

She was not to stay long in her troubled state, for soon she would realize the great destiny to which she was being called, and would exclaim, "My soul does magnify the Lord!"

Ever since that young girl encountered the Divine Presence, God has come again and again to the poor and the powerless – and even a few pompous – with the same call: to be bearers of His Presence. To let
him birth, as it were, the character and beauty of Christ in them.

This call arrests me. And I trust arrests you. Like Mary, the thought that God wants to bear His life and reflect His image through us can at first seem unsettling. We may wonder what great sacrifice the Lord
may require of us. But it is precisely at our point of uncertainty and anxiety that the Lord wants to remind us, "Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God." The call to be conformed into the likeness of Christ is not a summons to religious duty, but the signal of His
favor toward us.

How awesome the privilege and how exciting the purpose! To know His Presence, to let Him 'conceive' His presence within us, so that which is manifest through us is the life of Jesus.

Yet there is a mystery at work within us as we yield to His Spirit, even as it worked within Mary. For who Mary was destined to carry would not only be the greatest blessing the world would ever know -
but for Mary it would also mean confusion, misunderstanding, and rejection. For when the Spirit overshadowed her, He was not going to abide by conventional human protocols. Her 'Yes' to God brought the wagging tongues of suspicious neighbors, the momentary rejection of
her betrothed, and ultimately the sorrow of a crucified son. His Presence was to cause her great pain.

When the Spirit of God conceives the life of the Son in us, we too will flow in great blessing. Blessing manifested in gifts, ministries, dreams, and purposes – the stuff that gives our lives meaning. But in
this process we may also confront rejection, confusion, misunderstanding. For once we truly yield to Him, He won't play by our rulebooks. To know the wonder (read that, grandeur) of His Presence is
to sometimes know the wonder (read that, suspicion) of our world. Tongues may wag, people may reject – but in it all God will be glorified and we will say, "My soul does magnify the Lord!"

That is one of the great mysteries of the Christmas story. That a virgin blessed would know the pain of a pierced heart. And that that which would pierce her heart – the death of the Life born in her -
would be the very "tidings of great joy" the angel had proclaimed to nameless shepherds.

And "Tidings of great joy" were the words that announced what appeared to be the ordinary birth of an obscure infant in the backside of an insignificant Roman colony. A baby who, in the flush of His manhood, would become a companion of sorrow, destined to die a criminal's
death. Obscurity, insignificance, sorrow, death. Can these be tidings of great joy? Perhaps here we see the most profound paradox of all – a mystery that Christ intimately understood. For when He hung on that cross, He did so for the joy set before Him (Heb. 12:2). He knew that His sorrow meant our happiness; His death, our life. He comes once again, like a servant through the back door – that we might enter the gates of heaven!

If we – in our quest to be bearers of His Life – are to know joy in the midst of suffering, it is because He has shown us the mystery: that out of death comes life. That though – in yielding to His Spirit
- we may endure pain for a season it is so that the power of His Presence will be more fully revealed through us. And that revelation is what engenders joy.

Nancy and I, along with our team, are grateful that we can serve the Body of Christ by carrying this message of God's Presence. We are grateful to so many of you who, through your prayers and support, enable us to equip the saints to embrace the fullness of that
Presence.

Yesterday my 17 yr old daughter graduated. I was asked to pray for the graduates of her class. The following is my prayer. As I reflected on this threshold she is crossing, I thought of so many of our youth – and the world they are inheriting.

May this be a prayer we can all pray for our young people – I trust that it will inspire you to intercede for the upcoming generation.

Steven Fry

A Prayer For Graduates

In Psalm 127 we are told that the young are like arrows in the hands of a warrior. The OT records the story of an ancient king who was summoned by a prophet to shoot an arrow. He did so, and that arrow was called the arrow of the Lord’s Victory.

Before us today, Lord, are arrows of Your Victory. These are young men and women you have formed and gifted for such an hour as this.

For though these are days like the prophet Isaiah described – days of uncertainty, when thick darkness covers the people – we also know that they are days of incredible opportunity.

May each one of these men and women fly as an arrow of truth to a society often muddled about right and wrong; as an arrow of compassion to the unloved and unwanted; as an arrow of light pointing to a day when the Lord Jesus will reign over the earth.

I pray that they would know the ‘hope of their calling’ and, like Timothy, stir up the gift within them. That when in the course of things they are tempted to lose heart they would know that they are indeed arrows of Your Victory. That they are not consigned to a random existence, but

Called to be Your mouthpiece, penetrating a distracted and weary world with the wonder of Your wisdom.

Called to be an extension of Your hand of grace to the many they will touch who have never known what grace feels like.

Called to run in shoes of peace, bearing the Good News that Jesus has made a way for people to know God.

Grant them the gift of faith – a faith that will illumine every season of hardship and darkness.

Grant them a love for Your Word, a heart for Prayer, a song of praise and a sensitive ear to your Spirit.

For they will encounter many crossroads in life. Not just crossroads of career – but much more importantly crossroads of character.

Times when they will have to decide whether or not to take the path that most glorifies You – even if it means being less successful or lesser known in the eyes of others.

In these days of easily discarded relationships, help each of them know what it means to be a faithful friend, husband, wife, father or mother.

In these days that seem so frantic, help each of them to know Your peace which passes all understanding.

In these days when they will most surely navigate through seas of change and even crisis, help them forge anchors of wisdom out of every disappointment.

And then give them a heart to pass that wisdom on to their children.

And may they never lack in passion for You. Grant them a spirit that pursues You
above all else.

For at the end of the day, we know that it is not about making our mark, but pressing on to Your mark, that prize for which Paul himself strained – the moment when the Master says, “Well done” and the ‘forever’ we will have of knowing You face-to-face.

reflection to maintain your personal equilibrium.

I’d like to pass on something that we’re learning here at Belmont Church, which

represents a substantial shift in the way we’re shepherding people into wholeness.

Much of the counseling ministry in many churches is based on a key assumption:

that the primary problem with most people is a love-deficit. No one would dispute

the fact that such a deficit is, in fact, a huge reason why we are not whole. But is

this the root of our dysfunction? I’m not sure…

If we trace the problems in the world to their ultimate source what do we find? We

find an archangel by the name of Lucifer deciding to rebel against God. Two things

to observe here. First, Lucifer’s sin was not rebellion in the full sense of the word.

He did not seek to replace God or overthrow God. He simply sought to act

independently of God. Second, Lucifer, when he did rebel, was perfectly loved by

God. His action was not prompted by a love-deficit.

This leads me to two corresponding conclusions. First, the root sin of all sins may

be located in the desire to act independently of God. Second, the root of all problems

in the universe is not a love-deficit, strictly speaking, but an authority-breach. If

this is so, it should radically alter the way we minister to people.

My hunch is that because we assume that the root problem is a love-deficit, our

ministry to people is shaped along soulish lines. In other words, we emphasize the

building of one’s esteem, helping people feel good about themselves, restoring in

them a sense of God’s Fatherhood – that sort of thing. And all these approaches to

the human condition are right but may not be root.

I have wondered why a good many believers continue to have problems, continue to

need therapy. Could it be that they – and we – are trying to address the problems by

treating the soul and not the spirit? Getting people to focus on healing their

wounds rather than repenting of sin?

Now before anyone recoils at my apparent “fire-breathing” let me offer some very

important qualifiers. First, I am not saying that love-deficits aren’t critical, and that

wounds don’t need healing. But I would suggest that a love-deficit is the

consequence of the root of independence manifest in a system of rebellion – which

is the system of the world.   We can be victims of this system and thus experience a

real love-deficit. But the spirit of independence infects us nevertheless.

Second, I am not for a moment pooh-poohing the priority of walking in honest,

vulnerable relationships where the on-going mending of one’s soul, through the

curative of love, sweetly massages the very real bruises of victimization. In short, I’m

not trying to be the Ying to Brennan Manning’s Yang (for those of you aware of his

excellent books).

I’m simply saying that to treat humankind’s ills solely along these lines is

shortsighted. If the ultimate root of evil has to do with an authority breach and not a

love-deficit, then the root of all roots is the spirit of independence. I would go so far

as to say that the spirit or attitude of independence may be the essence of pride,

and the root of the entire demonic system. And the only way this is dealt a death-

blow is through a lifestyle of repentance – for it is in repenting that we both reaffirm

God’s authority, and express our commitment to that authority.

Obviously, I’m raising more questions than I can adequately address here – I just

wanted to give you a brief glimpse into what we’re experiencing here at Belmont

Church at the present. By stressing a lifestyle of joyous, continuous repentance we

are seeing people maintain their freedom in God, and actually experience

overcoming victory in the Lord on a regular basis.

Again, I’d like to invite you to join us this October for two strategic conferences.

From the 11th to the 13th, Messenger Fellowship ( www.messengerfellowship.com)

will be hosting a conference for spiritual leaders and their ministry teams called

“The Church at the Crossroads: Recentering the Church on the Presence of God”. Then

on the 14th and 15th, Lydia Fellowship (www.lydiafellowship.org)  will be convening

intercessors and their pastors from around the nation for their national conference,

“God’s Call to the Church to be Holy”.

The first conference is designed to encourage and equip spiritual leaders and their

leadership teams to pursue ministry models that center on the Presence of God and

to focus on some of the key issues that will spark a greater spiritual awakening in

the nation. Our special speakers are Francis Frangipane and John Mulinde from

Uganda, whom many of you have seen in the documentary, “Transformations: The

Glory Spreads”.

The second conference is aimed at mobilizing and training intercessors (and their

pastors) to vigorously pray for such a spiritual awakening in the Church! Those who

have seen the “Transformations” documentaries will recognize the names of John

Mulinde and Ruth Ruibal. Having seen God remarkably transform their respective

communities in Uganda and Cali, these two bring a depth of experience and

understanding to the issue of spiritual awakening. They will be the guest speakers

during the Lydia conference.  For more information, including conference schedules,

please contact the above websites.

Grace to you!

Steve Fry