Sir, yes, sir!
I have recently been reading a lot of comments from fellow believers in Christ on whether or not it is appropriate to correct church leadership when they are involved in sin. Let me first say that the scripture clearly says it is appropriate, and it is even required. I read a post from a brother in Christ recently who I believe has a heart for the Lord and has ears to hear when the Spirit is speaking. His words spoke true and resonated with my spirit, but I have come to believe that the broader Body of Christ lacks understanding on what constitutes a need for correction. I also believe the way the correction is brought is of upmost importance if we want to be successful in winning our brother back. This post is a chapter from my book “Prodigal to Prince,” and it approaches this topic in a way that most readers might not have thought of before being that only about 1% of our population has ever served in the military. I hope you can have an open heart and read it through to the end keeping in mind that this message is to everyone who calls themselves a believer in Christ regardless of their position in the church. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit might speak to you and reveal to you a truth you have not been able to fully understand until now.
Chapter 8
Sir, Yes, Sir!
Society’s morals and values have degenerated at an alarming rate over the past few decades. Sin has become the acceptable standard of the day, and if a person is not participating with others in their sinful ways, they are referred to as a religious extremist. If you want to see where we are heading as a nation, you only have to look to our youth. I had the opportunity to serve three years recruiting for the Naval Special Warfare Community, five years as a public high school teacher, and ten years as a pediatric nurse. It saddens my heart to think of where our nation’s youth was a century ago compared to today. There are still those who truly love the Lord, but our society has done a great disservice to our youth by making decisions for them, like taking God out of schools. We have made great strides as a nation in the areas of science and technology, but we have lost focus on developing any real character in our youth.
The enemy has attacked the family structure in America, and the last few generations have struggled to maintain the father-mother dynamic in the household. Fathers have lost their children because they have decided their needs outweigh the needs of their children. They have decided to leave their children to be raised by the government. Many mothers have been left raising their children on their own because their fathers have abandoned them. Our Father in heaven wants to restore the families in this nation. The absence of fathers in the families of America has opened the door for the enemy to attack the youth. The coming move of the Holy Spirit in this nation will be as it was in Malachi 4:6, “He will turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and strike the land with complete destruction.”
I have recently started having a monthly men’s breakfast called “The Men of Valor Experience.” The Father told me that the acronym MOVE would describe this program in the same way that SEAL describes our military program. It is time for men in the church to move and take back the spiritual authority they have abandoned to the enemy. Our Father is going to restore the fathers to their children by teaching them how to be Men of Valor again. I am talking about spiritual valor. I am talking about spending time on our knees for our children. I am talking about humbly coming before the Father in heaven with open hearts to receive our orders for our families. It is time for the men of Christ to take our place as the heads of our households again. The Father wants to restore the institution of the family in the world, not just in America. Let Him teach you to have a humble and lowly heart, so you might love and serve your family in the way that He desires from you. It is time to change the paradigm of what a father should be on Earth based on who our Father is in heaven.
The destruction of the family is one reason for the moral downfall of our society, but I believe there is another underlying reason that has allowed this decline to occur so rapidly. There is a deep seed of rebellion in this nation. Ironically, this rebellion began as a determination in the hearts of a people who wanted to be free to worship God in their own way. This desire has slowly turned into a selfish desire to be free to pursue our own personal dreams and ambitions. To be free to follow God is a wonderful thing, but being free to follow our own heart’s desires leads us down a slippery slope that Satan has used many times before to lead God’s children away from Him. In the beginning, Satan rebelled against God because of his own selfish desire to be like God. Adam and Eve also rebelled against God because of their selfish desires to be like God. Today people rebel against God because they want to be their own god, so they can determine their own future.
When someone joins the military, the first thing they must do is go to boot camp. They are stripped of their individuality, and they are developed into team players. They are taught obedience by placing them into a structured environment, giving them rules to follow, and disciplining them if they break those rules. We teach them there are consequences for the actions they take, and we show them that obeying their authorities is a good thing. They learn what the structure of a chain of command looks like, and we show them where they fall into that chain. We show them the entire chain of command from the commander in chief, our president, to the lowest position, a new recruit. We teach them the importance of obedience, and we show them how the consequences of disobedience could be death. When a recruit graduates from boot camp, the people who knew them before they joined hardly recognize them. They physically look different, but they also carry themselves differently. They are simply a different person.
In today’s society, we judge disobedience on a sliding scale. For example, speeding down the freeway at 10 mph over the speed limit is considered acceptable behavior by most drivers. How about cheating on our taxes, jaywalking, or running a stop sign? How about taking a pen from work that does not belong to us? What would happen if I told a coworker that taking a pen from work without asking is stealing, and stealing is against the law? They would probably laugh me out of the office. The truth is that all of these actions are acts of disobedience. Disobedience that might seem trivial to us today is only trivial because our society has judged the action on this sliding scale. Most people would never consider murdering someone because the act of murder is just too evil, but they do not have a problem with telling a little white lie. For any sin to become acceptable, we only need to find a justification that will allow us to live with our guilty conscience.
In the SEAL teams, we do not even address the issue of disobedience because it is common sense that all lawful orders are obeyed. We do not have to worry about an order being disobeyed, so we allow levity in how orders are followed. I might order someone under me to prepare their scuba equipment for a dive. I am not going to give them specific orders on how to do it because I know they will handle it in the way they were trained. I do not have to micromanage those under me because they can be trusted to complete the task. They will follow the standards that are written in their training manual. I do not expect my men to break the rules because they have all been trained to abide by them and to work within the system. Of course, there are rare exceptions when someone breaks a rule, but they are quickly and sternly disciplined.
The reason obedience is so important in SEAL teams is that we work in dangerous environments. Many times, if things are not done in a specific way and in a specific order, men might die. By questioning an order from a superior officer, I am saying I do not trust his decision. How can I come to that conclusion when I do not know all of the facts? When we are working in a team environment, someone has to be in charge. Everyone has their own tasks to accomplish, and with all of these different tasks going on at once, it would be impossible for everyone to know what everyone else is doing.
This vision is what the leader is responsible for maintaining. It is his job to know what everyone is doing, so he can coordinate everyone’s individual efforts into one effort. He takes in all of the information and tells us what to do to make the mission a success. He is taking in my input and combining it with the input of others in order to see the whole picture. Since he has the whole picture, he can determine that I need to make some small changes immediately to avoid some problems ahead. If he sees a problem and gives me a direct order, I must trust in his decision and do it immediately with no questions asked. Our daily Christian lives today might not have the same dangers here in America as I faced in the SEAL teams, but the rule still applies. Our orders come from our King and should be followed directly and without question.
What we must realize is that we choose to serve under a leader. Everyone in the military made the decision to enlist, so they chose to put themselves in the position to have to obey orders given to them by their superiors. By choosing to live in the United States, we have chosen to have the authorities of this country over us, so we must obey them, even if we do not totally agree with them. Romans 13:1 says, “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”
If the governing authorities are commanding us to do something that is contrary to the Word of God, we have just cause and a moral obligation to oppose those orders. When I was in the military, we had something called the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This document outlined the laws that every service member had to follow. Not only did we have to abide by this document, but we also had to abide by all federal and state laws as well. The military is held to a higher standard than the civilian population. If I was given an order I did not like or understand, I still had to obey the order. If it was the wrong decision, the person who gave the order would have to answer for it. If I was given an unlawful order that went against the Uniform Code of Military Justice, I could refuse to obey the order based upon its conflict with the law, but I better be absolutely sure I was correct in my judgment of the law because I would have to answer for my actions.
The same rule applies to the church as well. When someone gives their life to the Lord, they are allowing themselves to be placed into a chain of command in the kingdom of God. Even though the church is part of the family of God, it is also part of God’s army, and it is the bride of Christ. This can be confusing because these three identities can have very different characteristics. I believe the end-time church will function mostly as a warrior bride. It will operate and function more closely to the military. It will be fighting a spiritual war against the principalities and powers of Satan until Christ returns to rule and reign on the earth, and we will answer to the Father and our King. We will also have the bonds of brotherhood as we do in the military as we fight alongside our brothers- in-arms in the church. Jesus is the Son of God and the groom of the bride of Christ. This makes us a warrior bride bound together in the family of God and serving the King.
When Jesus returns, He will bring His kingdom with Him. Until this happens, He has placed members of His church in leadership roles to oversee the operations here on Earth. They are known as pastors and apostles. When we decide to join a congregation, we profess our willingness to place ourselves under the spiritual authority of the pastor and elders of that church. We must follow the orders passed on to us by the leadership of the church that we have joined as long as those orders do not oppose the Word of God. We must believe and trust the pastor is seeking God’s will and that he has the larger picture of the body of Christ in mind. Jesus Christ is the head of the church. The pastor is the head of his congregation, and he is solely responsible and must answer to the Father for how he leads his flock. If this sounds extreme, it is only extreme because we are in the habit of focusing on our own desires and ambitions. Boot camp instructors teach us to live our lives by a new paradigm. When we join the army of God, we learn to live by a new paradigm as well. We must learn to walk in obedience as Christ did when He walked the earth and follow those to whom the Lord has placed over us. We should be open to allowing God to train us in His boot camp, so we will be able to fall in step and work in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
If anyone decides they no longer want to obey the leadership of their congregation, they are always free to leave and move on to another congregation. If someone leaves a congregation because of their unwillingness to obey the lawful orders of the leadership, they will probably have the same problem elsewhere unless they can find a congregation where they will not be held accountable. There are many churches today that fit that description. I have visited many of them over the years. Some of them are so large they do not know who is coming in or going out. If you do not want to serve, you only have to be there on Sunday to enjoy the service.
If a church member has a problem with disobedience, they should ask themselves if they ever gave their lives to the Lord in the first place. They might want to ask the Lord if they were ever crucified with Christ. If we died to ourselves and learned to live with a new paradigm of absolute obedience in Christ, we should have no reason to refuse any lawful orders given to us by the leadership of our local congregation. It is true that we can all hear from God ourselves. It is also true that I can hear and observe what is happening around me when I am on a mission in the military. This does not mean I can disobey a lawful order from my commander because I believe I know a better way.
There are very clear ways to judge whether an order from your pastor is lawful or unlawful, and there are very clear ways to judge whether an order from a military leader is lawful or unlawful. The Word of God is to the church as the Military Code of Justice is to the military. Just as the Military Code of Justice supersedes civil law, so the Word of God supersedes the law of man. First of all, we must follow God rather than man. A lawful order from the leadership in your church is any order that does not oppose the Word of God. The Scriptures tell us all the laws we are to obey as followers of Christ. If the law of man opposes the law of God, we should follow God rather than man. This is why it is so important that our leadership in the church knows and follows the Word of God.
If my pastor gives me an unlawful order, I must choose to stand on the Word of God and decline to follow the order. If I decline his unlawful order, the pastor will be the one having to answer to the Lord for giving that order, but if he is giving me unlawful orders, I might want to pray about finding a congregation where the pastor follows and obeys the Word of God. If I choose to follow the unlawful order, I will also be held accountable, so it is important to know and live the Scriptures because we will all have to give account for our lives before the Father one day when we stand before Him. We must also make sure the order is unlawful before we decide to disobey it. If I disobey a lawful order, I alone will be held accountable before God.
In the military, a lawful order is any order given to me by a superior that does not contradict the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In the case of the church, a lawful order is any order that does not contradict the Word of God. This is one reason why it is so important that we spend time in the Scriptures. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense in any courtroom in the world, and neither will it be a valid defense when we stand before the Father to give an account for our lives because we have had ample opportunity to read the Scriptures whenever we desire.
What are some examples of a lawful order we might hear from a leader in our church? Being told to arrive at church on time would constitute a lawful order. What about an order from the pastor to attend a prayer meeting? We must answer to God first before our earthly leaders. If our manager at work asks us to work overtime and our pastor asks us to come to a prayer meeting, who do we obey? Like the military, a disciple of Christ is held to a higher standard than those within the world. They must obey the laws of their government as long as they do not oppose the laws of God, but they must obey the laws of the kingdom of God before they even consider the laws of man. If we cannot obey our nation’s leaders, then how are we to believe we can obey the Lord? It is a hard pill to swallow, but this is only because disobedience and rebellion have become normal occurrences in our society.
The dangers of disobedience within the church are even more dangerous than those faced in the SEAL teams. We are talking about sin, and sin separates us from God. Many people in the church, myself included, have judged sin in the past, much like the secular community. They might say, “Well, that small sin is not so bad. After all, I am not killing anyone.” But is this true? Every time we sin, we are slowly killing our soul and separating ourselves from God. The sin in our lives can also spread and cause others to sin within the church. It can become cancer to the body of Christ, and the Father will not allow the Son’s bride to be diseased forever.
I have heard people in the church say that the God of the New Testament is merciful and not a harsh judge. I agree wholeheartedly that He is a God of infinite mercy, but He also is a righteous judge. Hebrews 10:26–31 describes our situation should we continue in our disobedience to the Father after having received the knowledge of truth. It describes it as “insulting the Spirit of grace.” It also says there “no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.”
Remember Ananias and Sapphira in the book of Acts? They lied to the Holy Spirit, and it cost them their lives. Peter asked them, “Why is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test?” I ask today, “Why is it we feel we can put the Spirit of the Lord to the test in our own lives?” I do not believe we should simply be looking for sin in the body of Christ, so we can just sit in judgment of each other. But, if sin exists, we must recognize the opportunity to help our brothers and sisters to identify the disobedience in their lives before their disobedience is handled by the righteous judge. God is a merciful judge, and He has set up the body of Christ in such a way that allows us to show His mercy by helping our brothers and sisters to confess their sins and repent before they reach a point that demands accountability for their actions. I would rather have any sin in my life pointed out to me by a member of my congregation, so I might repent of it instead of arriving at church on Sunday and dropping dead as soon as I enter the building.
Peter gave Ananias and Sapphira a chance to repent, so they would not have to face the Holy Spirit’s judgment. If we do not show love to the members of the body of Christ by judging the sin in their lives, God will take care of His body by removing the sin from it Himself. The Holy Spirit passed judgment on Ananias. After Peter told Sapphira she would be carried out as her husband, she also died. She was given a chance to tell the truth, but she chose, instead, to lie as her husband did. I do not believe Peter wanted her to die, but she did die because of her willingness to lie to the Holy Spirit. She was speaking to Paul, but she was lying to the Holy Spirit who resided within Paul. I am just giving fair warning that His hand of mercy will not be on His church for very much longer because He will not allow us to live in disobedience to the Word forever. First John 2:4 says, “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” He will have a white bride for His Son when He returns to the earth, and it can become white the easy way or the hard way. We can be refined like silver, or we can be refined by affliction. I can tell you personally that affliction is not the easiest method. We are still under His hand of mercy, so I urge the church to act now while we are still in boot camp because once the bride of Christ is purified, He will not allow it to be tainted again.
God’s forerunners will be working under a greater anointing of the Holy Spirit and a greater quality of faith than the world has ever seen. I believe it will be so great that we will not be able to live with the blemish of sin in our lives. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.” To imitate means to follow as a model or to mimic. Another translation says we should follow him as he follows Christ. To follow means to pursue, obey, or keep one’s attention fixed on someone or something.
The only two men in the Bible that I am aware of having ever given this command were Jesus and Paul. Jesus was able to give us this command because He was the Son of God and blameless before the Father. He is the perfect example. What gave Paul the right or even ability to give this command? At one point during his ministry, Paul said in Philippians 3:12, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” He admitted that he was not yet perfect but that he was pressing on toward it. Depending on the translation, he later tells us to imitate or follow him as he imitated or followed Christ. Had he finally been able to achieve living a life in perfect obedience to the Father, just as Christ had? I believe so. If he had disobeyed the Lord after making the statement in 1 Corinthian 11:1, he would be condoning his own disobedience. How could he say we should be imitators of him as he is of Christ? Christ never disobeyed the Father. If Paul was still living in disobedience, he would have said, “Imitate or follow Christ as I do.”
I have heard many people say, “I know the Bible says to live in perfect obedience, but I am not Christ. He was, after all, the Son of God and was conceived by the Holy Spirit.” If what I am saying about Paul is true, this argument holds no water. Paul, by his own account, in 1 Corinthians 15:9, says, “For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” He was a murderer and persecuted the church before he was converted. If he could learn to obey Christ perfectly, we have no excuse. He was not conceived by the Holy Spirit, and he was not the Son of God. He was like the rest of us, or as he said, “the least of the apostles.”
I am not aware of any other person, other than Christ or Paul, who has told us to pursue them, to keep our eyes fixed on them, or to live our lives exactly as they did. If Paul could live in perfect obedience, what excuse do we have? None. Paul is no longer with us, so all we have is his teachings. Christ is still with us, and His spirit lives within us. We have the same example to follow in Christ as Paul followed. We should be the ones now who say, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”
Disobedience is rooted in selfishness and pride. We want to do something other than what is being asked of us to do. Why would someone choose to obey rather than disobey? It might be to avoid the consequence of disobedience. They do not want to get fired or thrown in jail. Why did Jesus obey the Father? It was because of His love for the Father that He obeyed, even to the point of death, even death on a cross. Love is a much stronger motivator for obedience than fear, but do not be deceived. We might believe we love Him, but actions speak louder than words. Jesus did not say our love for Him can be measured in how many times we tell Him we love Him. He said it could be measured in how often we obey His commandments. The love of the Father will not keep His judgment from us forever if we continue to live in disobedience. We need to honestly look at our lives and ask ourselves if we show Him every day that we love Him or that we love ourselves by the way we obey or disobey His commandments.
In the past, I wanted to believe I loved the Father with my whole heart, but I had to rethink this belief as I saw the imperfection of disobedience in my life. It is not only obedience to the laws laid down for us by the Father, but it is perfect obedience to His will and nature. When Moses struck the rock in Kadesh, he disobeyed God and misrepresented God to the children of Israel. By striking the rock in anger, he communicated to the people that God was angry with them even though He was not. Because Moses had received so many revelations of God, he was held to a higher standard. With great revelation comes greater responsibility.
I am not yet perfect either, but as Paul said, “I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12). Why is disobedience not an issue in the SEAL teams? We love our job and the SEAL community. We would not do anything that would bring shame to our unit or command. If need be, I would have died for anyone I have served with in the SEALs. How much more should we love the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? How much more should we lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in the Lord? How much more should we sacrifice our time for the body of Christ?
God’s forerunners will operate in this kind of love. We will live in absolute obedience to the Father because of our love for Him. We will only do what the Spirit tells us to do and speak only what the Spirit tells us to speak. We will live our lives as described in 1 Peter 4:11. It says, “Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
For this reason, we will obey the authorities put over us in the church because of our love for the Father and for each other. We will obey the authorities we live under in this world as long as we are not given unlawful orders by them.
Imagine what it will look like when the entire body of Christ is acting in perfect obedience to the Father out of a perfect love for Him. When the enemies of God see this kind of obedience, they will flee before us. Why? I remember a true story that I was once told that clearly makes this point. Even though some of the facts might be obscured slightly, the point is still valid.
Many years ago, there were two generals who were getting ready to face each other in battle. The invading general’s army heavily outnumbered the defending general’s forces by about fifty to one. The outnumbered general realized he was facing extremely stiff odds. He petitioned for a meeting with the invading general. The invading general agreed to the meeting, and both generals brought along a contingent of soldiers. The meeting was held at the edge of an extremely high cliff overlooking the battlefield. The two generals stood looking over the two armies below them. The outnumbered general glanced over to the invading general and calmly asked him for his surrender. The invading general looked back towards the two armies and then, with a slight grin, replied that he had everything he needed to ensure a sound victory. He would not be surrendering any time soon. The defending general turned and motioned to two of his lowest-ranking soldiers standing nearby. He ordered them to throw themselves off the cliff, smashing themselves into the gagged rocks below. Without a moment’s hesitation, the two soldiers ran towards the cliff and leaped over. The invading general peered over the side of the cliff in horror to see their lifeless bodies lying mangled at the bottom of the cliff. The defending general looked solemnly at the invading general and said, “Every soldier I have follows me in the same manner as what you have just witnessed.” With a ghastly look on his face, the invading general turned to his soldiers and ordered their return home. He surrendered without a fight. Why? He knew the power that came with being able to command an army acting as one body. He was aware of the efficiency and effectiveness of an army fighting with one mind, one heart, and one purpose. He knew if the body followed the head in perfect obedience, there was no army capable of standing in its way. There are more lessons that can be derived from this true story, but I only want to highlight the lesson of obedience. We will see amazing things begin to happen in the world when the body of Christ obeys her King in all things, just as the two soldiers obeyed their general even to a sacrificial death.
We have a big advantage over New Testament believers like Paul. We have the Word of God to guide us. Paul wrote much of the New Testament, and the teachings he wrote were being taught to him directly by the Holy Spirit. That which took him many years to learn can now be read by us in just a few days. Of course, reading it and learning the lessons are two different things. But what would be easier to do? Would it be easier to rebuild a car’s engine using a manual with pictures and clear instructions or have someone try to walk us through it over the phone when we do not even know what the parts are called or what they look like?
As these forerunners begin living in perfect obedience to God, He will entrust us with visions of heaven and prophetic insight into things to come. Those who are truly hearing from God will be evident by the way they are living their lives. The light that is shining from our lives will guide the body of Christ during the darkest times and usher in the end time church. It has been said that if the military was a sword, the Special Operation Teams in the military would be the tip of the sword. As the sword enters the enemy, the tip goes first and is followed by the rest of the blade. We are the first to infiltrate the enemy, but we are eventually followed by the rest of the invasion force. The same can be said about the church. If the church is a sword, these forerunners in the church are also at the tip. We might operate under this new anointing of the Holy Spirit first, but at some point, the rest of the body of Christ will enter into this anointing as well.
The tip is the sharpest point on the blade, but it is also the weakest and can break the easiest if used improperly. SEAL team operators are very sharp, and we can cause a lot of damage to an enemy, but if we make a mistake and are compromised on a mission, our lives could easily become at risk. If these forerunners, sons and daughters of God, make the mistake of allowing disobedience into our lives, we will be compromised, and we will suffer the consequences of our actions. Obedience will be the key, and that obedience must be motivated by love. The dangers and consequences are real, but so is the glory that will be given to the Father through the Son when we live perfectly obedient lives.
You can read more about this and other truths by obtaining a copy of “Prodigal to Prince” by Beau Walsh at BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com.
