Spiritual Authority.

Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you. Hebrews 13:17

1 Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. 2 "Has the LORD spoken only through Moses?" they asked. "Hasn't he also spoken through us?" And the LORD heard this.
3 (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)4 At once the LORD said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, "Come out to the Tent of Meeting, all three of you." So the three of them came out. 5 Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance to the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When both of them stepped forward, 6 he said, "Listen to my words:"When a prophet of the LORD is among you,I reveal myself to him in visions,I speak to him in dreams.7 But this is not true of my servant Moses he is faithful in all my house.
8 With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"
9 The anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left them.
10 When the cloud lifted from above the Tent, there stood Miriam—leprous, [a] like snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy; 11 and he said to Moses, "Please, my lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. 12 Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother's womb with its flesh half eaten away." Numbers 12:1-10

These are some sobering verses of scripture! We have here, Moses' siblings backbiting against their brother, and all he is trying to do is hear from the Lord. Man! That would make me feel miserable, wouldn't it you? Have you ever been there? You do something with such fervor and sincerity of heart just to have someone malign and disrespect you? God has established order in the body of Christ. It is not a matter of one job being more important than the other, it is a matter of roles. Remember the Words the Holy Spirit spoke through Paul, "Can the hands say to the feet I have no need of you?" and the answer is of course not! Everyones job is so important in Christ, but some jobs come with more authority than others. And if it is going to be well with my soul, I am going to have to submit (come under the protection of)to their authority. You see God has an established order so things run smoothly and not chaotic.

So why do we need to respect the established authority? Because we see how He feels about that in how He handled Miriam. We see here that Miriam is given leprosy by the Lord because of her attitude towards the established authority. This is some very scary insight as to how God feels when we gossip about our leaders, specifically our pastors. Moses was sort of an "old testament pastor" if you will, so I believe this story correlates with pastors and their churches today. Notice the above verse, that pastors are the shepherds of the soul, so if I make their job more difficult than it has to be because of my own pride, I will face an unfortunate penalty. It doesn't always come in the form of physical infirmity, no, it could come in the form of my finances, relationships, lack of spiritual growth, etc. Some of us could be facing these types of "curses" and the reason could be because of what we are allowing ourselves to say.

Now what am I saying, that you have to agree with everything your spiritual head says? No, I am not saying that at all and if they were bringing tyranny instead of growth we handle that differently and we need to read scripture for ourselves. But we are talking about an imperfect person that genuinely loves the Lord, responded to this call that James says incurs a "greater judgement", and is trying to lead people in the things of God. When we go home and talk behind their backs that is called gossip. And we see with how Miriam was handled, that God hates when we buck against spiritual authority because we are, in essence, bucking Him. The only Biblical clause for disobeying your authority, whether it be political or spiritual is if they try to get you to rebel against your faith. You see, this authority principle has its limits. For instance, Moses bucked Pharaoh because what he was doing to the people of God was horrific. So I am not saying we are to tolerate tyranny, I am saying, however, that if you have a person in political and/or spiritual power, and they are not directly telling you to do something against the rule of God, than we are to obey them. Because to adhere to their authority is to adhere to God's established rule. Again, God takes personal offense to this violation, watch how you treat His servants! See, our pastors and spiritual heads are going to give an account on how they handled our precious souls. If you make that extremely hard position even harder by the words of your mouth, I tremble for you at the final day. Let's pray for each other, that we are a fair and reasonable people!