Get Your Pretense On!

Chapter 5: Represent Strong! • 119

Principle 3: The Entrustment This involves a representative being endowed with the authority and power to act on behalf of the sender. This is clearly the case with authority today. Why can a 135-pound female officer bring to a halt all vehicle traffic on a busy six-lane highway during rush hour, with just the wave of her arms? She is the representative of the municipality, the state, or the federal government. As an agent of the government, she has been given the authority as its representative to command obedience in certain situations and conditions. Her size and strength is not the issue; it is the size and strength of the governing authority that she represents that makes all the difference in enforcing the will of the authority. Of course, the representative is not given unlimited scope and freedom in their use of their authority. Usually the mission dictates the boundaries and limits attached to the authority given. Usually such acknowledgment is given in a public and/or official ceremony, where the representative is sworn in and/or is deputized with the authority to represent. And, after this confirmation is done, the representative now officially is given the right to represent and is released to do the task. Paul saw his display of signs, wonders, and miracles in the Holy Spirit as the confirming power of his true call as an apostle of Christ (Rom. 15.15-21). God backed up his call and his ministry with signs of power and divine confirmation. Specifically, he made this point to the Romans For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience – by word and deed, [19] by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God – so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. ~ Romans 15.18-21