Spiritual authority isn't passive endurance. Pastor Todd and Pastor Katie break down resistance, humility, and what it means to be a vessel rather than the source.
Watching someone fall who once stood in a place of spiritual leadership is one of the most sobering things you can witness. Not in a self-righteous way. There's no satisfaction in it. But when it happens, it should do something in you: it should drive you lower. That posture of going lower, of continuing to humble yourself, is not a one-time act. It's a daily discipline that never stops being necessary.
Spiritual maturity and humility track together. The higher you grow, the more intentional you have to be about going lower. The Holy Spirit will speak to that. He'll prompt you. But the responsibility is yours. The Word of God makes that clear: humble yourself. Don't ask God to humble you. That's a dangerous prayer. The instruction is to humble yourself, before him, in due time. When you see someone else stumble, the right response isn't to analyze their failure — it's to pray, Lord, don't let that ever be me, and mean it from a place of dependence, not superiority.
Don't let that ever be me.
There's a phrase people use without thinking much about it: water off a duck's back. It sounds like you just float through difficulty untouched, barely aware. But that's not quite it. The duck is aware. It knows something is happening. It's raining, something is coming, and yet it has the ability to not be taken out by it — not because it's oblivious, but because of how it was built. Two realms: the protected realm underneath the feathers, and the outside realm that the duck was always going to inhabit. It was created for both.
You were built the same way. You are a spirit. You have a soul. You live in a body. You were made for two realms. The things of the earth shouldn't take you out. You've been equipped to handle them. But being equipped doesn't mean passively waiting for things to roll off. Resistance is active.
You'll never grow muscle without resistance. You'll never grow up spiritually without resistance.
When you actively resist the enemy, he sees that you are better equipped than he is. He's shooting and you're not going down. That's why he flees — not just because you have power, but because when he encounters real resistance, he has nothing to counter it with. The Word doesn't say resist the devil and he'll wait for a better moment. It says he will flee. That's a specific outcome tied to a specific action.
A lot of times we look at what's coming at us and get overwhelmed. The attack feels like too much. But the instruction isn't to lean into your own understanding of what you're facing — it's to acknowledge God. Not God out there somewhere, but the one who is in you. Greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world.
Sometimes the most effective resistance is refusing to give the enemy your attention. He's persistent, but he's also predictable — a pest, a thief, someone who goes after territory that doesn't belong to him. That's all he knows. Understanding his mode of operation means you stop being surprised by it and start taking authority over it instead.
One of the biggest misunderstandings about spiritual warfare is framing it as a competition. If you're in competition with someone, you're on the same level. Same playing field. But the enemy is not on your level. Jesus defeated him. His place is underneath you. That's not a metaphor — that's the actual position.
"He gave his life. He shed his blood so that you would walk in dominion and authority over the enemy. So you cannot allow him any place whatsoever." — Pastor Todd
When sickness comes, when limiting thoughts arrive, when symptoms show up and whisper that this is just how things are — you have to take authority. Declare the Word. That's not optional, and it's not a religious habit. It's how you move forward. The Word of God is your offensive tool. Revelation on the inside that stays on the inside changes nothing. When it comes out of your mouth, it gets established.
Kenneth E. Hagin was given a specific assignment: teach my people faith. The God kind of faith is believing in your heart and declaring it out of your mouth. The declaration is what solidifies it. And this works in the negative direction too. When you declare that you're tired, always broke, always sick — your body hears that. You were created in the image of a God who spoke everything into existence. When you speak, things respond. The problem is that people speak something out, look with their physical eyes, don't see immediate results, and back down. Physical vision is limited. Don't be limited to it.
People tend to shrink God's provision down to finances. That's understandable — money is tangible, urgent, measurable. But El Shaddai, the God of more than enough, applies to every area. Wisdom. Health. Direction. Relationships. You cannot buy wisdom. No price tag exists for the touch of God on your body. Jehovah Jireh, the provider, has already made provision before you even identified the need.
James 1:5 puts it plainly: if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and does not rebuke you for asking. That last part matters. In the natural, if you ask about something you should already know, you can expect a look, maybe a comment. The Lord doesn't operate that way. He gives liberally and does not scold you for coming to him. So go. Ask in faith, nothing wavering, because a double-minded person is unstable in every direction.
I'm a very needy person. I'm always like, Lord, I need you.
The same God who created us with billions of simultaneous processes just to make us speak a single sentence — all working together without you managing any of it — that same God has made provision in your spirit for wisdom that exceeds what your mind can construct. It doesn't need to pass through your head. It flows out of your spirit when you're positioned to receive.
There's a particular kind of trap in ministry where you start believing the gifts are yours. They aren't. You are not the gift. The gifts belong to God, they come from God, and they flow through you when you stay positioned to receive them. First Peter 4:10 says as every person has received the gift, minister the same to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. You're a steward, not a source. A dispenser of God's goodness — which means you have to be receiving in order to be giving.
This shows up most clearly in the moments when you have absolutely nothing of your own to offer. Sitting in a counseling appointment facing a situation that seems completely impossible, with no natural answers available — that's where you find out what you're actually drawing from. The response isn't to panic or to perform competence you don't have. It's to say, Lord, you know. Thank you for the wisdom of heaven right now. Father, use me as a vessel. And then expect something powerful to happen, because it's coming from the Almighty, not from you.
When you recognize the source and yield to the source, you can rest assured that the power of God will flow.
The wisdom that comes out of your spirit in those moments often surprises you. You start saying something and realize mid-sentence that you never consciously thought of it before. It's not a dramatic cloud-of-glory moment. It's a natural flow — natural because you were designed for it, because you're spirit first, and your spirit is hooked up to the one who knows everything.
The flip side is also true. When you insert too much of yourself — your attitude, your flavor, your particular way of seeing things — it can muddy what God is doing. That calls for honesty and, sometimes, for actually stepping back and acknowledging it. Not apologizing for what God did or what the Word said, but for how much of yourself got mixed in. Limiting your own presence when God is using you isn't self-deprecation. It's the job.
Positioning yourself spiritually isn't only about internal states — prayer, humility, receiving. It includes obedient action. John 14:15: if you love me, keep my commandments. Willing and obedient eat of the good of the land. That's Isaiah's framing, and it connects love to action to result.
Many people are operating in something that looks like God's plan but is being carried out in an entirely natural way, because they stopped checking in. They know the general direction. They have a sense of the assignment. But they're not asking, specifically, today, what do you want from me today? That daily inquiry matters. You can walk into a service with a whole message prepared and have God redirect entirely. The message you worked up may have to go. What God wants to do is the only thing that matters.
This requires a kind of trust that doesn't come automatically. All of us want to be further ahead than we are. The gap between where you stand and where you believe you're supposed to be can create pressure that feels like urgency. But God's never at a loss for supernatural options. He knew what you would need before you were born and has already made provision for it. When you don't see where the supply is coming from or when it will arrive, that's not the moment to take over. That's the moment to say, Father, I thank you that you do know, and this is not my concern to figure out.
That's what trust in God actually looks like. Not a comfortable feeling. A choice, made on the basis of who he is, regardless of what the current situation looks like.
Nothing great originates from us. That's not a diminishment. It's a relief. Keep your heart pure, stay low, stay positioned, and let the flow of what he has be what comes out of you. The fruit of that kind of life reaches further than anything you could build on your own.
