Every community has an authority or authorities, whether it be a family, a town, a church, a nation, a business or a sports club. Authorities have been put in place by God to be gateways, points of entry and exit if you will, to their respective communities.
Gateways protect entrances from unwanted or hostile influences and allow friendly or desired influences in. They also largely represent what comes out of a community to the outside world.If we imagine a community like a enclosed town, the gate would be the authority and the stones would be the community members.
A gateway however cannot subsist by itself, it needs to be supported by a wall or a surrounding structure or it collapses… enter the community… the community is the wall in which the gateway (authority) is set, the stones are the community members.
When God said pray for those in authority, one of the reasons was so that they would be made strong to resist the assaults of the enemy on the community, and be able represent the community well to the outside world. In the case of a town this would mean gaining good trading deals, making good alliances with other towns and organisms and attracting wealth, trade and prestige. It would also mean strengthening the towns defences, keeping the town away from harmful alliances or enemies.
The gate cannot stand alone and the stones without a gate (or with a gate that lets nothing in) become a closed community isolated from the rest of the world, or what some might call a cult… if a gate lets everything in, the town loses its identity and character, that which makes it unique and to a degree, attractive to the outside world.
A “wise gate” will attract the blessings of God and allow only positive influences to permeate the community. A “foolish gate” will attract negative influences and allow them to permeate the community. So praying for leaders steers the community towards blessing, protection and positive development.
When we submit to authority, we allow that authority to protect, bless, and influence us because God always enters through a gate, He doesn’t break down the walls to get into a community, He respects the order He has Himself put into place.
When we rebel against authority, for example in the case of a revolution, we are in effect seeking to replace a godly gate with one chosen by man or by the devil. We are in effect taking the place of God who is the one who gives and takes authority in proper timing.
A good example of Godly transition of authority is when David waited for God to remove Saul when David could easily have removed him himself on numerous occasions.
Rebellion effectively hands the community gate over to the devil and you can guarantee that the community will be negatively effected or even destroyed.
We are all gates for the following generations. If we get a victory over a disease through healing, that passes on to the next generation, if we live a godly life, the blessing passes on to the following generations as do the troubles generated by an ungodly life.
As individuals, we can be defined as a community of spirit, soul and body to which the mouth is the gate (the power of life and death reside in the tongue). We determine with our words what we allow to affect us or not and to what degree we agree with God and submit to His will.
The Trinity is also a community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The point of access to this community for humans is The Word of God i.e. Jesus (I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through me).
So we access God through the gate of His Word and we allow God access to us through the gate of our Word (He who confesses me before men I will confess before my Father in Heaven).
The point is authority is everywhere. It all comes from God and we need to understand how to cooperate with it when it’s godly, how and when to pull it down when it’s demonic and where and how to exercise our own authority (subject for another topic).