Student Study Guide
Lesson 12
Sent or Went
Section 1 - Why It Works When God Speaks
Section One
Submission to authority is not a loss - it is the mechanism by which authority is received. The foundational question driving this lesson is: Why does it work when God speaks? In answering it, we discover exactly why it can work when we speak.
God does not speak in hopes. He does not declare things and wait to see whether circumstances cooperate. When He opens His mouth, what He speaks comes to pass - not occasionally, not under the right conditions, but always.
Fill in the Blanks
1. Submission to authority is not the loss of authority - it is the through which authority is received.
2. The foundational question driving this lesson: Why does it work when God speaks? And the answer reveals why it can work when speak.
3. God has structured things so that authority is only released in to the degree of submission. This structure is not an unjust limitation - it is a to the believer and a protection for everyone around them.
The Sobering Reality: If a believer were to carry genuine, unrestricted authority - where whatever they speak immediately comes to pass - without being fully submitted to the Word and character of God, the results would be catastrophic. An angry word spoken in a moment of frustration could release death and destruction. God is not withholding power arbitrarily. He has structured things wisely.
Your Reflection
Section 2 - The Sobering Case of Moses
Section Two
The account of Moses at Meribah illustrates what happens when authority is misused, even by those who genuinely carry it.
Fill in the Blanks
4. God told Moses to to the rock. Instead, Moses struck it - twice - in anger. The miracle still happened. But God's response was immediate: Moses would not enter the Promised Land.
5. The miracle still happened because Moses still had enough that when he acted, power was released. But God maintained the integrity of the principle: authority must be exercised within the of submission.
6. The moment authority is wielded out of personal , personal agenda, or in violation of the specific instruction of the one above you, it has been abused - and there are .
Prophetic Warning: The generation being raised up will walk in a level of authority no previous generation has known. But the only path to that authority runs directly through a level of submission unlike anything that generation has yet required of itself. The authority and the submission will rise together - or neither will rise at all.
Your Reflection
Section 3 - The Authority in the Voice of Jesus
Section Three
7. The crowd did not say Jesus prayed more fervently or used better spiritual techniques. They said He speaks with . His words carried power to bring the impossible to pass.
8. Jesus's commands did not return void because He was completely to the Father who sent Him.
The Deepest Layer - Why Does It Work When the Father Speaks?
9. In the kingdom, a name speaks of rank and authority. Psalm 138:2 declares something staggering: God has exalted His word above His own . He has submitted His authority - everything He is - to His word.
10. God Himself is in to His own word. That is why when He speaks, it works. That is why He cannot lie. That is why His covenant be broken.
The Bedrock: When God speaks a promise, it is not a wish or an intention. It is a legal declaration from One who has submitted Himself to the authority of His own word. The same principle He calls His people to live by, He Himself embodies perfectly.
11. The authority a believer can exercise in the spirit will always be a precise of the degree to which they are genuinely under the authority of God's word.
Your Reflection
Section 4 - Submission to God's Governmental Structure
Section Four
Submission to God's word cannot be divorced from submission to the governmental structure through which He works. God does not operate in isolation from human authority structures - He established them, and He moves through them.
Fill in the Blanks
12. Claiming submission to God while refusing submission to the human authorities He has set in place is to misunderstand how His functions.
13. The independent spirit - "just me and God, I answer to no one" - is a strategy of the to keep the church .
14. Genuine spiritual authority is never self-generated. It is transmitted through a divinely ordered , received from a higher authority and stewarded .
15. releases control. reclaims it. Fear of imperfect structures will always cause a person to take control back into their own hands, rather than trusting God to work through them.
The distinguishing mark of a leader who has genuinely submitted to authority is visible in how they relate to the authority above them. A leader who demands submission from those beneath them while remaining accountable to no one above them is not functioning in a kingdom authority structure.
Your Reflection
Section 5 - Sent Not Went: The Personal Account
Section Five
The difference between being sent and simply going is not merely semantic. It is the difference between operating under delegated authority and operating on one's own recognizance.
16. Jesus states the "sent" principle in one form or another times in the Gospel of John alone: "I did not come to do My own will. I was sent." That submission to the Father's sending was the source of the He carried.
✍ The Kentucky Story - Study It Carefully
A thriving ministry based in San Diego, traveling the nations. A pastor friend from Kentucky calls with an offer: join as associate pastor at one-third of what is needed to live on, travel restricted to one week per month. The offer is declined repeatedly.
Then God begins asking a direct question: "Are you going to be one that just went, or one that was truly sent?"
The response: "Call my pastor, ask him, and whatever my pastor says, I will do." The pastor speaks: "I tell you, in Jesus' name, go." When those words landed, the power of God hit. What had been something there was no desire for suddenly carried the faith to step into it.
What followed was not easy: almost no pay, loans unpaid, savings consumed. The organization was borrowing from criminal sources. After eight months: "I have no money to put food on the table. Will you send me?" The answer: no. The pastor would not release, would not bless out.
Then the pastor's own moral failure became public. His covering was named - and three weeks later that man's own failure became public too. The chain of authority had been broken long before.
But God worked through the structure. The pastor above my pastor called: "Steve, when John returns to the pulpit, you are out of there. Go back to California, back to the nations." Pressed: "Is this your opinion, or thus saith the Lord?" Answer: "Thus saith the Lord."
When John returned, they resigned - properly commissioned, released through the authority structure, not running out the back door. Within six weeks, every dollar poured into that situation was returned. The back salary became the down payment on their first home, purchased at the bottom of the market. Five and a half years later, they sold and bought their next home for cash. Completely debt-free.
The seed that produced a debt-free home was planted in the season of choosing to submit to an authority that was behaving wrongly - trusting God to work through the structure, rather than escaping it.
Fill in the Blanks
17. The author committed: "Call my pastor, ask him, and whatever my pastor says, ." He surrendered the outcome to the authority above him.
18. When the pastor spoke, something shifted visibly. An apostolic came into his eyes. He rose up physically and said: "I tell you, in Jesus' name, go."
19. God did not the authority structure. He worked it - anointing the one above the compromised pastor to speak the word of sending that the pastor had refused to give.
20. They resigned being properly , released through the authority structure - not running out the door.
21. The seed of a debt-free home was planted in the season of choosing to to an authority that was behaving wrongly - trusting God to work through the structure rather than it.
Your Reflection
Section 6 - The Question Before Every Believer
Section Six
The Governing Principle:
Why does it work when God speaks? Because He is under the authority of His own word.
Why does it work when we speak? To the exact degree that we are under the authority of His word and His government.
22. When a believer is genuinely under authority - not performing submission, not managing the appearance of it, but truly submitted - they are no longer functioning in their own power. They are functioning in the power of the one who them.
23. The commissions of Matthew 10:8 - heal the sick, cleanse lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons - are given not to the but to the .
24. The end-time church will walk in an authority this generation has not yet seen - but only by walking under a this generation has not yet required of itself. The two rise .
The boundary is clear: Submission to human authority never extends to obeying a directive that contradicts the Word of God. That line must never be crossed. But short of that line - in the vast territory of things that are simply difficult, uncomfortable, poorly managed, or humanly perceived as unjust - the call is to trust God, stay submitted, and refuse to take matters into one's own hands.
25. The path into authority begins in the same place it always has: in the place of the Most High - in the intimacy of a deepening relationship with Jesus, where trust is formed and the heart learns to release control.
The Final Question
Lesson 12 - Practice Test
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Part A: Multiple Choice (5 questions · 2 pts each)
1. What does Psalm 138:2 reveal about why it works when God speaks?
2. What was God's immediate response to Moses striking the rock at Meribah, even though the miracle still happened?
3. In the Kentucky story, how was the author finally properly released from the ministry that would not send him?
4. What is the distinguishing mark of a leader who has genuinely submitted to authority rather than merely preached it?
5. According to the lesson, why does God structure authority so that it is only released in proportion to submission?
Part B: True or False (6 statements · 1 pt each)
1. Moses' striking of the rock (rather than speaking to it) had no real consequences since the miracle of water still occurred.
2. God bypassed the broken authority structure in Kentucky and spoke directly to the author to release him.
3. The boundary of submission to human authority is absolute - a believer must obey every directive from any authority figure, even if it contradicts the Word of God.
4. The authority a believer can exercise in the spirit is a precise reflection of the degree to which they are genuinely under the authority of God's word.
5. Trust releases control while fear reclaims it - fear of imperfect authority structures will cause a person to take control back into their own hands.
6. The end-time church will walk in greater authority by developing better spiritual techniques and ministry strategies.
Part C: Fill in the Blank (5 items · 1 pt each)
1. God has magnified His above all His name - He is submitted to His own word.
2. Why does it work when we speak? To the exact that we are under the authority of His word and His government.
3. The authority and the submission will rise - or neither will rise at all.
4. The commissions of Matthew 10:8 are given not to the independent but to the .
5. releases control. Fear reclaims it.
Part D: Short Answer (completion credit)
1. Explain why the lesson says God's withholding of unrestricted authority from unsubmitted believers is actually a mercy, not an injustice.
2. What happened in the Moses/Meribah account that illustrates the danger of misusing entrusted authority? What was the principle God was maintaining?
3. In the Kentucky story, God did not bypass the broken authority structure. How did He work through it? What does this reveal about how God operates through imperfect structures?
Part E - The Question Before You
Are you currently "going" in any area of your life - operating without being sent, without proper covering or commissioning?
Is there an imperfect authority structure in your life that you have been tempted to escape rather than trust God to work through? What is God asking you to do?
Write your answer to the lesson's closing question: