I believe the Church today is in a full-blown crisis over its lack of spiritual authority. I regularly receive calls from pastors and parents who are panicked about their children. They plead, "I just discovered my child is a drug addict and I don't know what to do."
My heart goes out to these parents. They're brokenhearted, desperate to find true spiritual authority that will lead to real help. Yet, I have to wonder: Where is the spiritual authority in their home? In my opinion, many such parents think they're helpless when they're not. Somebody in the family has to have power to chase the devil out—out of their child and out of their house. I say to every suffering parent: You must lay hold of spiritual authority yourself. Even if your child shuts you out, you still can attain power in your secret closet of prayer.
You may protest, "But I'm not Jesus. He came to earth with divine authority." The fact is, Jesus, though God in flesh, faced the devil as a man, a Spirit-empowered man. He didn't fight Satan on any other grounds. Likewise, Satan always approached Christ as a man, even though he knew He was God's Son. The demon acknowledged as much, saying, "Let us alone . . . thou Jesus of Nazareth" (Mark 1:24). They addressed Jesus as a human being, born in a particular town in Israel. Yet, even though Christ was a flesh-and-blood man, He wielded full spiritual authority over every demonic power.
You may also think, "If only I had that kind of power over the enemy. But I don't possess the type of authority to make Satan flee." That just isn't true. Jesus' disciples had this very power: "When he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease" (Matthew 10:1). "I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy" (Luke 10:19).
