Gerry Gutierrez' Update

A Preacher Without a Pulpit.

John the Baptist was a preacher without a pulpit.

Insights for September 14, 2016. - Matthew 21: 23 - 27  

Little we know about John the Baptist. But the one thing we know for sure is that John the Baptist had no pulpit but plenty of power and authority. John was not a member of the establishment that assisted change.

John was an agent of change, he came to herald the new covenant’s arrival, not as a cause or an ideology, but as a person and his message was Jesus.

 The authority of John the Baptist came from lifting the name of Jesus, who said, “If you lift me up, I will draw all men unto myself”.

The authority of John the Baptist did not rest on his membership to a human organization or corporation.

The authority of John was rooted in his faith in Jesus and his agreement with the will of God as stated in scripture. This made out of John’s life a life in alignment with God. Once a man is in alignment with God, he does not need any formal authority or power or endorsement of any human organization, because he already has the approved power and authority of God dwelling within him.

The first evidence of a man in alignment with God is that there is no trace in him as one building a name for himself. Instead he lifts in humility the name of Jesus.

He is a man who fasts fro the luxuries of the land of the living such as fine food, clothing and prosperity. He is happy to have wild honey and locus as food a camel’s skin as garment and a slender body as home and the desert as his Parrish.

The gift of God to him is loneliness, where he lives in thankfulness and contentment as great gain. He is a satisfy man in fellowship with the Lord his husband, whose love is better than the love of thousand women. John did not seek after people; it was the people that came looking for him to where he was.

John was definitely not a seeker friendly. John knew that there is no one who seek God, not even one. To them who came to him John called them, “brood of vipers, who warn you of what is about to come?”

Even so John had a first-class group of disciples who follow him to his death. These disciples heard John, but follow Jesus. John was please as a small brook of water happy to be a tributary of the great Amazon River to become the mighty Atlantic Ocean.  

Power? Authority? Who needs it?

It is not something you have as a sword in your hand or as up gun in your hip, authority is something you are or you are not. One is and has authority only when one is under Authority. Power and Authority can be best illustrated by a ten inches nail being robbed to a magnet and becoming magnetized to the point that it exercises power and authority over smaller nails.

Power and Authority is the irresistibly force that is exercised attracting others by virtue of having been empowered or magnetized. So is with a man of God as John, our man without a pulpit, yet invested with power and authority.  

Being with God will transform a man to the point of transfiguration as Jesus in the Mountain and Moses in Sinai. John's authority was certified by the words of Jesus over John. “There is no one born a woman, greater than John”, Jesus said.

Authority in a man is not to be defined but to be described so others can draw their own conclusion and be responsible of what they come to believe.

Once John sent his disciples while on Jail to ask Jesus, “Are you the one sent from God or should we wait for someone else?”

Jesus did not define himself to John's disciples with a simple “YES”.

Jesus instead told the disciples of John of what was going on blind, the sick and the poor and the lost.

Beware of defining your self early on, because it will become on you as a nametag stuck on your forehead “as the mark of the beast” and you will never be able to remove the first impression you have caused by your own words.

We also must be cautious to answer to anyone who wants to ask us for definition. Authority and power does not flow from man made credentials and tittles proudly placed at eye level on the wall behind a burgundy lather chair where one sits as an idol stands on and ivory tower.

Authority comes from the life of God powerfully active in ones life. Let some else testified of what kind of spirit governs your life. Never mind al the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of the witness, it is about God’s name and God takes care of his own name in his own and in his own way and time.

John is to draw his own conclusions. For faith to be saving faith and personal faith it has to be based on ones own conclusions, only then, a man is willing to stand to the death for what he has come to believe. Then everyone will be a preacher, the whole world will be his pulpit and his Parrish and every one his congregation of two, three or more. You are a witness of Jesus. No need of a pulpit. “This Man”.

Gerry Gutierrez.

This man's congregation of two. 