Authority

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Thoughts after our Box Bible Study

We Have Authority

My senior year was full of battles with my health. One day I was home sick with strep throat—fever running, house empty, nothing unusual. Mom and Dad were at work, my little brother at school, and I’d been sleeping most of the morning.

A knock at the door woke me. In our house, you couldn’t see the front step from the door itself—you had to walk past it, down the hall, and into my parents’ bedroom to peek out the window. From there, I could see both the front entry and the driveway.

No one was there.

As I turned to head back to the couch, I stepped into the hallway and froze—face-to-face with a woman inside my house. She had slipped in through a locked door unnoticed.

She was about 5’7″, wavy brown hair, heavier than me. At seventeen, I was 5’5″ and 150 pounds but looked closer to thirteen.

We startled each other.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

She stumbled through an excuse about looking for someone, but everything in me knew—she wasn’t lost. She had walked into my locked home with a purpose, and I had interrupted it.

I began walking toward her—calm, steady, certain—and told her to leave. She stammered, backpedaling her words and her steps, trying to justify why she was there. But I kept moving forward until she was out the door. I closed it behind her and locked it.

I called my mom,  “Mom, I could’ve taken her!” And I meant it. I wasn’t shaken, just sure.

Looking back, it wasn’t youthful bravado—it was the Holy Spirit. That day, He filled me with a confidence that wasn’t mine, a presence that I believe she could feel.

That moment was a picture of something we face daily—not always in the physical, but in the mental and spiritual. The enemy often walks right through the “door” of our thought life, uninvited, bringing fear, lies, and anxiety. Sometimes he dresses them up with excuses, trying to make them sound justified.

And here’s the thing—what happened physically in my home happens in our minds every single day.

The enemy slips in, uninvited:

• Fear that plays out worst-case scenarios while you’re trying to fall asleep.
• Anxiety that whispers “you’re not enough” before you step into a meeting.
• Shame that replays something you said years ago, convincing you you’ll never change.

They act like they belong there, like they have a right to be in our heads. Sometimes they even offer excuses that make them sound reasonable.

But just like that day in my hallway, we don’t have to stand there passively.

We can step forward with confidence, rooted in the truth of 2 Timothy 1:7—“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

The Holy Spirit gives us the authority to say:

• You are not welcome here.
• You need to leave.
• You have no claim in this space.

When fear comes knocking—or worse, slips in unnoticed—we can confront it, move toward it, and escort it out.

That day, I physically followed an intruder out of my home and shut the door. Spiritually and mentally, we can do the same. The moment we feel fear or lies invading, we can rise up in the authority Jesus gives us, speak truth, and close the door behind them.

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Blessings and confidence,

Stacy