Dominion…
Bishop Castle, Rye, CO
Dominion…
Dominion. Doesn’t that sound like a bad scary word? To me, it has always had a very negative connotation, but not anymore. Dominion means to rule over what is yours, and that is a good thing to know.
We all have things we are in charge of. Our homes, our family, maybe you are in charge at your workplace, and even ourselves. No matter where we are in life, we are in charge of something. We all need to hear that sometimes. When circumstances have you down, we tend to forget who we answer to first. We must answer to ourselves. Why do we allow ourselves to be controlled by circumstances in the first place? We have the ability and the power to always change our situation, or at least our attitude.
See the first and arguably most important area that everyone has dominion over is themselves. Their bodies, their mind, their attitudes, and actions. We all have control over all those things. We choose when to do the right thing, and we also unfortunately choose to allow ourselves to be offended or mad at times. We must first get a handle on this area of our lives if we expect to have any authority anywhere else in our lives. It is hard to lead your family if they see you as someone who is out of control. We must learn to have control over our lives and then and only then will we have any real chance of being effective leaders anywhere else.
We also have dominion over the church. I’m not talking about taking control of your local church. I am more talking about the church as a whole. We should all take part in being the best example of Christ followers out there. We should be generous, helpful, and full of integrity at all times. In this way we are taking control over our part of the church.
We should, especially men, have dominion over our families. It’s pretty clear that men should be the leaders at home. It seems that our culture is pushing away from that idea, but it is not biblical. I failed at this for most if not all of my adult life to be honest. A wife wants to be lead, but she wants to be led by a good man who is working towards the good of everyone and everything in their home. Leading is not overbearing or self-serving, it’s pushing others up and collectively achieving more than any single person could on their own.
In the workplace we should all have dominion. Some people will have more than others, but even someone working their way up from the bottom will see success if they follow the same principles. We should be the hardest working, best employees, best bosses out there. We should do our work to the best of our abilities, every time. We should do so without griping to others or participating in gossip in the office. Others should look at us and see something different and hopefully want to be more like us. I say us because I have had that mentality towards work most of my life, even when everything else was in shambles. It has allowed me to excel in my craft and be recognized for it over the years with promotions, and influence.
These days I see a lot of people who like to complain about their situation, even though their decisions put them there. People like to blame everything and everyone but themselves when there are problems in their lives. We must break that cycle as a society and start taking ownership of where we are in life. If we can do that, we can take steps to change where we are to get to where we want to be.
'You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority— '
Psalms 8:6 NLT