Authority in God's Kingdom

The use, misuse and abuse of authority is a big subject and it has exercised my mind a lot over the last couple of years. This has led me to study the New Testament on this subject and it has been an interesting study.
How did Jesus use his authority? My study has led me to the conclusion that Jesus used his authority for the benefit of others and did not exert his authority over people - I believe that this is a good model for Christian leadership. Certainly Jesus has authority over all mankind, but the way he uses that authority should be our model.
  A common teaching about "Leadership authority" has been taken from Matthew chapter 8 and the story of the centurion and his servant where the centurion talks about "being a man under authority, with soldiers under me" and this has been used to teach about a hierarchical structure of leadership; to my mind this passage teaches about understanding the nature of authority that Jesus had over sickness, as this is clearly the context. The centurion was entirely confident that Jesus had authority over all sicknesses and if he said "Go" it would go - that is amazing faith. To my mind it is not good use of scripture to make this into a model of how authority should be exercised over other people and the necessity of "coming under" someone else's authority. Rather Jesus teaches in Matthew 20 a different structure contradicting the idea of exercising authority over people, but rather talking about being servants who will use God given authority for the benefit of others. This teaching is underlined elsewhere in the Bible, particularly in Philippians 2 and 1 Peter 5.
God has given us authority over all sicknesses and powers of darkness - let us use this authority to serve others bringing healing, freedom, joy and peace.

Wisdom from Heaven

We have been away on holiday recently; we had a good rest. In particular I like the sun, hot weather and cooling off in a nice swimming pool. These are luxuries that not everyone in the world get to enjoy.
As I swim up and down the pool my mind wanders around different subjects and this holiday I found myself mulling over the thought about living in a culture that is not judgmental and cynical. Some people believe that this is a naive fantasy of mine, but during the 3 months that Kim and I were a part of Bethel church in California this is what we experienced and we loved it.
It is so easy to be critical without being constructive, to be cynical or negative and think we are being wise. I think to understand this more we need to consider the way that God is and behaves. God is ultimately wise and all knowing, yet he works all things for the good of those who love him; he speaks words to uplift, encourage, comfort and strengthen. He will convict us of wrongdoing always with a way forward.
In short, part of the conclusion I came to is that we need to become more like Jesus day by day and love him more. We need to seek the wisdom that comes from heaven which is pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy (James 1 v 17 NASB)