Vachon Imagined

When anyone resists authority, they ultimately resist God.

This is difficult to hear because we have been taught to think of authority as something outside of ourselves.

A parent.

A teacher.

A boss.

A government.

A religion.

Someone telling us what to do.

And when we resist, we believe we are protecting our freedom.

I want to eat, therefore I eat.

I want this, therefore I take it.

I don’t want that, therefore I refuse it.

It feels like freedom.

But there is a difference between movement and resistance.

Movement happens.

Life moves.

God moves.

Nothing is resisting in the clarity and momentum of God.

Only the self resists the self.

And then the self becomes remarkably creative at explaining why.

You don’t know where I come from.

Mind your own business.

You don’t understand me.

You don’t know what I’ve been through.

On and on the explanations go.

But beneath them can be something else:

the self defending its right to remain itself and most importantly, separate.

Authority is not ultimately about another person having power over you.

Authority is the movement of life itself.

And when we resist that movement, we are resisting what is already happening within us.

We are resisting God.

This does not mean obedience to every person who claims authority.

It means recognizing that the authority we are resisting is the truth we already know.

We can feel it.

We can know it.

And still fight it.

We leave the relationship.

We leave the job.

We leave the church.

We change the circumstances.

And then discover that we brought the resistance with us.

Because the self came too.

The resistance was never entirely out there.

It was inside the one resisting.

And when one person finally stops resisting themselves, something extraordinary happens.

The whole temperature of the room changes.

Peace enters where resistance was.

Because one person stopped fighting.

This is how powerful you are.

You can bring peace into a room without controlling anyone in it.

But to do this, you have to stop looking for what you want outside of God.

You have to stop imagining that life is withholding something from you.

Instead, declare what you want inside a life that is already working for you,

never against you.

Because what you want is often what you were told to want.

The money.

The title.

The position.

The approval.

The relationship.

The identity.

We inherit desires without realizing we inherited them.

And then we put our mind back on our own heart.

Something else arises.

Something quieter.

Something that does not need to convince anyone.

Something that was already there.

And suddenly we have the confidence to be it.

To declare it.

To walk in it.

Not because we created it,

but because we finally saw it.

And then,

to declare it as our own.

This is not rebellion.

It is not obedience.

It is not resistance.

It is movement.

The movement of a life that has stopped arguing with itself.

That is what freedom actually is:

not getting everything you want,

but becoming so clear about what is yours that you no longer need to fight for it.

You simply become it.

You walk in it.

And you let life move.

Because nothing was ever standing against you.

You were standing against yourself.

And the authority you were fighting

was God,

quietly moving through you

the entire time.