Who Has Authority Over Me, God or My Boss?

“So Pilate said to him, ‘You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?’ Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. . . ‘” John 19: 10, 11.

This passage records the exchange between Jesus and Pilate right before He was crucified. To read the passage for context, click here.

It was my first job as a new nurse in a nursing home. I had been battling fear and anxiety because I had gotten in trouble. And I was tempted to be afraid of the outcome. I was afraid for my job.

Mind you, I was not intentionally neglecting my duties. It’s not that I didn’t care what kind of job I did. I should’ve and would’ve been fired in that case. I cared intensely and was doing the best I knew how. It just the stress I was experiencing was making me stupid.

The Lord brought this passage to mind out of the blue. And this was His message to me: I had given the authority figures at my job way too much power. I had been afraid of the power they had over my job and life.

Who Has Authority Over Me?

The problem was the ire of my bosses was warranted. I didn’t document a fall. And I signed that hearing aids were in the cart when they weren’t. I signed off that a patient was walked when they weren’t. (These were unintentional oversights).

I charted that someone had a rash when it was really just grape juice. My boss thought I didn’t do a dressing change (although I think I did).

Then I inadvertently took the keys to the medication cart home after my shift. And I didn’t discover them for two days. The facility didn’t have the correct phone number for me and was not able to reach me.

I was supposed to work on Thanksgiving but misread the schedule and didn’t show up. And again, they couldn’t reach me.

And there’s more. . . I made a medication error, didn’t call the on-call physician when a patient fell, used an alcohol wipe to clean a cut, a narcotic in my medication cart somehow went missing.

This all happened in the space of not years or even months, but about six weeks.

But the Lord wanted me to understand something: It was really Him who put me there. And He was the one who kept me there and would continue to do so if it was His will.

The Lord is Our Keeper

In our passage, Pilate said to Jesus “I have power over you”. But Jesus said “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above” (v.11). He understood that God was in control of His life.

And if He was going to be crucified, it was because it was God’s will. Not because Pilate had power over him.

In the same way, the managers at my job didn’t really have the power to fire me, or do anything else, unless God gave them that power. They didn’t have any authority unless it was God’s will. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t happen.

That was true no matter how bad things seemed. He was trying to teach me to stop cowering in fear to my authority figures, because they are not ultimately in charge, God is.

This is why when Paul was a prisoner of Herod, he called himself not a prisoner of Nero, but of Christ (Ephesians 3: 1). He understood that if he was a prisoner, it was because it was God’s will. And the only power Herod had over him was the power God allowed him to have.

God Is in Charge

Was I the worst nurse on the planet? I was probably in the running. Did I deserve to get fired? Likely. But the Lord was teaching me that He’s the one in control. And because that’s where He wanted me to be, that’s where I would stay.

I needed to stop acting like I didn’t deserve to be there. Or to be called a nurse just because I made a mistake or two. God put me there and He would keep me there.

He wanted me to hold my head high in spite of my mistakes. And to know that He thought I was worthy to be there and to be called a nurse.

As it turned out, He did end up keeping me there for two years until I quit to work somewhere else. When I finally got my first official performance review from the director of nursing, it could not have been better! I got the highest rating possible in all seven categories.

To read another post related to see The Wise and the Foolish: What We Can Learn from Ants.