In 1640 a twenty-six-year-old former soldier named Nicolas Herman entered a monastery in Paris. He had been wounded in the Thirty Years’ War and was lame for the rest of his life. He entered as a lay brother, not a priest, took the name Brother Lawrence, and was sent to the kitchen. He cooked for the community for years, until his leg got too bad to stand at the stove; then they set him to repairing sandals.
He held no office. He gave no orders to anyone but the pots. And yet people kept seeking him out, first his fellow monks and then visitors from outside, because something about the atmosphere around him was different. When a priest named Joseph de Beaufort asked him about it, Lawrence described his kitchen this way: “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.” After his death, de Beaufort gathered those conversations and letters into a small book, The Practice of the Presence of God. It has been read for more than three hundred years.
Brother Lawrence had no authority over anyone. But in his kitchen he carried a different kind of authority, and it changed the place.
So the question is:
Where has God given you authority, and where has He already given you fruit?
Opening Prayer (Say this aloud!)
Father, You’ve measured out a portion of the world and placed me in it: my home, my work, the people around me. Show me the places where You’ve given me authority, and teach me to use it the way Jesus did, to serve and to bless, never to control. Remind me of the victories You’ve already given me, and let me see what they were for. In Jesus’ name, amen.
God assigns each of His people a particular portion of the world to serve in, and faithfulness inside that portion is how it grows. Scripture’s word for that portion is metron, “measure.”
You may have met this word in Kingdom Essentials. Session 9 studied metron as one of the ways God speaks: through the specific place He has already put you. This session picks up the same passage and asks a different question: what authority comes with that place?
Paul wrote 2 Corinthians 10 in the middle of a dispute. Some visiting teachers in Corinth had been promoting themselves and questioning whether Paul had any right to speak into the church there. Paul refused to play their game: “when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding” (2 Corinthians 10:12). Then he explained where his own authority came from:
“But we will not boast beyond certain limits, but will confine our boasting according to the limits of the work (κανόνος) to which God has appointed us, that reaches even as far as you. For we were not overextending ourselves, as though we did not reach as far as you, because we were the first to reach as far as you with the gospel about Christ. Nor do we boast beyond certain limits in the work done by others, but we hope that as your faith continues to grow, our work may be greatly expanded among you according to our limits.”
Word Study
κανών kanōn G2583
“work” · 2 Corinthians 10:13
Range. Originally a straight rod or reed used for measuring; then a rule or standard. Thayer gives two senses: “a definitely bounded or fixed space within the limits of which one’s power or influence is confined; the province assigned one; one’s sphere of activity,” and, metaphorically, “any rule or standard.” English gets the word canon from it. It occurs four times in the New Testament, three of them in this passage (2 Corinthians 10:13, 15, 16) and once in Galatians 6:16.
The sense here. Paul’s assigned field. The Greek of verse 13 reads, literally, “according to the measure of the field which God apportioned to us as a measure.” Three words stack up: metron (measure), kanōn (the bounded field) and merizō (to divide out, apportion). The NET compresses them into “the limits of the work to which God has appointed us.”
Why it carries the argument. Paul’s authority in Corinth didn’t come from his title or his reputation. It came from assignment: God had apportioned him a field, and Corinth was inside it, because Paul was the first to bring them the gospel. Outside that field, he wouldn’t boast. Inside it, he wouldn’t back down. That’s the shape of the authority Step 15 asks about. It isn’t unlimited, and it isn’t self-appointed. It’s measured out by God, and it has edges.
Source. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament; Strong’s Concordance via Bible Hub.
Two things in that passage matter for you.
Your field has edges. Paul wouldn’t “boast of work already done in another person’s area” (10:16). A measured field means some things are yours to steward and some aren’t. Knowing the difference will save you from two opposite mistakes: neglecting the places God has actually given you, and trying to take charge of places He hasn’t.
Your field can grow. “As your faith continues to grow, our work may be greatly expanded among you according to our limits” (10:15). The expansion comes through faithfulness inside the present field, not by leaving it. Jesus said the same: “The one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much” (Luke 16:10). J. Robert Clinton, who studied how God develops leaders, observed that a leader’s sphere of influence is really “the number of people for whom a leader will give an account to God,” and that a leader should never try to expand it “as if bigger were better.” A larger field isn’t a reward to grab. It’s a larger account to give.
What does your field include? Most believers have more than one. If you’re a parent, your home is part of your metron. If you run a business or lead a team, its culture is in your field. If you lead a ministry, a class or a small group, you carry responsibility for its atmosphere. And even if you hold no position at all, you carry something into your workplace, your neighborhood and your friendships that belongs to you and to no one else.
Illustration
In an actual group that worked through these steps, most people named the same two fields first: their home, and their work. That’s right, and it’s where most of us carry the most responsibility. But the answers that taught the most went further.
One woman described a field no title had ever given her. For years, before she knew Christ, she couldn’t understand why coworkers kept coming into her office to “unload.” Even her bosses did. Patients at the dental office where she worked would ask to have a word with her, and “not about dentistry!” Now, she wrote, “I ‘get it’. And now I realize I have a Partner who does most of the ‘work’.” Her authority had been recognized by the people around her long before she recognized it herself, which is exactly how Clinton said spiritual authority works.
Another woman named her home, her workplace and the class of small children she teaches at church, and described the workplace this way: “We bring God’s presence into a place where people struggle with fear.” That’s authority over an atmosphere, with no authority over any person in it. And a third, listing a ministry team she helps lead, added three honest words that marked its edge: “to an extent.”
Pause & Reflect
Where does your influence already reach, whether or not you hold a title there? Where have you been trying to take charge of something that isn’t yours?
The authority God gives you in your field is authority to serve, bless and resist the enemy there. It is never authority over the people in it.
This is the line that has to be drawn hard, because authority is easily abused, especially spiritual authority. Peter wrote to the elders of the churches, the people with the most obvious authority in the room, and told them, “do not lord it over those entrusted to you, but be examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:3). Jesus said the rulers of the Gentiles “lord it over them,” and then, “It must not be this way among you!” (Matthew 20:25–26). Your authority in your home doesn’t entitle you to control your spouse. Your authority at work doesn’t entitle you to manipulate your co-workers. Even a parent’s authority over a child is given for the child’s good, not the parent’s.
Clinton put it simply. Spiritual authority, he wrote, is “the right to influence, conferred upon a leader by followers, because of their perception of spirituality in that leader.” It isn’t seized. It’s recognized. And it’s never the goal:
“A leader does not seek spiritual authority; a leader seeks to know God. … Spiritual authority results from a leader’s experience with God.”
J. Robert Clinton · Professor of leadership, Fuller Theological Seminary · The Making of a Leader, 1988
That’s Brother Lawrence exactly. He never sought authority; he sought God in the kitchen, and the authority followed.
So what is your authority over, if not people? It’s over the spiritual atmosphere of the place: the culture, the tone, what’s welcome and what isn’t. Jesus sent His disciples out with an instruction that shows what this looks like: “Whenever you enter a house, first say, ‘May peace be on this house!’ And if a peace-loving person is there, your peace will remain on him, but if not, it will return to you” (Luke 10:5–6). They didn’t take over the house. They blessed it, and the blessing either rested there or came back to them.
I believe this reaches further than good manners. Kingdom Essentials Session 13 laid out the authority every believer carries over the enemy’s influence: “Submit to God. But resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Where your field reaches, you can use that authority. When a workplace or a home is filled with a critical, hopeless or accusing spirit, you don’t have to simply endure it. You can pray over it, quietly and with authority, resist the enemy’s influence there, and ask God for peace and encouragement to take its place. Then you live in a way that carries that peace in with you.
Where this stays unresolved. Christians who share a high view of Scripture disagree about how much believers should expect to address demonic influence directly, and about whether it attaches to places at all. Kingdom Essentials Session 13 takes up that question more fully. What every tradition agrees on is enough for Step 15: God assigns you a field, you’re accountable for how you serve in it, and prayer and blessing change the places where you pray and bless.
God shapes you through your victories as well as your valleys, and the victories He gives you are meant to be seen.
When David offered to fight Goliath, Saul objected: “You aren’t able to go against this Philistine and fight him! You’re just a boy!” (1 Samuel 17:33). David answered with his history:
“Your servant has been a shepherd for his father’s flock. Whenever a lion or bear would come and carry off a sheep from the flock, I would go out after it, strike it down, and rescue the sheep from its mouth… The Lord who delivered me from the lion and the bear will also deliver me from the hand of this Philistine!”
1 Samuel 17:34–35, 37
Nobody had watched David fight the lion and the bear. Those were private victories, won alone in a field with his father’s sheep. But they were preparation. They taught David what God does, and they gave him the faith to walk into a public battle. That’s why Step 16 asks about your victories: past faithfulness is evidence of future faithfulness.
Your lion and bear may not look spiritual at all. One woman in an actual group that worked through these steps began her answer, “Not sure if this is what you’re looking for…,” and then told how she’d taken up pool when she was young, decided she wanted to get good at it, and ended up winning tournaments and a division championship in her league. “That was something I set my mind to do, and I did it very well.” It was exactly what the step was looking for. Her coach’s reply is worth keeping: “Your ‘trophies’ are those events/accomplishments where you succeeded at some task… Ask Holy Spirit, where have I succeeded? Your successes may be some time ago. He knows.”
And notice what David said the victory was for: “Then all the land will realize that Israel has a God, and all this assembly will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves! For the battle is the Lord’s” (17:46–47). The victory was David’s, but the glory was God’s, and the point was that people would know Him.
Psalm 67 says the same thing about God’s blessing on His people:
“May God show us his favor and bless us! May he smile on us! (Selah) Then those living on earth will know what you are like; all nations will know how you deliver (יְשׁוּעָתֶךָ) your people.”
Word Study
יְשׁוּעָה yešûʿâ H3444
“deliver” · Psalm 67:2
Range. Deliverance, salvation, help; also welfare, prosperity and victory. It comes from the verb yāšaʿ (H3467), “to save,” and it shares its root with the names Joshua and, through the Greek, Jesus. Brown-Driver-Briggs lists four senses: welfare or prosperity; deliverance; salvation by God, “primarily from external evils, but often with added spiritual idea”; and victory, especially victories God wins for His people. It occurs about seventy-seven times in the Hebrew Bible.
The sense here. The NET turns the noun into a verb, “how you deliver your people”; more literally, “your yešûʿâ among all nations.” It’s God’s saving help, seen in the life of His people.
Why it carries the argument. In Hebrew, one word covers salvation and victory. Every real victory in your life is a small yešûʿâ: God’s help showing up in your story. That changes how you tell it. You aren’t listing achievements. You’re listing times God helped, so that “those living on earth will know what you are like.” Your victories are His witness. One man in that group wrote his this way. He named taking on leadership of a ministry team, then added what it showed him: “I was able to look back and see God’s fingerprints over my journey.” What he had learned years earlier, almost by accident, in another church “was preparation for what he planned to do through me” now. That’s a victory told as a yešûʿâ.
Source. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon; Strong’s Concordance via Bible Hub.
In Session 1 you met the promise of Psalm 37:4: “Then you will take delight in the Lord, and he will answer your prayers.” The next verse finishes the thought: “Commit your future to the Lord! Trust in him, and he will act on your behalf” (37:5). Many of your victories were exactly that: God acting on your behalf when you trusted Him with something you couldn’t control. Believers and unbelievers alike are drawn to that kind of story, because it shows what God is like.
Pause & Reflect
What’s your “lion and bear,” a private victory nobody else saw, that taught you what God can do?
For some readers, Step 16 will feel uncomfortable, and the objection is worth stating plainly. I was taught not to talk about my accomplishments. “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth” (Proverbs 27:2). Pride is the root sin, and making a list of my successes seems like the opposite of humility. Paul said he regarded his achievements “as dung” (Philippians 3:8). Shouldn’t I be listing my weaknesses instead?
There’s real wisdom in that. Pride is deadly, and it disguises itself well. Moses warned Israel that success would tempt them to forget God: “Be careful not to say, ‘My own ability and skill have gotten me this wealth’” (Deuteronomy 8:17). And Paul asked the proudest church he knew, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).
But notice how Paul ends the very passage this session is built on: “But the one who boasts must boast in the Lord. For it is not the person who commends himself who is approved, but the person the Lord commends” (2 Corinthians 10:17–18). Paul doesn’t forbid boasting. He redirects it. And Moses didn’t tell Israel to forget their prosperity. He told them to remember who gave it: “You must remember the Lord your God, for he is the one who gives ability to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18).
Here’s where I land, and why. I think refusing to name your victories can be a quiet form of ingratitude. One woman in an actual group that worked through these steps solved the problem in a single line before she began her list: “Please Note: ANY ‘success’ I’ve had in this life (I believe) is a direct result of God working in and through me.” Then she named seven, without embarrassment. If God delivered you, taught you, or used you, the humble response isn’t to pretend it didn’t happen. It’s to say who did it. That’s why Step 16 asks you to write down, beside each victory, what God showed you about Himself through it. A victory written that way isn’t a trophy. It’s a memorial stone.
Everything above has been explanation. God measures out a field for each of His people, and it has edges; faithfulness inside it is how it grows. The authority He gives you there is authority to serve, bless and resist the enemy, never authority over the people in it. And the victories He’s given you were preparation for what’s next and a witness to what He’s like: every one of them a small yešûʿâ.
Now you map your field and name your victories.
Draw a small circle in the middle of a page and write your name in it. Around it, draw rings, one for each place your influence reaches: your home, your extended family, your workplace or school, your church or ministry, your neighborhood, your friendships, and any online community where people listen to you. Inside each ring, write the names of a few of the people there.
Then pick one ring, the one where the atmosphere most needs to change, and bless it this week. Before you walk in the door, pray quietly: May peace be on this place. If there’s a critical or hopeless spirit there, resist it in Jesus’ name, silently, and ask God for peace and encouragement to take its place. Then watch, and write down anything you notice over the following days.
Discovery Steps · Steps 15 and 16
Use the Listening Rhythm for each step: ask to be searched; do the work; sit with it; test it with the witnesses; sleep on it.
Step 15 · My Metrons
The prompt. Where do you believe, or sense, that you have spiritual authority?
What to do. Start with The Experience and your map. For each ring, ask two questions: Did God assign me here, by relationship, role or calling? and Do the people here recognize something of God in me? Where both answers are yes, you’ve found part of your metron. For each one, write what kind of atmosphere you’re responsible for there, and one way you could bless it this month. Be honest about edges too: name one place you’ve been trying to take charge of that isn’t yours.
What to produce. Three to six fields where you carry spiritual authority. For each: the basis (relationship, role or calling), the atmosphere you’re responsible for, and one way to bless it. Add one sentence naming a field that isn’t yours.
Surface answer: “Everywhere. I’m a child of God.” (True of your identity, but it tells you nothing about your assignment. Paul, of all people, said his field had edges.) The opposite thin answer is more common: “My work.” That was a real answer in an actual group that worked through these steps, and it’s probably true. But two words name a place without describing the atmosphere, the people or one way to bless it. Two other near misses from that group: naming a kind of ministry (“people in need of healing and deliverance”) instead of a place, and naming a skill (“helping others navigate difficult territory”) instead of a field. Step 15 asks where, not what.
Deep answer: “My home: I’m responsible for the atmosphere my kids grow up in, and it’s been tense since my layoff. The third-shift crew at the plant: I’m not their supervisor, but they come to me when things go wrong, and I’ve started praying over the break room before shifts. Not mine: my adult sister’s marriage. I keep trying to fix it, and I need to go back to praying for it.”
Worked examples.
You’re done when …
Time: at least two days: one to map, and at least one to pray over a place and watch.
Step 16 · My Victories
The prompt. What successes have most influenced your life? Why and how?
What to do. Go back to your timeline from Session 8 and look above the line. Ask yourself: Where have I enjoyed success? Where have I met big goals, dreams or desires? Include private victories, your “lion and bear,” as well as public ones: victories in your family, education, work, ministry, health, relationships and your walk with God. Choose the five to seven that shaped you most. For each one, write what happened, why it mattered, how it shaped you, and one line on what it showed you about God.
What to produce. Five to seven victories, ranked by their impact on you, each with its why, its how and what it showed you about God.
Surface answer: “Obtaining a job in my current place of employment and continuing to promote and receive opportunities I never would have imagined.” (A real answer, and a real victory. “Never would have imagined” hints at what it showed him about God. Saying that part out loud is the next move.)
Deep answer: “Finishing my degree at forty-five, while working full time. Why: I’d quit twice and believed I wasn’t smart enough. How: it broke a lie I’d believed since high school, and it’s why I started mentoring adults who are going back to school. What it showed me about God: He was patient with my timeline and faithful to finish what He started.”
Worked examples.
You’re done when …
Time: at least one day.
Big Ideas
Kingdom Principle
God measures out your field; your part is to bless it, serve it and pray over it, and to give Him the glory for every victory in it.
Closing Prayer (Say this aloud!)
Father, thank You for the field You’ve measured out for me. I don’t want anyone else’s. Teach me to bless my home, my work and every place my influence reaches, and never to use it to control anyone. Thank You for every victory You’ve given me, the ones people saw and the ones they didn’t. They were Yours. Let them show the people around me what You’re like. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Go Deeper
Accessible
Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (first published 1692). Conversations and letters of a kitchen monk who learned to carry God’s presence into ordinary work. Short, and free online in several translations.
Substantial
Timothy Keller with Katherine Leary Alsdorf, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work (2012). How faith shapes ordinary work, and how believers can serve and bless the places they work without controlling them.
Academic
Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary (2005). A detailed commentary on the Greek text, including the difficult wording of 2 Corinthians 10:13–16.
Leading This Session
Two conversations will need care. The first is authority: someone will hear “spiritual authority in your home” as permission to control a spouse or adult child. Read the What I Am Not Saying aloud and hold the line: authority over the atmosphere, never over the people. The second is victories: some people will be embarrassed to name them, and others will struggle to think of any. Help both groups by asking for private victories, the lion and the bear. The most productive exercise is The Experience: have people share one ring they plan to bless this week, and follow up next time. Group questions: Where does your influence reach that you’ve never thought of as a field? and What’s one victory that showed you what God is like? Two notes from an actual group that worked through these steps. At Step 15, most people named “home” and “work” and stopped; ask, Where do people come to you without being asked? That question surfaced the richest answers. At Step 16, people apologized for victories that didn’t seem spiritual (“Not sure if this is what you’re looking for…”). Tell them the lion and the bear weren’t spiritual either.
If you have questions or comments about this content, or about your personal situation, email us at feedback@thedisciplespath.com.
Next: Session 10, Your Refining, turns below the line: the trials and failures that shaped you, and the promises God has spoken over you on the other side of them.
Session 9 · Kingdom Purpose
Your Measure
Where has God given you authority, and where has He already given you fruit?
Your Assigned Field
God measures out a field with edges. Faithfulness inside it is how it grows.
Authority Without Control
Authority over the atmosphere, never over the people. Bless it, serve it, pray over it.
Victories That Shaped You
The lion and the bear came before Goliath. Every victory is God’s help in your story.
1 Samuel 17:37 Psalm 67:1–2
So · Now
God measures out your field; your part is to bless it, serve it and pray over it, and to give Him the glory for every victory in it.
Map your field and bless one place, then complete Step 15 (your metrons) and Step 16 (your victories).
Discovery Steps · Steps 15 and 16
Kingdom Principle
God measures out your field; your part is to bless it, serve it and pray over it, and to give Him the glory for every victory in it.