By James Wilson
Franklin Graham reports, “For seven years after almost every football game, Coach Joe Kennedy of Bremerton High School in Washington State had gone to the 50-yard line to bow his knee and pray. This season the Bremerton School District ordered him not to do it anymore.” Kennedy disregarded that order – and the propriety of obeying those in authority over him. Expecting to be escorted off the field by security he found a crowd of supporters – including the opposing team – joined him in prayer. The crowd erupted in applause. Kennedy’s contribution was to be the one with the courage to choose protocol over propriety.
Propriety stems from the rules and regulations people generate to order their affairs. Propriety is good, as I have said before, but only as far as it supports protocol. The latter is about honoring God first and the people He loves second. Protocol is always subject to the will of God, and our best bet for knowing it remains the Bible. While God never violates His Word, it is crucial to remember protocol trumps propriety. It is just as crucial to know we discover the will of God in the whole of Scripture, not in some favorite text we happen to enjoy hearing.
For example, Coach Kennedy broke propriety wide open. He works for the school district and his bosses gave him a direct order, an order he defied. Yet the order was an offense against the First Amendment to our Constitution and a larger offense against His Creator and King. Protocol dictated his defiance; propriety is no excuse for abandoning His King.
The adherents of propriety might have thrown a scripture like 1 Thessalonians 5:22 at Kennedy – Avoid even the appearance of evil – i. e. don’t resist the orders of your superiors because it looks bad even if it is not. In other words, it is not enough to be right; one must look right for the sake of those who don’t know better. This too is the Word of God, but it is not the whole Word of God. The whole Word contains passages like John 7:24 – Stop judging by mere appearances; Galatians 3:1-5 – Are you saved and witnessing miracles by the Law or by the Gospel you heard; and in the Old Testament the example of Daniel, who prayed to the Lord his God after the King of Babylon forbade it because Daniel was a man of protocol first. We can either be courageously the people God made us or we can try to be something the world appreciates. But obedience to God always begins badly and ends well; obedience to the world begins well but ends poorly.
This is the message of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same sex marriage licenses because they violated Kentucky law, the US Constitution, and the Word of God. It is the prophetic thrust of God’s Not Dead, in which the student goes against his professor – not to find trouble but to walk in integrity. It is the reason I stood before a thousand people to protest the consecration of an apostate bishop – because God says safety is found by His side, not on the sidelines.
Each of these people – the fictional and the real – ended well. Davis is a national celebrity, the movie is a hit, and I was invited to speak in other lands when my stand was picked up on the web and went viral. Vindication is not necessarily swift, but it is ultimately inevitable because the God who creates protocol is authentically God.
Lake Burley Griffin is a dragon shaped lake in Canberra, named for the designer of Australia’s capitol city. The lake is known for the occult activity common to its shores as much as for being surrounded by Australian government buildings and installations. The Governor General’s residence is located by that part of the lake called the Dragon’s Mouth. When I led a prayer walk there in late September we did what we always do – we blessed, forgave, and celebrated the Lord’s Supper on the land – for this is the protocol of redeeming the land itself.
At the end of our time we poured anointing oil into the water. It immediately assumed the clear shape of a dragon – interestingly enough – and in about sixty seconds the oil had transformed its shape into that of a butterfly. This is a prophetic promise of the redemption of land and people that always follows a culture of protocol before propriety. We can await its fulfillment not because of the sign, but because the God who creates protocol keeps His Word.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
