“We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.”

Dallas Willard

The world has made an idol of reason, polishing it with perpetual questioning. This has got into the church. However attractive the vulnerability in which it is packaged, doubt is not a virtue in Christian leadership. Faith comes by hearing, chewing and feasting on the word of God and without faith it’s impossible to please God! Whatever is not from faith is sin (Romans 14:23).

I am both haunted by and pulled to answer with my very life a question that Jesus once posed:

“When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:1)

Uncertainty has become odiously trendy in our grey, postmodern, western culture of intellectual idolatry. Thomas did not get a medal from Jesus for his honesty and stubbornness, neither does he appear in the Hebrews 11 hall of fame. Yes, we all have seasons of wrestling with truth. Notwithstanding healthy occasion for vulnerability, this is our moment to peel away from the public platform and earnestly seek the face of God.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t endorse woolly talk. He is never political. Apostolic love in the New Testament was never co-dependent, but backboned, brazen and bloody self-sacrifice on behalf of lost people on their way to hell without repentance and faith.

I believe that church leadership in the west needs to throw out all trendy, political, uncertainty and demonstrate plain faith and godly authority! We are not called to be doubting, intellectual analysts heavy on opinion, but simple messengers, who fear God and not man. I’m not that interested in your opinion Mr. church leader, I want to hear the word of God on the matter! In this next season, I believe that favour and anointing is going to come on men and women without guile and with plain speech. Love is pure. The shepherd-less flocks of the world don’t need to be pandered to but saved by and led through and out of darkness by a revered company of incandescent men and women who know their God and hold aloft the light of His word, come what may.

Extract from ‘Firebrand – Devotions from a Life of Burning’ by Dominic Muir