Brothers and sisters,
Let me speak plainly today.
There is a kind of Christianity that looks alive but is hollow. It has the language of the Spirit but not the life of the Spirit. It has the form of godliness, but it denies the power thereof. This is what I call carnal Christianity.
Carnal Christianity is fear-driven. It does not walk by faith. It does not rest in the power of the Holy Ghost. It does not see the Comforter—the Spirit of truth who leads us into all truth and empowers us to speak it. Instead, it sees only danger, only risk, only rejection. So it shrinks back.
And when truth rises up—when hard truths press in, when the culture demands clarity, when the church needs a trumpet blast—carnal leaders become afraid. They are not like the apostles, who stood in the power of the Spirit, who counted not their lives dear unto themselves, who said, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”
No, carnal leaders choose silence. They choose self-preservation. They fight denial not with truth, but with more denial. They answer evasion with evasion. They answer compromise with more compromise. And in doing so, they leave the truth unsupported, unspoken, and unpreached.
And what happens when truth goes unpreached? The people suffer. The church loses her clarity. The light goes dim. The salt loses its savor. The Word is no longer a sword—it becomes a decoration. A symbol. A memory.
But hear this today: the Holy Spirit is not weak. The Holy Spirit does not tremble before the deniers of truth. He does not retreat in the face of resistance. He has not changed. He is still the Spirit who came with fire. Still the Comforter who gives boldness. Still the One who convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.
The Church was never meant to fight the world in the flesh. We were never meant to answer spiritual darkness with political maneuvering, with fear, or with silence. We were meant to speak the truth in love, filled with the Spirit, guided by the Word, anchored in the fear of God—not the fear of man.
So today, let us repent of carnal Christianity. Let us renounce fear-driven leadership. Let us stop building walls of silence around hard truths. Let us cry out again for the Comforter to come and fill us—fill our pulpits, fill our prayers, fill our preaching.
And when He comes, may He give us courage to speak. Courage to stand. Courage to declare, as the apostles did, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak the truth.”
Be that Church again.
Be led by the Spirit.
And may the truth once again be preached—with fire, with boldness, and without fear.
Amen.
