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Followership, Certitude and Humility

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 Eph. 4:13 … until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature,
attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

 

A certain strain of traits run together that produces in us the authority necessary to lead others. That leadership is one that effectively knows how to correct others amid the sea of aberrant teachings, while it remains subject to correction itself wherever necessary.

 

Satan is obviously primed to destroy the relationship among those key traits. He must do so, waging his ferocity against them because their combination is utterly deadly to his kingdom in all its dimensions. Today then, we want to talk about that set of traits, and to establish their relationship in our lives. They are: followership, certitude and humility.

 

Followership is the root determiner of the group at hand. Followership is of course another word for discipleship. But we are not going to use the word discipleship. That is because discipleship carries a tone focused on following a set of principles, patterns and practices. But we are not interested in these. We are only interested in obedience to a Voice as a Living Command. It is the Voice of the Lamb who imparts His directives to our spirits. To this end the scripture says they “follow the Lamb wherever He goes.” Rev. 14:4

 

Where we read of the Lamb’s Voice in scripture, we hear of only one tone: authority. Everything the Lamb says, He says with authority. (So too with all the angels.) He always is giving directives, and otherwise speaking with authority about whatever He is saying. He never speaks a word out of a spirit of questioning, or self-doubt or uncertainty. Whenever He speaks, He speaks like He knows what He is talking about. And if perchance there is something He doesn’t know, He therefore doesn’t speak about it.

 

The Lamb did not know everything when He was among us. Yet He never ventured into the realm of His ignorance. He never asked “Why?” of the Father. He only spoke as He heard. He did not speak out of what He hadn’t heard and therefore out of what He didn’t know. The man who speaks only out of what He does know may sound to others like he thinks he knows everything. But that is very far from the truth. Such a man neither knows everything nor thinks he knows everything. It is just that he is wise enough to speak only from what he does know, and otherwise keeps his mouth shut.

 

This then is the distinctive of the Voice of the Lamb. And that is the only Voice we are to be listening for. This is especially important in context of what we are hearing from our fellow followers. When we listen to others, we cannot and must never listen to them independently of our own hearing of the Lamb’s Voice. For we have no way to prove otherwise as to the veracity of what they are saying. All of us ought to be listening to the Voice of the Lamb underneath what we are hearing through one another. This is the source of all testing and proving and discernment. If we ourselves are not able to hear our own Shepherd, we have no basis to discern anything about what our surrogate shepherds may be saying.  

 

This is the meaning of followership. To be a follower means to be in submission to and obedient to the One we follow. Followership begins with a listening ear. If we cannot listen, we cannot follow, even if we say we want to be a follower of Christ. (Take heed, therefore, how you hear!)

 

From followership flows certitude. Certitude is not a self-generated quality. Rather it is a spirit of the Lord. When we follow only the Lamb, He bestows on us His certitude. Certitude embraces several other traits we associate with following Christ. It embraces faith. It embraces confidence. It embraces boldness. These are the qualities of certitude. By contrast, certitude banishes all doubt, including self-doubt. It banishes the constant questioning of God that always asks, “Why?” Accordingly, certitude banishes fear and cowardice. 

 

When we have certitude, we walk with an air of confidence, boldness and faith. These are qualities the devil absolutely hates. He cannot stand up to people of this caliber. He cannot resist those who exude these traits. These qualities mark true spiritual leadership. Therefore, the devil seeks to destroy certitude in all saints, but especially in those who occupy the “seats of authority” in the church. Let me say it right now, and with clarity: anyone occupying a position of leadership who does not demonstrate certitude ought to resign that position.

 

Paul rhetorically asks, “For if the trumpet produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle?” I Cor. 14:8  This was spoken in the context of discussing tongues, but it applies equally to speaking from a spirit of uncertitude. If leaders cannot paint a clear authoritative picture of where their followers are to go, what is a follower to do but wallow around in a mud pit? Yet this is the state of most leadership in the church today: leaders characterized by lack of certitude disguised as “humility.”

 

Today, the devil has almost completely succeeded in converting bold, faith-filled leaders into questioning professors of ignorance. These professions of ignorance are offered to the body of Christ in the name of humility. But it is not true humility. It is a certain fear masked as humility. It is the “humility” of endless “consultation,” of the “committee” and of the fear of man. It is the “humility” of “I wonder what so-and-so thinks about this?” or, “I wonder how this will sound to those in the room?” It is the “humility” of “Saul.” It is the “humility” of the herd mentality and of groupthink.     

 

See then what has become of the spirit of certitude in the church. There is little to no certitude. And as a result, there is little true leadership. There is only a pretension to leadership. There is only a hollow positional leadership.

 

Few voices emit the clarion call of certitude, but rather an uncertain call sabotaged and tainted by double talk and equivocation in deference to others who “might not agree.” This is a spirit of placation, not certitude, and certainly not humility. It is most of all the spirit of the fear of man.

 

How so? Because it is the spirit of fear “to be seen as proud” by the critics. It is the fear of what the sheep think of us. It is the fear of offending. How many times has one heard leaders say, “I don’t mean to be offensive, but…”? That is the fear of man, not the spirit of humility. False humility bends over backwards to prove itself to be humble in the eyes of men. It is rooted in self.

 

What then is true humility? True humility is nothing more than openness to correction or teaching by the spirit of one who speaks with an equal or greater voice of spiritual authority than our own. Remember, we are foremost followers. Followers of who? Followers of the Voice of the Lamb. How then does the Lamb speak? He speaks authoritatively to us. Thus when He speaks to our correction, as followers we obey. We repent. We gladly and eagerly change our position or our way at the hearing of His Voice. And when we demonstrate such responsiveness, we are demonstrating humility.

 

Likewise therefore, when a brother or sister speaks from that same Voice, we gladly change our position or our way. That is humility. We are able to walk in true humility before one another only by recognizing the authoritative voice of the Lamb when He is so speaking through one another. It is not actually the brother to whom we are submitting, but to the Lamb within him marked by His superior Voice.

 

But again, “If the trumpet produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle?” If the brother(s) seeking to correct us is not (are not) speaking from the Voice of the Lamb’s authoritative certitude, then what is there to submit to? That is, “who will prepare himself for submission?”

 

See then what lack of certitude and false humility have produced in the church. The devil hates genuine authority, which means he hates followership, which means he hates the certitude that exudes from such followership, which means he hates authoritatively-responsive humility. His objective then has always been to corrupt certitude in the Voice of the Lamb, and to do so by twisting humility to reflect the fear of how others see us as co-followers, rather than as an expression of submission to Lamb-sensitive authority. He re-casts such true submission as “pride” and “unteachability.” 

 

To whom then do I write? Not to those having become dull of hearing, nor to outer court believers having ne’er entered the actual temple of complete discipleship. Rather, I write to those whose pursuit of the Lamb has been clouded and perhaps overwhelmed by the subtle corruptive influence of the spirit of uncertainty and false humility that has invaded the temple. I write to the overcomers. I write to hone your hearing and pursuit of the Lord even as He has worked tirelessly to hone my own hearing and perfect my own followership of Him amid the congregation.

 

As overcomers, we take stands in the Lord. We guard our pursuit of Him. We draw clear boundaries regarding what we hear through others offered as the counsel of the Lord. We test what we hear. We prove our hearing of Him in others against the plumbline of our perception of Him directly within. There must be consonance between the two.

 

Yet when surrounded by many, it is so easy for uncertitude and false humility to creep into the fabric of our followership. Almost unnoticed, we become followers of one another rather than of the Lamb. (I can state with great certainty that this is indeed the case in the mega-prophetic ministries. The prophetic—of all offices—with all its “round tables” and “counsels of apostolic elders”—has been effectively reduced to the issuing of “papal bulls” from a non-authoritative, man-placating collective of “prophets” who should all step down from their offices.)

 

The overcomers cannot afford to be detained or side-tracked by this spirit. More than ever before, we must stay glued to our vision of Mt. Zion’s summit, shirking the groupthink that presents itself as the Lamb’s Voice at lower plateaus. We must recover our own distinct certified voice whereby to lead others, not cave to an uncertified collective voice for His that is dubbed as “leadership.”

 

 

Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, Rhode Island

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org



07/25



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