Pray for spiritual leaders

I refer to the exhortation given here concerning the scandal with Ted Haggard.

By all means let us pray for spiritual leaders, but let us also pray that the Lord will empower our Christian leaders with the gift of discernment of spirits and the boldness to use it in love, so that a lot of these problems can be avoided before they blow up into big things that unsettle the faith of baby Christians.

We also need to make sure our reasons for believing are more to do with Jesus Christ himself than with his messengers. Then we will be able to stand when we experience rejection, betrayal and faithlessness from the people we might think to expect more from.

One of the characteristics of the last days will be that the “love of many will grow cold”, and that “many will betray one another” (Matthew 24). We see it in business relationships amongst Christians and in church relationships. We have to know that the reason we believe is rooted in Christ first, and only supported by other believers. If we believe because of what God is doing in and through someone else only, we are too easily picked off by the devil in times of crisis such as this.