CWW Week 40 - Loyalty

Church Without Walls – Raw transcript of interview:

CWW Week 40 – Loyalty

 Hi everyone and welcome back to Church Without Walls Week 40 and um, I dunno about you, but it’s been a beautiful spring week up till now, but it’s gone back to winter again. And, uh, so we need the warmth of the Holy Spirit, I think. So let’s invite him in with prayer. Dear Lord, father in heaven, we need your coach.

We need your wisdom. We need your courage and mercy. So Father God, please fill us with the Holy Spirit as we unpack your word today, that we may be renewed. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. Well, back to Church Without Walls, week 40. And we’re talking about loyalty. This week we’re gonna see what the Bible says about loyalty.

It’s a pretty pressing topic and uh, I think a lot of people have divided loyalties these days about so many things. Political, uh, relational. Even Christian loyalties are divided, and, uh, there’s so much we can unpack with this. And the Bible has so many, has so many great verses for us to help us to understand the topic of loyalty and guide us in the right direction.

Before I go into the topic, I would like to once again promote, uh, the, uh, church Without Wool’s Bible Study Group. Uh, the Hoodies Bible Study, uh, group, www.hoodiesbiblestudies.com. So if you go to that website, hoodies bible studies.com, you’ll find, uh, an array of people who are ready to go on a Bible study journey with you and to help you.

Start a community of believers in your own town. Even these people are located all around the world, even in, uh, America. Now we have a, a couple of people in the States, I believe. And so, uh, I wanna thank Liam RAs and the wonderful team of volunteers he has who are helping people. So you go to that website, you find a location near you where you can either meet with somebody in a group or, uh, individually, or you can, um, share via Zoom or just have a phone conversation, ask any questions.

That you feel you need to ask of somebody who’s been on the journey a little while, who perhaps wants to mentor you. So it’s a wonderful initiative and some wonderful people partaking of that. So today we’re gonna be talking about loyalty, as I said, and the week’s devotionals. Following on will unpack day by day, different aspects of loyalty.

So what is loyalty? Loyalty is faithfulness, it’s love. Um, it’s honoring a commitment. Look, you know, I’ve broken so many commitments in my life and I can honestly, I can attest to every day as a journey of character development. Uh, I did things in my past. I broke loyalties. I was unfaithful. Uh, and, and that was all part of my journey.

I’ve been making amends as I go and I’m less likely to do that now than I was back then because I am a work in progress, just as you are. A work in progress. We all need to see ourselves as just one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, as the, um, serenity process.

I wanna give an example of, um, how precious loyalty is to me, uh, through a testimony of something that happened about four years ago. I have a saying that I use with my friends who I pledge my loyalty to, and let’s face it, our friends, our our, um. Our real friends should be people that are happy to hold us to account and happy for us to hold them to account.

Iron sharpens iron. So I have a saying with people in my close circle, my inner circle, you stand, I stand, you fall, I fall. In other words, I’m gonna be with you through thick and thin. And that was tested in me about four years ago. I was on a Zoom call, uh, uh, live, going out to, I don’t know how many people, probably thousands of people.

It was at a very critical time. And, uh, two of the co-presenters on with me, uh, started gossiping and talking negatively about somebody I had pledged. You stand, I stand, you fall. I fall too. And, uh, and they were. They were saying very, very derogatory comments about this man, a man who I trusted and still do.

Uh, a man whose faith I have in him is marrow deep. A man who I know would never let me down and I would never let him down. And as they were spreading these, these humongous stories, uh, they came to me for an opinion and I said, I need to declare myself here and now. I have made a pledge to the man that you are now denigrating on this broadcast, and I said to him, you stand, I stand.

You fall. I fall. My faith in this man is marrow deep, and I believe the attacks you’re making on him are unfounded, and any attack you make on him is an attack on me because he and I are brothers and my faith in him is marrow deep, as I said. Well, you could have heard a pin drop. Everything went south.

From there, the hatred started pouring out. I was being accused of being a sympathizer of a secret society. It just went on and on and on. But I knew in my heart and God, God told me that this man was worth standing for. And in fact, I baptized him several months later. So I can tell you that these days when I pledge my loyalty to somebody, I stick by it.

Unless something dramatically happens to show me that I really have made the wrong decision. So how do I make the right decisions? Well, I ask God, my discernment now is much sharper than it was even three or four years ago. There are certain people I’ll be associated with and continue to be associated with, and there are some that I won’t be, um, I won’t be treading, uh, treading the boards with ever again.

God has shown me and they by their fruits have shown me. Perhaps they’re not the right people. Perhaps they’re not to be trusted. Perhaps their journey is going in a different direction to mine. So loyalty is a profoundly honorable thing to hold. It’s a beautiful thing to receive, and it’s a gift from God.

Now, loyalty takes several facets. There’s of course loyalty in a marriage. Um, there is loyalty amongst friends. There is our loyalty to God and God’s loyalty to us. So let’s have a look at the Bible and unpack that, uh, in a couple of verses and see where that takes us. So I hope you’ve all got your Bibles ready as I have mine.

And I wanna start off by talking about loyalty to God. And for this, I go to my first verse, which is the book of Deuteronomy, chapter six and verse five, Deuteronomy chapter six and verse five. It reads, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Love the Lord your God with everything you’ve got.

Why wouldn’t you love him? Because he created you. He created you in His image. You were created to love and to be loved. You weren’t created to be mandated to love him, but this is an instruction if you want a relationship with God or with anybody for that matter. A relationship that’s strong, it’s based on love, and you have to be committed to that.

And this verse is talking about commitment. This verse is a call to total commitment. It’s a call to loyalty to God, meaning loving him with every part of your being, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. God comes first. God is the beginning and the end, and so everything in between must fall to God. My loyalty is first and foremost to God, and that loyalty helps me maintain a loyalty to the other people I’m in relationship with, especially my wife.

So I’m loyal to God first. Here’s, here’s my top priority in my list of relationships, followed by my wife and my children, other family members, community, country. It goes on from there. Let’s now go to Joshua chapter 24. And verse 15, Joshua 24 15. I love this verse. I’ve got a T-shirt with this printed on it.

I love it. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day who you’ll serve. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord and you make it plain. I recently spoke at a gathering in Sydney just a couple of weeks ago. In fact, last weekend. My whole purpose for meeting at that gathering in front of 5,000 people was to spread the gospel message and to talk of my loyalty to God, to Jesus.

Um, the meaning of this verse is really true. Loyalty involves a clear personal choice. Joshua challenges the people to choose whom they will serve. Showing that loyalty to God must be intentional and firm. You must be steadfast in your loyalty to God. As we continue in talking about loyalty to God, let’s now go to Matthew, the book of Matthew.

Love the book of Matthew New Testament, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John, the first book of the gospel, Matthew chapter six and verse 24. You’ve heard this one many times no one can serve two masters for either. He will relate, sorry. Either he will hate the one and love the other. Or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money. Now, loyalty’s exclusive, Jesus teaches that divided loyalty leads to spiritual conflict. You can’t serve God fully if your heart is tied to something else like wealth. I hate to bring it up, but you’ll see a lot of television evangelists pushing this stuff. Where is their loyalty?

It’s all about money mostly. The gospel just serves their desire for money. That’s not how this is meant to be. That’s not loyalty to God. That’s loyalty to money. You know what? I believe that God owns all the cattle on a thousand hills. If he sees that I have a financial need, he will meet it through the generosity of others.

I don’t have to go out and ask for it. It’s there when I need it. I have faith in God. I’m loyal to that, and it has never let me down. Let’s now look at loyalty to others. As I talked about earlier, this is really important, and the first verse I picked out for this one is the Book of Ruth, chapter one, verses 16 and 17, and it reads, but Ruth replied, don’t urge me to leave you.

Your people will be my people. And your God, my God. May the Lord deal with me. Be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me. Pretty strong passage from Ruth and Ruth is showing deep sacrificial loyalty to Naomi. That’s the lady she was talking to. This verse highlights how true loyalty goes beyond convenience.

It stands firm even when things get hard, fair weather. Friends. Have you known a few? I certainly have, as I said, my circle of friends has shrunk down in the last few years. I have a lot of acquaintances outside that circle, but my real friends have my permission to call me on my stuff, and they give me permission to call them on theirs.

That’s how we grow, that’s how we develop our character, and that’s how we attain the character of Jesus as we move closer to his soon return. Let’s go now to Proverbs. I love Proverbs chapter 17 and verse 17. Proverbs 17 and verse 17. A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity. My closest friends are my brothers.

Um, in fact, I hate to say it, but my closest friends are more like my brother than my earthly brother, uh, whom I haven’t had much to do with in many, many years. Sadly. The meaning of this particular verse is loyalty and friendship and family shines brightest during tough times. True. Friends and siblings show their love, not just in the good moments, but in the trials as well.

You know, you throw a barbecue or have a dinner party and all your friends will come to enjoy your hospitality, but how many of them are there when your house burns down? That’s how you tell a true friend from an acquaintance. Let’s now look at God’s loyalty to us, because that’s the foundation of everything we do at church.

Everything we do at Church with our Walls is based on God’s loyalty to us, which demands our loyalty to Him. It de it. It deserves our loyalty back to him. Love is a two-way street. Love is something you do for somebody else. It’s not something you do for yourself. So let’s go to Lamentations. Chapter three verses 22 and 23.

Lamentations chapter three, verse 22 and 23. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They’re new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. God’s loyalty is unwavering no matter how bleak things seems. His mercy and love are renewed daily. He’s always faithful. I’ve told this story before, but I called my pastor friend Jeff, who baptized me nearly 20 years ago.

This was about five or six years ago, and I said to him, Jeff, I’m really struggling with my faith. A bit perplexed by it. He said, oh, how so? I said, well, I just seem to be drifting away. He said, how do you feel about that? I said, I feel really bad. He said, thank God for that. Praise the Lord. I said, why? He said, if you weren’t worried about it, I’d be concerned.

And that’s the truth. We always slip away. We drop the ball, we fall off the wagon. And then Jeff said, said to me, where was it when you left him? I knew exactly where it was, and I went straight back there and reconnected and he was still there. His loyalty to me has been endless. His loyalty to me has been marrow deep.

And for that purpose, he has my undying loyalty to him. Even though I stumble from day to day, we are. A work in progress. Every day is a day of character development. God’s loyalty is unwavering. Let’s look at two Timothy chapter two and verse 13, two Timothy chapter two and verse 13, and it says, if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot disown himself.

Even when we fail or fall away, God’s loyalty doesn’t change. His faithfulness is rooted in his unchanging nature. That’s who God is. That’s God’s character. That’s God’s character in us too. That’s the character we are meant to develop, and I have learned so much by following that pathway in the last 18 or 19 years.

My whole life has changed. I did say earlier that I have let people down in the past, but I have been forgiven and I’m moving forward. And let’s look at our last verse for today, and that is Psalms chapter 36 and verse five, Psalms 36, and verse five. Now, king David wrote this, uh, he was beloved friend of God and God was his beloved friend and still is, even though David’s sinned.

Your steadfast love, oh Lord, extends to the heavens. Your faithfulness to the clouds. God’s loyalty and love are vast and limitless. This verse paints a picture of how grand and dependable his faithfulness truly is. That’s so true. We can always count on God, even though we can’t always count on each other.

We need to forgive those that have let us down, and they need to forgive us as we’ve let them down. That’s the only way we can move forward. I’ve let a lot of people down in my past. I lived a pretty dark past. Faithfulness was something new to me. I never grew up in it. I never saw it witness to me. It was innate in me, but I had trouble really tying it to my life.

But now that’s different. Now that is totally different and my life is going much better for it. My purposes, my mission, my relationships, my leanings are all heading in the right direction, day by glorious day, and I pray that will be happening for you now as your journey with us in Church of our Walls.

Let’s close with a prayer. Dear Lord, father God, we thank you Lord for your tireless faithfulness. We thank you that you are forgiving and understanding. We thank you, Lord, that you instill in us a sense of righteousness. Demands loyalty to you and to our friends, and to our confidants. Father God, we pray that our loyalty will be strong when tested.

We pray that we will be there even though the heaven’s fall. And we thank you, father God, for your spirit of prophecy, for the messages you give us in your word, and for your undying loyalty and faithfulness to us, we pray. Jesus’ name, amen. God bless you. Don’t forget, um, keep spreading this message far and wide.

People are loving the daily devotionals. Please share them because um, if you are getting something out of them, then someone close to you probably needs to as well. So God bless you and until next week, week 41, and I’ll save the topic till then. ’cause who knows what’s gonna happen in this crazy world. I pray that the word of God dwells in you richly.

Have a wonderful week with Jesus. Don’t forget he loves you and God bless you. He’s waiting to, and I’ll see you next time on Church Without Walls. Until then, bye for now.