I COR 4vs 2
JOHN 14 vs. 30
PROV 22vs 10
MTH 12 vs. 30
A
steward is a Christian, a Minister; a Steward is one who claims to be born
again. The Bible says here about the basic thing that is required…. It’s not
about the requirement, but about the basic thing of which anyone should discover
about you- is that you are trust worthy!
The
word trust worthy, is the same word as LOYAL.
Trust
worthy- That is, I can depend on you.
Proverb 22vs 10…
John 14 vs. 30…
A
trust worthy man is faultless, without out wrinkles, without blemish. Satan
came to Jesus and inspected Him
properly and couldn’t find one fault. Some of us don’t need inspection to be
thrown away, looking at you alone fault is all over; but there is amendment
going on in the realm of the spirit here.
Amen!
Mathew 12 vs. 30…
In
the kingdom of God there is nothing
like standing on the fence, there are people whose life is fenced. They are
neither here nor there, they will never take a stand, the bible says such
people are against us, people that won’t call sin, ‘sin’, people that won’t say
things the way they are, people that will always want to be neutral. One thing
about neutral gears is that, it doesn’t go anywhere.
When
you park a car, good car, you put it in neutral and you and you use the hand
brakes, because the car is stationary. For everyman that wants to do everything
in a neutral format, is an indication that the man is not making movement.
Hallelujah!
Are
you a loyal member?
Praise
God!
The
word loyal is the same as
faithfulness, it is the same word as devotion, it is the same word as
allegiance, it is the same word as trustworthiness, it is the same word as
consistence, it is the same word as reliability, it is the same word as
fidelity, and it is the same word as dependability.
Are
you loyal?
What
the person is asking is, are you faithful? Do you have devotion? Do you know
what it means to have devotion? Do you know what it means to be loyal?
Now
if you want to see loyalty in its crude format, you look at some Islamic
countries and its followers of Prophet Mohammad.
Now in Tunisia, about four years ago which brought about
the Arab spring, what the historians called the Arab spring, a young man felt
that the country wasn’t moving in the direction expected? He was just a petty-
trader, but the country was in the hands of Tyrants, people who were not
handling the economy the right way. To show his devotion to his country, the
guy sat in the middle of the road, poured fuel on himself, lit a match and
stood still and burnt to ashes. ..
That
is devotion! The same word you use as in loyalty.
…If dying is what I have to do for my country to move
forward, let me die; and he stood there, burnt himself to ashes. Immediately
the government of Tunisia changed, and then the same action spread through Arab
world.
Most
people in countries where leadership has been in power for like thirty, fifty
years, that singular act of devotion upturned everything and there was change,
and democracy entrenched in the Arab world, because somebody exhibited loyalty.
The
kind of loyalty we see in the Islamic world, Muslims, sincerely speaking, I somehow
wonder why we don’t see that in the church.
The
people that preached the gospel and handed it over to us, handed it over with
their blood; they handed blood to us. Now we have picked up their blood, inside
the blood is the gospel, we just dusted off their blood, cleaned it off and
took the gospel. So the gospel we preach now is the gospel that tells us ‘that
suffering is not the will of God. That
when you go through a particular kind of challenge in your life- that God is not there... And that you are a
sinner’.
No!
That is the gospel of the devil.
The
Bible says that Christ learnt
obedience through what he suffered. He didn’t learn it by eating in the dining
with Queen Elizabeth or with Pharaoh. He learnt it through suffering. The only
thing the Bible didn’t do is to analyze the kind of suffering but we know that
suffering is suffering. The kind of suffering Christ faced in those days is more than we are facing today
Hallelujah!
That
is devotion.
A particular youngman, was born in the middle east, I think
Syria, and suddenly because the mother told him from childhood when he was four
that he was going to be a Jihadist when he was born; as such has he was growing up at about eight years old, he
went into the desert to learn how to shoot because he wanted to convert infidels
[that’s you and I]. When he saw that he could not do it all, for there were the
Isles, the Bokoharam, Iqadia, too many people in the gun part of Jihad, he went
into what they called cultural Jihad and left Syria. He went straight to the
United States to make sure that he carried out Jihad….
Who
is funding the young man?
Loyalty
to believe! Loyalty to his god that he serves!
He had a program, he started executing it with all that he
had; until the God of heaven who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above
all that we can ask or imagine ,stepped in to stop him
Can I say this to you; God is the one who evangelizes the people and not the church.
When
Paul, the then Saul stamped his feet on the floor of Palestine, all the
disciples ran away. But the God, who
will send you on an evangelism and go before you, went and arrested Paul, sent
Paul to them. When Paul was knocking at the door of the Apostles, they couldn’t
open. While he was with them for few weeks, they didn’t believe he was
converted.
That
is the kind of God that we have. An
amazing God!
But
they have a kind of god that can’t communicate to them, but they are loyal and
devoted to their god.
Hallelujah!
That’s
what we call devotion.
A particular young man in far Asia, I mean India, Pakistan,
and the rest , in search for holiness went by the tree and sat there, folded
himself in meditation; as at the time I saw the story, he has being sitting
there for four years, no movement. Four years. No food, no water. Four years. Now I want to believe that the boy properly
may have done that, for like forty days after which they started playing pranks
that is my belief. The story says the
guy has been there in that stationary position for four years. What happens, is
that from time to time they will chase people out and cover him up, am sure
that’s the time they play their pranks, because all the people that believe in
that religion. Am sure he is a Hindu boy. They made the guy an idol, and
started coming there for worship; it became an adoration ground for them. He didn’t
move, for four good years.. ..
If
it was to be you, you would say you’re bored, what nonsense is this?
The
boy was there, what kept him there is LOYALTY to his belief. There is a god
that that he is serving that he is loyal to. Some of us can not fast. You will analyze
the fasting: We have made fasting so stupid, with knowledge inclined. To the extent that we are now defining fasting
–‘ fasting is abstinence from food, sometimes it’s just abstinence from a particular
thing,- there are four kinds of fasting , white fasting, yellow fasting, green fasting,’
… we’re all doing that because the loyalty to our belief is fading away. The men,
who handed the gospel to us, fasted for forty days, forty nights. Nothing
happened to them.
We
are living in the twenty-first century where we call fasting –‘white, blue and red’,
so you can take fruit but don’t take the food; let me tell you, some fruits are
stronger than foods. When you consume a head of pineapple, you don’t need food.
So what we’re practicing now is religion of ‘self deceit’; we’re busy
congregating and deceiving ourselves.
If we must do this, we must do it the right
way.
Let
me paint this picture, but not too many of us will understand it.
‘There are some people
in Asaba here that will never wear any cloth, any bag, and any shoe that does
not have a brand name. They don’t go to the open market to buy anything. No! They
must wear Zara’ they must wear ‘Gucci’, they must wear Prada, they must
wear a name. That is how loyal they are to brand names. If you must sell
bend-down clothes to them, remove the tag and make it ‘Zara’ they will wear it,
but if it doesn’t have a name it’s not for them.
That
is brand loyalty.
And
that is the devotion and loyalty that is expected of us as Christians.
Oh Jesus!
The
Bible says something that
‘the grace of God has appeared to all men and it teaches us how to
say no to ungodly’
The
same way a young woman will walk into a shop and you bring something that is
not a brand name, and she will tell you ‘ no, I don’t use this’. You
try to convince her and she walks out on you, is the same way you appear in a
place and somebody shows up in a name of sin or in the name of anything to make
you compromise, you say ‘No, I’m loyal to
my master, I can’t do this,’ and you walk away.
But
there is no loyalty!
What
we do is, we do what we can do, with hope that the blood of Jesus is still there. But let me tell
you this, if you do it and get back to the Lord,
he will forgive you; but what happens to people like this is that, by the time
you practice it over a while, it becomes a habit. And when it becomes a habit, which
puts people into bondage. So if you continue in that manner, at a point you
will stop confessing it as a sin, because it has become a part of you and it
will lead you to hell.
I’m
teaching on loyalty.
The
word loyalty means a strong feeling to support or pay allegiance to a particular
thing.
Strong
feeling!
Christianity
that we practice today is Christianity that has no loyalty in it. If you’re not
loyal to God, you cannot be loyal to
your pastor, because it flows from there, but because people have lost loyalty
to God, they can do anything to the
priest, they can do anything to the altar. That’s why a young man in Imo state beat
up a Reverend father. There is no loyalty to God.
That’s
why a pastor’s house in Enugu was invaded by his church members and they beat
him up.
Why?
No
loyalty to God; because if you can’t
respect God, who is pastor?
So we need to come back to our first love, if
we had first love in the first place.
Everybody
that must come before God must come with
tramblulation must come with fear, you must come with fear, and our God is a consuming fire. You must be
loyal to the one that is called the Almighty.
That where ever Mohammed is now, Mohammed is still worshiping Him.
‘The dead and the living bow before Him’
That is the God we serve.
But
we’re not loyal to Him.
We
are now in the church that is not looking for loyalty, but is looking for Gift.
Church has being overtaken by gifts not loyal men. Members are looking for
gifted pastors; pastors are looking for gifted members so there is confusion. So
once anybody can come to the pulpit and jump around and talk and dance well, we
pick him to be in the choir, we don’t test their loyalty, we check out their
gifting; that’s why the church is messed up. Once any pastor, anybody can talk
well and explain the Bible, he is already a pastor and he will start answering
it before ordination.
Let
me tell you, it’s not in the gift; it’s never and will not be in the gift. Go
and read Galatians, go and read Corinthians. Gifts end with time, loyalty is ‘character
inclined, and it transcends time.’
Now
let’s look at the life of Christ. Jesus wanted to pick 12 men that He
would work with; these are twelve men that He would hand over the gospel to
that will take the gospel to the uttermost part of the earth. When He wanted to
look for these twelve men, the Bible said that He went to the bank of the
river; and in studying of the topic, I said to myself, why would Christ go to look for disciples at the
river? Now the disciples are men that he was calling to teach on how to speak,
because the gospel is all about talking. And He went to a particular profession
where they don’t practice to talk, ‘fisher men
don’t talk’ for one is at one point of the canoe, the other is at the
other end of the canoe; no communication.
That was where Christ went to look for men that he would hand over the gospel to.
I thought that a common sense inclined man should go to the church where people
are already close to what he wanted, I thought he would have gone to the courts
where there are learned people who are already in the act of speaking; but he
went to the place where he would find loyalty and left where there are gifts.
There
are gifts in the church, there are gifts in the court room, and he didn’t go
there. This means Christ values loyalty, more than gift. So, you have to
re-prioritize your priorities. If you want to marry, don’t marry gift, marry a
woman that would be loyal to you. Loyalty is superior to gift.
Marry
in loyalty.
And Sarah called
Abraham Lord, lord, lord what do you want me to do?
Marriages are going down in this platform of
this same thing, loyalty!
The
man is not loyal to God; the woman
is not loyal to the man, so we have two dysfunctional people living together.
The man is the head of the home; God
is the head of the man. The man is not loyal to his head; the woman is not
loyal to her own head. And they have complained
box, with many kinds of journals, which no legal firm has published.
Praised
God!
So
he wanted to hand over the kingdom to the twelve men and he went to look for
them in places where people don’t talk. He established the kingdom on loyalty. Christ established the kingdom on
loyalty.
Now
let me say this to you, you know there are some things that happen in the life
of Christ that we don’t take cognizant
of, now have you noticed, every time people come to Christ and said I want to
follow you, He will always want to test their loyalty, He will say ‘sell all that you have, give it to the poor and then come
follow me’
a cattle of a
thousand hill belongs to Him.
Don’t punch your calculator for Him; He is
testing your loyalty. Another person will come with an excuse, ‘Jesus give me time, I want to go and bury my mother and
father’. Loyalty- let the dead bury their dead- follow me-
reason- Christ Himself is superior, stronger than the dead.
You
see this value people place on the dead is because of proximity; if you are
living in the United States and your father or mother dies, do you know the
possibility of coming back is not there?
Loyalty
is fast disappearing from the church, no loyal member, no loyal pastor. That’s
why we move from place to place, thinking that we’re growing. What we have these
days is not church, the people that had church growth, they have dead and gone.
What we have now is ‘sheep’ exchange of members from one church to another; the
general picture is that we don’t make impact to the world again, we stare the
waters and nothing happens. Knowing the name of a church is not kingdom
practice, but we’ve become bunch of confused people.
No
loyalty!
We
are not loyal to where we worship, not loyal to the pulpit, even to have
connection to the pulpit, because it takes connection to stay loyal. You can’t
be loyal to what you don’t know. Pastor says a word, members says another- lack
of loyalty. Pastor says something, members suggests the particular way it
should be done.
Spiritual
things doesn’t make sense, your job is to obey.
The
bondage we are in today, it’s most likely that 70% of them is that we put
ourselves in, we have every opportunity to change every troubles that we’re
going through today, but we lack loyalty, we’re not loyal to anything. The
woman is not loyal to the husband; the husband is not loyal to God, so the husband behaves anyhow.
Loyalty
is lacking in the kingdom of God.
Steven
was surrounded by Paul and his men, loyalty to what he believed; he lifted up
his hands immediately and told God that ‘am on my way’.
If he had opened his mouth to beg, may be Paul would have had pity, because the
plan of Paul was to stop the purification of Christianity. So if he had said
‘Paul am joining you from now, no more Christ, kill them’, Paul would have had
mercy. But he looked at Paul and his army and looked at God and said ‘to die is gain to live is for Christ’
he died.
If
it were to be us, we would not even wait to come to the face of war, before we
declare our stand.
No
loyalty anywhere. We have chameleons in the name of Christians. No loyalty anywhere.
That’s why our children are not loyal to what we believe, because they couldn’t
see it in us in the first place.
No
devotion!
REASONS WHY
LOYALTY IS IMPORTANT
[1]. Loyalty is the basic qualification
for every Christian. Let me give this idea to the
people who are company owners, don’t look for men and women under you who are
gifted. You can have gifted people around you, and have normal people around;
but if you want to release an office to any, I’ll rather advice you to give it
to one who is loyal to your vision. Don’t give it to the gifted. The gifted can
destroy it; give the one that is loyal to you and to what you do.
So
loyalty is a basic qualification for every Christian. You must be loyal to one God.
1cor 4vs 2
“it is a requirement that every steward, should be found faithful”
That is to be
found loyal.
[2] Teaching of loyalty is
important, because we have the devil within us.
So the more we teach on loyalty, the more we dis-arm the devil.
John14vs30
“this
man came to me and found nothing; The prince of this world came to me and found
nothing”.
In
other words, the prince of this world came to Christ and found nothing and went to Judas and found something.
There
is always devil in your mist. There is always someone the devil takes advantage
of consciously or unconsciously.
Let me tell you a story that was
told in the book-
‘a particular war lord
went for war in a particular city, surrounded the city. And the city he went to
war with or war against, is a city fenced like Jerusalem. Strong city, nobody
breaks into that city, very strong, very fortified city, just like Jericho. And
one of his men asked him,’ boss why did you bring us here, you know this people
are much secured. We can’t even enter through the fence, to fight them, how do
we do it?’ and the war lord said, ‘I’ll enter into them, through them’ they
asked him, ‘how do you mean?’ ‘He said, I have my spies inside them, and when
the time comes, they will open the gates for me.’
There
is a spy around you, some are in your families, they are the ones that open the
door for the devil to come and attack, because they are not loyal to the head
of the home. Some come in form of cousins, some come in form of maids, some
come in form of care-givers, whatever- they are the ones that open the door for
the devil to come in. Sometimes you see wives and husbands quarreling not
because of what they did to themselves, but because of what the devil in the
family said or did.
So
he opened the door through Judas, he tried Jesus he didn’t succeed; he then
tried Judas and succeeded. Jesus, Judas, they all mean the same
thing .when it can’t work here, it will work there.
[3]
We must treat loyalty, because church
cannot operate without love; and where
there is no loyalty, there is no love.
John13vs3-
“By this shall all men know that you’re my disciples, if you love one
another”
Loyalty
is loving one another, loving your neighbor, the way you love yourself. Feeling
burden of another, the way you feel the burden of your own problem; some people
are so selfish that the only thing they feel is what concerns them. If it does
not concern them, it means nothing to them.
Loyalty
is love. You can’t practice loyalty, without being in love with God and Humanity.
The
Bible says in
Psalms 23vs2-
“He leads me beside still waters…”
Sheep
drink by the still water, no sheep will drink water no matter how hungry on the
troubled water, because trouble waters are dangerous waters, you don’t know
what is troubling it, it could be a Crocodile, an Alligator, a Whale, a Shark; so
Sheep don’t drink on troubled waters, they drink in quiet waters and the church
should be like quiet water, once there is trouble, that is by dis-loyal people,
gossips, bite biting, envy, jealousy, these are things that troubles waters.
But the power of love quenches it.
To
have a large and successful team, we need to be teaching loyalty, because
Christianity is a team work, Christ formed a team.
If
you must make a head way, we need a team also; so you can’t practice
Christianity without a team. When he wanted to send them out, he sent them out ‘two
by two’. He called twelve people, He sent them out in twos’ and He had His
twenty-one, twenty people, besides His disciples, so Christianity is a team
work and the devil knows that this loyalty is the only thing that will scatter
the team, so he has planted it; so what is reigning amongst us now is that ‘I
belong to Paul, I belong to Apollos’
Paul
said
‘I planted and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase’.
We
belong to God, we don’t belong to a
church, church the nomination is just a ‘nomenclature’ which had to come for
administrative reason, not for reasons of segregation. We’re segregating for
nothing.
Praise God!
So
if we must achieve something, we must form a team, we must come together, we
must kick out all the dis-loyal people in our mist. People who are not
faithful, people who are not trust worthy, people who you can’t entrust
anything into their hands, we must kick them out of our mist. We must do that.
{4}
if we must have a mega church, we must
teach loyalty, no church will turn mega until the members are loyal to the
church. If we have people who are not loyal to the church, there won’t be
growth. Loyalty is commitment. We are not committed to what we believe; but
because of our parentage, we are accidental Christians, and so we continue with
our ways. None had an encounter; we were born into the church. That is why
breaking away is the order of the day.
{5} if we must have a long
lasting ministry, we must preach loyalty, because what
sustains the church is loyalty.
If
the church must be sustained, we have to start disciplining loyal members. The
essence of practicing loyalty is for you to review your relationship with God.
(6). In order to reap, can only come when you
are loyal to God. You can sow seed , you can confess, you can do everything;
but of you are not loyal to God, there is a level of blessing that you can’t
get. God is the only one who gives increase, so if you are not loyal to him the
increase will not come. Pastor blesses you , God executes the blessing.
Rev 21 vs. 14
When
a man is totally loyal to the brand or to his God as I speak in reference to
God now, what happens is that the man gets what is called ‘fullness of
blessings’.
Loyal
men worked with Christ for three and half years, when Jesus left they stood for
Christ for the rest of their life, some of them were boiled, some into boiling oil,
out of loyalty they died struggling, some were beheaded. In the old Roman
Empire, it was said that the kings of those days uses human being as candle
light, and those were Christians who brought the gospel to that side of the
world, they were called infidels because they were loyal to God. That was what
God looked at and said that the foundation in heaven, the names of the
disciples must be engraved on the pillars. The impact is loyalty. They were
loyal to their God.
“those who know their
God, will be strong to do exploits”
it
is important to know that half obedience is equal to disobedience.
Rev. Cosfinney Udoka N.
Senior Pastor
House on the Rock, Asaba
For messages like this and more visit,
House on the Rock Asaba,
Plot 17 GRA beside Lumen Christi School,
DBS Road,
Off Summit Road,
Asaba.
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