I will like to
refresh our minds by letting us know loyalty is one of the most important
things that we need to talk about in the body of Christ and in our various organizations. Loyalty is very key to any
organization to grow, the rise and fall of any organization is tied to loyalty.
That Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola and its doing well, is because of loyal customers.
Praise God!
If you find
yourself into any country of the world, like the United States, like the
Caribbean’s, in what every country you find yourself one of the drink you will
drink without questioning it is Coca-cola. Once you get into the shop, and you
see the fridge filled up with all manner of drink, in other not to disgrace
yourself, you tell them not to give you Coke; because you have being a loyal
customer all these years. You started drinking Coke as a little boy, little
girl and you are still taking Coke now. As a matter of fact some of us are
addicted to Coke that they can’t eat without Coke.
Amen!
We’re talking
about loyalty. Loyalty is sticking to a person or sticking to a brand, an
organization. That’s loyalty. It takes loyalty to get married and stay married,
it takes loyalty to say ‘ no’ to one thing and say ‘yes’ to another, it takes
loyalty to reject money. The loyalty you have to God, or your loyalty to God
is what determines your character, what you can sacrifice for God, is determined by your loyalty to
Him. So when they tune you like radio and you start talking, it means your
level of loyalty is very low, when you’re being bullied and you start throwing
punches, it then means that you don’t have complete loyalty to God, so for everything you do on earth
you have to consider loyalty in your life.
If it has
something to do between you and your husband, you have to check if you’re loyal
to the man, it is only loyalty that will make that guy to drive up to you in a
with a nice ride and say ‘ madam how are you? Where are you going to? I don’t
mind giving you a lift’; loyalty to your husband will make you say to the guy ‘I’m
sorry I’m not interested’.
Praise God!
Loyalty to the
guy you’re dating will make you stick to him.
Loyalty is
everything, it’s what keeps you. The reason why you are still here, despite
what you’ve gone through here is because you’re loyal to House On The Rock.
Because sometimes you become so angry, because the HODs, the protocols, the
securities, etc , you feel angry about how and what they do and you vow not to
return to the church, but the next day you find yourself attending again, it’s
because you’re loyal to the brand, that’s what I want to believe.
Amen!
One of the
lessons you need to learn about loyalty is
i.
Loyalty
demands full persuasion Luke 23vs 2, John 6 vs66-68 the key word there is ‘persuasion’. Persuasion
is really not putting one under duress, persuasion is one standing with you,
with the strong power of convention using every necessary means to make you do
what he/she wants you to do. the bible says something, it says “considering the end of unbelievers, we
persuade them, seeing where they will end”, seeing that these people are
heading for hell, so you are the only bridge between them and hell and they are
heading forward and they want to get into hell and you’re the last man standing,
so you block them, you persuade them, please where you are going to is
dangerous for as soon as you cross me you’ll enter hell, please give your life
to Christ.
If
you really know the intensity of hell you persuade un-believers. Until you have
proper understanding of hell, you will not evangelize. The reason why you’re
not evangelizing is because you do not have the understanding of where the un-believers
are headed, if you know where they will end, you will persuade them.
What
I’m saying here is, before you commit to any man or any organization, before
you become loyal to a man, you must be persuaded about the man. There must be a
persuasion about the man in you that will make you to be loyal to him. You
don’t just walk up to the man and say am loyal, you don’t just go to a church
and say am loyal, you don’t just go to an organization and say am loyal, you
must have a convection in your heart, so as you move by the day nobody sees the
convection, but when trouble comes your convection or your persuasion is tested.
You must be convinced in your heart
about anything you are involved in or involved with, if you are going to be
loyal to a person or an organization you must be sure of what you want to be
loyal to. You must be sure, so it’s most important to first of all get
convinced about a thing, a person or a brand before you become loyal to it.
Don’t just give allegiance or loyalty to anything until you’re persuaded about
that thing; the reason for which people break up, is because you are really not
persuaded about them. Persuasion is needed because loyalty must be tested;
loyalty that is not tested is not loyalty. Whatever you are loyal to, that
thing and you must be tested, so in the time of test what makes you to stand is
your level of loyalty to what you are loyal to.
Praise
God!
Hallelujah!
Pledging
our loyalty, from person to person, church to church and party to party, it’s
an indication that we’re not persuaded about them. If you are a loyal jumper
(people that move from one church to another) it means that you are not
persuader about any. You must be persuaded about a church, am I saying don’t
visit another church? No. you can visit other churches, but you can have a
church that you are persuaded about, nothing can shift you from your persuasion
about it; but unfortunately most times we don’t have such people. That’s why
you see people, at one slight anger they change church, in fact because pastor
preached a message, and they assume pastor was talking about them, next Sunday
they won’t come to church. Something happened in the department and the H.O. D
got her or him angry and then the next day he or she is no longer there, why? Because
you are not persuaded. You work in an organization, and a trivial thing came
up, and you decide to resign, you’re not persuaded.
Your
persuasion over what you’re loyal to is very important, that is your conviction,
is very important, because that thing that you anchor your loyalty to must be
tested and you must be tested at the same time also. You must develop a
persuasion.
I
have a case I am handling now about a girl, she is from a catholic background and
her father insists that she must wed in a catholic church that is the Roman Catholic.
This girl gave her life to Christ
and became a born again Christian, and now she wants to get married and she hasn’t been to the catholic church for
a while and the father insists on her wedding in the Catholic Church. Why is
the father insisting?
Persuasion!
What is being
tested in the young girl?
Persuasion,
loyalty!
The father was
born in the Roman Catholic like some of us were and then he grew up in it and probably
became one of this ‘nites’ in it and he is so convinced in his part, that he
does not care where his daughter worships but when she is ready to wed, she
must wed in the Roman Catholic church. He said to the young girl, if you don’t
wed in the Catholic Church, I will not come for the wedding.
That’s what is
called persuasion.
Pentecostals are
more flexible than rubber, we don’t have persuasion. Persuasion to a Pentecostal
person is an event that happened the day he gave his life to Christ after that day, no more. They
are not persuaded about anything. The man said, if you dare, I won’t come. And
the young girl reported to me, and asked what she should do, I told her ‘young
girl your persuasion is being tested, your father’s persuasion is being proved,
so let’s see how it goes’.
Hallelujah!
I pity some of
us, because I don’t know what we believe in now. Christianity is becoming a
place where we gather together and entertain ourselves with good music and good
preaching.
Conviction. Your
must be convince about what you’re loyal to. Let me tell you something,
when I wanted to get
married to my beautiful wife, something happened, I collected the list like
every other person collects list, I collected it and said no problem, I then
opened the list, I began to analyze the list, wherever they said six jars of
palm wine, I asterisk it, six cartoons of star, I asterisk, six cartoons of
Harp, I asterisk, etc, I went back and to them I have seen the list. I told my father-in-law ‘this is the list you
gave me, but this is the newest edition’. He looked at it and said ‘don’t worry’.
Hallelujah!
My father in-law said ‘the ones
you tick good bring’- six crates of minerals (good), seven crates of malt (good)
etc, all those things I tick them. That day I brought them, I was waiting for
them, all the kins men gather together, and when they were calling things one
after the other, the ones I have ticked good I’ll show them, and then, they ask
about the others, I kept mute, and my father in –law would said ‘jump it ‘when
they kept jumping the asterisked ones , one of the uncles said to my father
in-law,’ if you know we’re going to keep jumping why did you bring us here?
Praise God!
They locked up, and I locked up,
because they are following their persuasion, my own persuasion is being tested.
I told them,’ if you tell me to go home now and wait for the next five years to
come back and marry her, I’ll wait but to give you one bottle of star I will
not’. By the time I drew that inference everybody knew that I was ready to walk
away.
Praise God!
Let me tell you
when you give the devil one mile he goes ten miles, so when devil gave me an
opportunity, I also went like him
‘…. I told them, I
said ‘not only will I not bring alcohol in my environment, but I don’t want
anybody to bring it’. The problem now was that they wanted to use their money
to buy it, but I also refused.’
Persuasion!
Some of you will
be overwhelmed and even be drinking with them. Tomorrow if anything comes
strong in the family and they need to consult a native doctor, they will remind
you, of the first time you compromised, so they expect you to also compromise
the second time.
You don’t have
persuasion. If we are Christians’ let us be Christians’. If you’re a Christian
and you once received Christ as your
Lord and savior, cut off something’s, be a Christian. There are some things
that cannot be suggested to me in my in-laws house but thank God they are also Christians, the
reason is because they know me, there are some things they discuss in my family
they won’t tell me, because they know my persuasion. How many people know about
your own persuasion?
Your persuasion
is what gives you protection.
Praise God!
Where we read in
the book of Luke
23vs2 something happened, Jesus
came one day in a crusade ground like he usually would do, he came there and
started preaching one strong message, started preaching hard message, as He was
preaching He was losing His congregation, the kind of message when you preach,
people are leaving the church, the doors people didn’t use they were using that
day, because there was rush in exit. People were just exiting, to the point
that the remaining were the disciples, the Apostles. He did not stop; He turned
to them in conclusion of the message ‘won’t you also leave? ‘In order words ‘I
don’t mind losing all of you because of my persuasion’.
Peter said
something very amazing….
“Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord to whom shall we
go, thou hast the words of eternal life”
In other words Lord I have taken out time to convince
myself about who you are, I know you to the point that what you have is what I need.
As hard as it was looking or looked that’s exactly what my life needs, so I
can’t move. So twelve of them remained with Him based on persuasion, based on conviction,
based on what they know about who they were following; but the people that had
no persuasion left Christ.
That is Loyalty.
Let me tell you
that was the same thing that kept them, even when the man of God, Christ himself was being disgraced, they did not go away, that I
mean they didn’t leave him in their spirits even though they left Him in their
bodies, but from afar they were still following Him, because even the midst of
troubles, tribulations and trials something in them tells them that there is something
about this man that can’t die, let’s keep following Him, while in the grave ,
they were monitoring the grave yard, they were making sure they were oiling the
body. They had a conviction in them that this man can’t die. They were
persuaded.
On the third day,
their persuasion came to light.
The people that
were laughing at them that ‘your master is dead’, came to congratulate them,
saying ‘we knew it’.
When you come to
a point where men gather around you and say “I knew it” you are persuaded about
something.
Hallelujah!
ii.
Your
Loyalty must be to the higher authority
1Cor 11vs1, Acts17vs11
What Paul is
telling us is as long as I am following Christ,
keep following me, but any day I stop following Christ, you can decide on whom to follow. In the chain of authority
our eyes must be on God, so that as
we are following any pastor, we tend to understand if he is still following Christ, so that when pastor stops
following Christ, I have every right
to pull my loyalty from him.
Your authority
is tied to higher authority.
Follow me as I
follow Christ, stop following me as
I stop following Christ; that’s what
Paul is saying.
The problem of
the church or the people is that we follow men without following God. We are so much interested in men,
and that is why we are being deceive daily, we follow men, we follow pastor, we
follow Reverend, we follow father, we follow mother, we follow sister ,etc, but
we don’t follow them in comparison to whom they are following, we blindly
follow them.
Acts 17vs11-12
This was talking
about the Beroea Church, it was a Church that whenever Paul appears in their
midst, after preaching to them , they go home with their bibles to search if
what Paul says is in tune with what the bible is saying. And the bible says
they were more honorable. The reason, for which they would return the next day
to listen to Paul, is because the day before, they searched what Paul preached
on and it was in line with what God
is saying. So their loyalty is not just to Paul who was preaching, but also to God. When the man whom they were loyal
to finishes preaching they will go to the God
whom they are most loyal to check if what they were saying is in line.
We have so many
people here who are loyal to men of God
who are not loyal to God.
The man is not
loyal to God and because you don’t
have the capacity to check from God if he is loyal to God by the things he does or doing;
some of them will tell you that you have to ‘bury something in your village’
you will agree out rightly. You don’t want to check if it is the act of Christ; did Christ bury things in people’s compound? Did Christ hit somebody’s head and blood gushed out and he started
washing it with water? Are you checking the senior authority?
Loyalty is to
the highest authority, and then it steps down to the immediate man that you can
see, so any day I begin to do things that are against the word of God, you have the permission to walk
away.
The problem we
have now is not because we are not loyal, but because we are loyal to the point
of stupidity. Loyal to stupid things.
Hallelujah!
Nobody wants to
search the scripture anymore, we just want to come and here pastor or pastors,
as they are speaking you’re just sitting down comparing each one to the other, you
don’t want to go and compare what the pastor says with the bible, to come back
the next day and say ‘pastor, sorry sir you said this last week and I went home
to read, this is what I saw, please clarify it for me’; but you assume that
pastor is all knowing. Any day they bring up something stupid, you give ear to
it and you don’t care to inquire of the Lord
what He is saying, because we don’t behave as the Beroea church that goes home
to check from the master if what the servant is doing is right. So we are
stupidly loyal.
Loyalty must
have a reference point and our reference point is God.
A man who was born around 1938
and died in 1978, by the name Jim Jones. Jim Jones was born in America, he
became an evangelical, very dynamic, very charismatic, and very enthusiastic,
he was everything that everybody needed in America in those days. He was
preaching with fire, he was shouting and people were coming, one day he decided
that the entire congregation should come to church that day that they are going
to see God. They all came to church, to see God, he shared them a cup, poured cyanide
inside said ‘we are going to pray, once we pray we all drink together, so we
can go and see God’ the foolish people gathered together with their cups, and
all of them drank the content and died. About nine hundred people died at the
spot, about two hundred children were involved,
why? Somebody is being loyal to what he/she is
not persuaded of, what you don’t know about, what you haven’t searched for,
what you are not convinced about. Conviction does not come without knowledge;
you must have knowledge of a thing before you are convinced of that thing.
Convection is knowledge inclined, so learn why we do a thing, which is how to
grow in faith.
Nine hundred, by
that I mean men, women and children died somewhere in 1978 because of one
useless man who is being used by the devil. Let me tell you the truth, we have
worst Jim Jones in Nigeria now than in America. There are some stupid people,
crazy people who don’t know the bible. Native doctors who are wearing suits
parading themselves around town as men of God,
but because we don’t know the truth we follow them and now we are sympathizing
with the nine hundred when they have five thousand in their own congregation.
Anything they tell you, you will do, sometimes how to recognize them is that
when they coming they sing to them the song they sing to God, and most of them also have in their names ‘A.K.A’s’ they have
strange behaviors, usually insecure, they are unease wherever they are, because
the sins they committed is following them, so anything can happen.
It is not my
work to judge any man; it’s my work to open your eyes to the scripture so that you
can judge by yourself. let me also put it this way, if you are in a church, the
highest authority is the pastor; when H.O.D is doing something that is not
reflecting the pastor, he is acting in rebellion, your loyalty should be pulled
out immediately, when the chief usher, protocol etc, begins to do something
that is not I line with what you know I stand for, your loyalty shouldn’t be to
him again, you need to pull out at that point in inform the pastor.
When the unit
heads begin to criticize the pulpit that is the pastor, watch out, don’t just
stand and watch, it shouldn’t be for we have the head and loyalty is to the
highest authority; so whatever group you belong to and the person is not in
line , know that the person is miss-leading you. So everything the leaders do,
must reflect what the pulpit is doing, and what the pulpit is doing must reflect
what the bible is saying, so once it is not in line, pull your head, for you
are in the wrong line. Your life will be delayed , if you are following the
wrong person and let me tell you, the best way to drive in a road that you’re
not familiar with, is to follow the man ahead of the man that is ahead of you
for it will help you to avoid pot-hole properly, you will turn properly, you
will do everything properly; but if you
keep following a the man that you are follower(who is just in front of you) you
will be prone to accident. That is the way with loyalty.
iii.
A loyal person,
does not withhold information 1Cor5vs1, 1Cor 1 vs. 11, so if you are loyal
to me, you have to be loyal with the information you have. I am not talking
about gossip, I am talking about progressive and productive information that
will take the congregation forward-
In
the verse we read Paul said it has being reported amongst you that some people
are into fornication.
Fornication
is a particular sin that nobody does in public. Not only do you do it in the
secret, but you do it very secretly, Apostle Paul said, it had being reported
that somebody is doing it. How did Paul get to hear? Did he catch them red
handed? A loyal person opened up the information; so you must learn to give
information to the leadership that you are loyal to that will bring about
progress to the church, remember Paul began to rebuke them immediately because
of it the church was revived, in 1Cor 1 vs 11 also talks about the contention
that was reported amongst them, envy, strife; so the leadership will start
working on the fornication, start working on the strife, envy and contention
and then to make the body of Christ pure.
That is the essence of information.
I
am not talking about gossip. Two of them are different. There are some people
in church , you have been privileged, you have an information that can help the
body of Christ, but you refused to
come forward with it, you chose instead to keep quiet, God will ask the blood from your hand, He will ask it.
Information
helps the leadership to work well, to serve you better, so don’t keep it to
yourself.
Praise God!
A pastor was given a wonderful
information in Ghana, a sister was dating an associate pastor, and this same sister
dating one pastor who she was about to get married to was also dating a guy, so
from time to time the sister sits in one bar with the guy and from time to time
they both go to hotels, one of such days another sister in church was opportune
to see them. She went to the pastor whom she knew the sister was supposed to be
dating to tell him of what she happened to have seen. And by the time
investigation was carried out, the pastor cut the wayward sister. And when she
was asked why? She said she started dating the guy before the pastor.
That sister must
have been committed for the pastor to have seen her and decided to go for her,
but in her commitment, she was still loyal to somebody else outside. The information
was leaked by someone this made the pastor to get married to another person,
the right person.
Praise God!
iv.
Loyalty is based
on principles not on emotions.1Sam 20 vs. 13, this more like a covenant
between Jonathan and David, in the course of Jonathan’s life with the father,
you will notice that Jonathan was advocating for David, in front of the father.
The father got so angry and throw a javelin at him, the father wanted to pin
him to the wall, he said “why would you be supporting my enemy” the reason for
this is that Jonathan was loyal to David, not based on emotion but based on
principle. Some people are loyal to some pastors not based on principle but
based on emotion. Don’t follow a pastor because of emotion. Loyalty is not
based on emotion , it is based on principle
You
shouldn’t follow a pastor based on emotion, it is evil, that is why some people
are in an environment where they are not being blessed, because they are not
following God, they are not loyal to
God, they are loyal to emotion, they
follow the pastor based on emotion, because the pastor broke away, you follow
him because you want to give him a sense of support, or based on the fact that
you did not like the way he was treated in your former church. Are you God?
You
can’t advocate for man, if you have to follow him, follow him on the bases of
who he is in God, and not because of
the fact that he was not treated properly. That is why people are in the wrong
places, they are not getting blessed in the church where they are, because they
are afraid of leaving the pastor who they broke away with due to sympathy.
We
should understand that nobody is indispensable in ministry, Christ came into the world, He initiated
this work we are doing and He was in a haste to leave. He understood that even
Him was not indispensible to the work, that His work is to introduce and leave
and men are still doing it till date.
So
loyalty is not emotionally based. Jonathan was following David, bear in mind
that Jonathan was probably older than David, but he believed in David, he was
following David, he loved David, and followed him based on principle. He knew
that what David was fighting was a just course, he was the next king of the
land, he didn’t care that his father was the one sitting on the throne at the
moment, but he knew this was the right person.
v.
Loyalty will
cost you your relationship and your friends. James 4vs 4, Luke 14 vs. 26, 1 Sam 20
vs31-33, Heb11vs24-25. The lesson you will learn here is that once
you are loyal to God, there are some
friendship you don’t need to keep again, if your loyalty to God , haven’t separated you from some
kinds of friends or relationships , you are not loyal to God, you’re not born again. Since the day you gave your life to God, you did not leave some friends and
new ones did not emerge, you are not yet born again; because your loyalty to God should cut off some people out of
your life naturally. Immediately I gave my life to Christ I knew some people had to go, some I told them verbally, and
some left naturally. Now some people get born again, we don’t even know the
difference. When you give your life to God,
everything around you will change and become uncomfortable for your ‘usual
friends’. But today we see people who casually give their lives to God, without
complete remorse. When we gave our lives to Christ we wept, do we have an extension of heaven, new heaven that
is meant for today’s Christians’?
May
God help us!
Our
God is a consuming fire, whether you
like it or not. If you dead and end in hell, you will burn for
'it is
appointed unto man once to die and after that judgment’
One
of the most frustrating things in life is loneliness and once you close your
eyes in death you will be completely lonely. If you had been sick to the point
of death, you will have a better understanding of this, for people surround you
but you alone know that you are lonely, so when they are saying sorry, you
don’t feel their sympathy, the only thing you are particular about is where you
are headed, because of what might happen any moment of the time you have left..
Loyalty
should cost you some friends; some friends should have to leave your life. You
have to tell them to leave, you have to learn to be satisfy with your salary,
not living in the allowances of men, learn to live right, by not depending on
married men, learn to sacrifice some friends if you are a Christian, if you are
not go ahead, enjoy!
Jonathan,
the relationship he had with David, cost him his relationship with his father.
His father hated him, because a man who was supposed to take over the throne
was against the throne, why? Because he believed in the anointing of God. The father said, ‘I will not
wait for David, I will kill you so that David will know it is obvious that he
is the one that will take over’ but
you want to be a friend to Saul and a friend to David, it doesn’t work.
Hebrew 24vs 25
When
Moses came of age, he refused to be called a pharaoh, he said ‘let me suffer
with my people’ instead of staying in the palace, that was what
led him out of the palace, he began to see what his people were going through,
and then he started fighting on behalf of them, of course his people also dealt
with him. The point is his loyalty to the God
of heaven made him loose the throne. So your loyalty must cost you
something. It must cost you money, it must cost you time, it must cost you
everything that you have.
Loyalty must take it, if it is loyalty. You
can’t be loyal to an idol and you’re not servicing the altar, it will kill you,
like the one that is in my village, a crazy idol, bad one they walk in trembling,
it stays in a bushy place, dirty place, but if you see the people enter there,
they enter with respect. They pull their shoes from a distance, go close to the
zinc house; if archeologist should go to my village and test the zinc house it
will be up to one thousand years. Very Old
zinc! Once the people get close they
bow, then go in with their backs for a sign of respect, in other words
expressing their humility that they are nobody and that they can’t come in and
see it (Idol) face to face, you’re too big for me to encounter you face to face.
.
– Moses saw the back of God.
Those
idol worshippers have respect for it (Idol), they trust that it will handle their
steps; they believe it to be their sight. After which they go in, sit and pick
up a chicken and slaughter it, sprinkling the blood by making incantations and
mentions their victims name, it has effects because the only time we Christians
have to alter what they do , we are lazily sleeping off, because we do nothing
with our Christian life. If God was to appear in this gathering,
some of us will take Him for granted and address Him casually, by our attitude
we are saying it daily.
Praise
God!
The
last but not the least is:
vi.
Loyalty places
demand on you.
Your loyalty is seen in your commitment to what you are loyal to; you can’t say
you are loyal to me without being committed to me.
Praise God!
You cannot say
you are loyal to a church and you are not committed, it’s a very simply test.
If you’re loyal to God and you’re
not paying tithes, you’re not giving your offering, you are not doing all that
is supposed to be done, you are not loyal. It is not loyalty that is rebellion.
If we’re begging you to pay tithe at the end of the month you’re not loyal to God, if we’re begging you to attend
church services, you’re not loyal to the brand, you’re not loyal to God, and you’re not loyal to the
pastor. You are not if we have to beg you, you are not.
2Timothy 1vs 6, 3vs 14
Paul was
charging Timothy, he said to Timothy,
‘concerning the
prophecies that have being made over you stare up’, he said ‘whatever I put
in thee in remembrance that thou stare
up the gift of God which is in thee, by putting up of on hands’,
There is
something that has being imparted into you, that is grace. If you’re loyal to the
grace of God upon your life, stare
it up. What Paul was telling Timothy here is that be committed to what you
have, don’t parade yourself as a Christian with no manifestation around you,
you’re not manifesting anything and you’re saying you’re a Christian? The truth
is you are not a Christian, but a passer-by.
Loyalty is commitment!
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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