Loyalty Under Fire

Trusting God Through Trials

Good morning and welcome to Living Faith Church. I am so excited to be able to worship Jesus Christ with you on this amazing Sunday. If we have never met before, my name is Aaron. My wife Stella and I are honored to be able to serve on the Pastoral team at LFC. Today we are three fourths of the way through this series “In Search of the Noble Heart”. A series on loyalty.

Now, I must say, I feel as if this series has the potential to impact your walk with God in a dramatic way. One thing that I have found over the years is that too often people are more loyal to ministry than they are God. I’m going to say that again because this needs to sink in. I find too often that people are more loyal to ministry, that God. They are more loyal to the work of the church than they are to the Bride of Christ, the Ekklesia.

If you stay with God long enough, eventually your loyalty will be tested. Jesus did full-time ministry on earth for only three years, and by the end of those three years, everyone was offended at Him, including His twelve disciples. The Pharisees hated Him, the Sadducees hated Him, the crowds cried crucify Him, Judas betrayed Him, Peter denied Him and the rest fled from Him not wanting to be associated.

As you read through the Gospels you find that many people like Jesus when He fed them, when He healed them, When he let the little children come to Him. But as soon as His kindness called for discipline, the crowds turned on Him.

Matthew 19:21 - sell your possessions and give to the poor,

Matthew 8:22 - Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.

Matthew 5:48 “Be Perfect…

Matthew 5:28 - If you look with lust, you’ve committed adultery

And we find much the same today. Many love the work of the Church, the philanthropy, the mercy works, the community and connection. But as soon as the church does something we don’t personally agree with we want to separate ourselves.

That ministry we thought was so powerful, and we were so connected to ends

A certain leader is no longer part of the team

We start preaching on tithing

The church spends money on that thing I didn’t think they should spend the money on

They keep preaching about the Holy Spirit and Speaking in Tongues

See, I find that often, church people can be more in agreement with what the didn’t like about their last church they attended, than they are in what they do like about the church they currently are in.

Many years ago Stella and I ventured on a ministry venture. We had a couple of guys that joined us on this adventure. We thought for sure that this team was going to be impactful because we had done so much ministry together in the past. I was a youth pastor prior to this, and they had helped Stella and I in youth ministry. Yet, something shifted in the way we worked together in this new venture. We were no longer equally under and leader, sharing common frustrations, talking about how we would do things differently if we were in charge. As a matter of a fact, there was not a “We are in charge”. Stella and I were building a team of men and women who could serve the vision of the church, and lead under our direction. Suddenly, some of the very same arguments that we shared regarding the leadership we had previously been under, was turned toward Stella and I. What we found was, this was not a shared love for the House of the Lord, but rather a share love to be in charge. A love to do things “my way”. A love for a certain kind of work.

The Fire of Jobs Trials

According to the book of Job, we could say that Loyalty is measured by how much it costs you to stay in the game.

For Job: that was all of his livestock, his home and barns, his children, and his own health. When His wife suggested that he:

Job 2:9–10 NASB95

9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” 10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

The test is part of the bond that loyalty requires. Remember, Loyalty is defined as:

“A noble and unswerving allegiance rooted in faith and love”.

Faith and love are what are tested in the fire of adversity. For Job the question to be answered was: “How can you serve a God who allows you to loose everything you spent your life building? How can I worship a God who takes children from me, who allows me to suffer in body with such pain? And we find in Job 5, his resounding answer is. “I cannot answer as to why God would allow me to suffer like this, but how cannot I not worship a God who has the ability to bless me they way He has?

Job 5:8–9 NASB95

8 “But as for me, I would seek God, And I would place my cause before God; 9 Who does great and unsearchable things, Wonders without number.

The Test of Faith and Love

Both love and faith must be tested, for faith without love drives blind acquiescence, and love without faith will self destruct. So, we find that God allows both to be tested.

1 Peter 1:7 NASB95

7 so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

Deuteronomy 13:3 NASB95

3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

The Test of Gods Leadership Style

This primary area where our loyalty is tested is in the area of Gods leadership style, Gods Fathering style. This goes back to the original test.

Genesis 3:1 NASB95

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

Now, if you read the original command of the Lord, this was not what He said at all. What did God say?

Genesis 2:16–17 NASB95

16 The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

Clearly Satan is twisting Gods words in front of Eve. Doing it in such a way that causes God to look as a manipulating, controlling Father who will do anything to keep His children small, and ensure they will never supersede Him. This is birthed out Satan’s own offense. We read in Isaiah

Isaiah 14:14 NASB95

14 ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’

The question that this test has to answer is simple. “Do you believe that God is good”. If you believe that God is good, then somewhere in this test, this fire of adversity, there God is producing in you good fruit.

Proverbs 25:2 NASB95

2 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.

It is not your job to answer the question “Why” in the midst of adversity; it is your job to answer the question “Where”. Not, why is God, but Where is God. And in order to find God in the midst of adversity you must search for Him, you must stick with Him, remain loyal to Him - rooted in a faith that He is good, and a love for His relationship.

This is the kind of endurance that keeps us close to the heart of God even when we cannot explain the reason for the trial. This is the kind of endurance that is food to a loyal heart. A kind of endurance that forges our love. The love that answers the question: Do we love being in Gods presence, or do we just love the Hawaiian vacation.

The Test of Gods Timing

Another way that we experience the fire of adversity in loyalty is with delayed answers. Why sometimes we don’t get answers, see the miracles we are praying for, or receive the breakthrough we need in the time we feel we need it is well beyond our scope of wisdom. But what I do know is this, in the waiting my faith becomes stronger. In the waiting my prayer life becomes more consistent. But we know also, that in the waiting, the hearts of those disloyal to God are manifested. There is no better place in Scripture to read about this than in the latter years of the reign of King David. David, in all of his might as warrior, and success as a king, a man after Gods own heart, failed to successfully raise up a king after himself. David is old in age, unable to fulfill many of the duties a king should attend to, and his kingdom is beginning to wonder, who is next. I’m not sure that we can appropriately answer the question as to why David delayed in setting in Solomon as his successor, but what we do know is that the delay revealed the disloyal hearts. 1 Kings 1:5 tells the story.

1 Kings 1:5 NASB95

5 Now Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, “I will be king.” So he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen with fifty men to run before him.

Verse seven says that Adojiah conferred with Abiathar the priest, and Joab the commander of Davids army and secretly set himself up as the new King. There was a division in Davids leadership team that David knew nothing about. And this is the fire of delayed answers. Will you remain loyal to God, even when you don’t see God moving? Will you remain faithful to God even when you don’t have an answer, will love Him fully even when His silence is deafening? We rarely know what God is doing in the waiting season:

But after 22 years of slavery, trial, and wrongful imprisonment, Joseph became the prim minister of Egypt.

After 15 years of being tormented by Saul, hunted by his army and hiding in caves, David became King.

After surviving 24 hours in the den of roaring lions, Daniel served King Darius as his trusted advisor.

For the loyal hearted follower of Christ, waiting time is never wasted time, it is only invested time. Because for the loyalist, the waiting only increases the seeking. And our promise from God, through the prophet Jeremiah is this:

Jeremiah 29:13 NASB95

13 ‘You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

Maybe you do not have a personal relationship with God; maybe you are still carrying the anxiety, guilt, and pressure that sin induces in your life. Maybe you are stressed out by trying to navigate life all on your own. Can I assure you; today all of that can end, and you can walk out of this room with hope in your heart? The Bible tells us:

that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 11

Romans 10:9 NASB95

Many people have told me, I don’t want to become a Christian because I can’t keep up that goodie lifestyle. But this verse says nothing about your lifestyle. God is more interested with your heart. If He can get to your heart, He will deal with your actions later.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 11

Romans 6:23 NASB95.

We know that sin leads to death – you’ve felt the sting, and pain of sin. The good news is this, Paul calls God’s gift of life a “free gift”. I want to pray with you right now to receive this gift. If you would say, I want God’s forgiveness, I want to accept this gift of life, I want Jesus to live in my heart, raise your hand so I know who I am praying for.

KEEP YOUR HANDS RAISED HIGH - I HAVE A PRAYER PARTNER COMING TO PRAY WITH YOU

“Heavenly Father, I trust You to save me through Your Son, Jesus. Forgive me for all of my sins. Make me brand new. Because You died for me, I want to live for You. Fill me with Your Spirit, so I could follow You. Jesus, You’re now my Lord and the Savior of my life. Take my life. It is Yours. In Jesus’ name, I pray.”