Committed dependability to a person or goal. “…there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Proverb 18:24
Loyalty is unswerving allegiance. It means that you are loyal to someone or something. You are going to be dependable, and you will be trustworthy.
A lot of us have a dog whom we love very much. I think of my dog and know he is loyal to me/us….way more than I can even say about many people I know. My Boogie is the greatest and most loyal dog I have ever had. They just love us for us. Isn’t that how we should be with people as well? We just love them for them.
We are to always be loyal to God no matter what we see in our life for God is perfect and His ways are what we are to follow. Oh, how we should also be loyal to our Christian family as well. We should esteem others better than ourselves and want good for them, encourage them, and bless them. Many people are so jealous of what someone has it is like they go out of their way to be disloyal instead of loyal.
The Bible tells us, as believers, to be faithful, loyal, dependable, and committed. Are we being that? We should show loyalty in our home, our church, and our job (actually doing our job and not trashing our job or our boss). Good intentions are not always enough. Be loyal! When we are loyal people can depend on us and the loyal person is more important than silver or gold.
God is “the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” ( Deuteronomy 7:9). God is loyal to us even when we are not loyal to Him, and His loyalty is so much a part of His character that He wouldn’t be God without it (2 Timothy 2:13). Shouldn’t loyalty be part of our character as well? Of course it should!
As people, we long to have friends and family who are on our side no matter what we do, but that never means that they have to go along with our bad decisions, or in us doing wrong. It must be hard though when we look around and see people who say they love and care for us…who are not loyal. Yet our desire for undying loyalty stems from our need to be in a relationship with God who really did die out of loyalty and love for us. God is always loyal to us even when we are not loyal to Him. We need to change that in our life.
God pledges His love to all people, even those living in rebellion to Him (Romans 5:8). We see this primarily in the fact that He made the way of salvation available and extends the offer to all (2 Peter 3:9; Acts 4:12; Galatians 3:24–29). Anyone who puts his or her faith in Jesus Christ will be saved (John 3:16–18; Ephesians 2:8–9). That does not mean we say we have faith in Him but don’t really. Even the devil believes in Jesus. God sees our hearts and knows when we are lying as to do we really love Him.
Nothing that a believer in Christ does, nor anything that is done to us, can cause God to stop loving us (Romans 8:35–39). He always loves us, He is always with us, and He is always for us, which causes us to ask, “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). God is always here for us but because we live in a fallen world and make wrong choices we need to go to God and confess our sins and repent/turn from them. God is perfect and God always sees our motives for what we do. We can’t con God so why not just start doing things the right way???
The Bible also speaks highly of loyalty between friends (Proverbs 17:17). Other than Jesus Christ, arguably no one in the Bible lived out this kind of loyalty better than Ruth. Ruth stayed with her mother-in-law, Naomi, even after her husband died, and supported her. She could easily have returned to her home and her own family, and was even encouraged to do so by her mother-in-law. When Naomi told her she had nothing left to give her, Ruth pleaded with her, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Though not related, Ruth was loyal to Naomi, and God blessed her greatly for this with a new husband and a great-grandson who became the most celebrated king of Israel. This is how we are to be to those we love and care for as well. Are we doing that? There are many people in the Bible that show us, by example, loyalty! Let us learn lessons by examples of loyalty in the Bible.
Now think of the most loyal person that was ever born on earth…Jesus!!! While loyalty in friendship is wonderful and stimulating, the most important loyalty in anyone’s life is to Christ, the one who loved us so much that He died so that we could have abundant life (John 10:10; 14:6; 1 Peter 2:21–25).
Jesus asks for our loyalty, above our spouse, above our children and parents, above our friends, above our country, and above any other cause, including our own lives (Luke 14:26–27). Are we willing to give God our loyalty? Are you sure of that? While loyalty to people is good, loyalty to our God will bring the most life to ourselves and those around us. We must always make sure that our loyalties are in the right order: love God, then love people. If we do this, then the other areas of our lives will be in right order (Matthew 22:36–40).
Your life is very important to God. Loyalty is one of the things that we are to be. Without loyalty who and what are we? How can we expect anyone to be loyal to us if we are not loyal to them? We want God’s best for our life and Him to be there for us, but are we there showing Him how much He means to us? This is an area of our life that we all need to work on.
When your family and friends are disloyal to you how does that make you feel? Now turn that around and how do you think they feel when you are not loyal to them? Let us each grow in this area and do more to be more loyal in our life.
Now, may the Lord bless you, keep you, draw you to Him, guide your life, heal your body, bless your finances (not your greed’s), and may He give you His peace.
God bless you!