Loyalty and Its Cost

Is it wrong to want others to like us, to value us and respect us?  Should it not be a noble goal to have people speak highly of us at our funeral, for them to have fond memories of our life and testify of what a good and generous person we were?  So do we leave the path of rightness if it matters to us what sort of reputation we have developed and we care about the popularity we acquire?  Jesus insisted that if we follow Him there will be those who hate us and reject us because of Him.  Does that possibility frighten us?  Are we disturbed by how the Gospel in us is received?  When Christ works His way through our personality, it is not a trifling matter.  It is revolutionary; as upsetting as the day the colonies declared independence from England; as chaotic as when the realization strikes us that our children really are adults and no longer ours to keep in place.  The supernatural effect of the Cross is that the Lord Jesus Christ becomes Lord over one dealing after another and it will crack the care-free web of interacting we have built.  God’s peace does not please everyone.  Hope does not make everyone happy.  Holiness is frightful to many…so is kindness, generosity and mercy.  The world is not ready for a Christian man or woman who fully intends to let God live through the complete personality.  It will jar plenty; stun and mystify enough of the crowd to send some shivers down our spine.  You will not be prepared for being hated because Christ lives through you.  It will seem to you that God should have worked that out in advance; that if you are reworked by the Holy Spirit, He will make the path clear of boulders and thorn bushes for you.  But He won’t.  Just as the seedling needs the pushback of the soil to make it prosper and grow strong, you need the opposition of friends and family to develop spiritual backbone.  You are to be strong and mighty in God and it must be steady she goes for you as you gain some of the circle of isolation Christ faced.  Let Christ be the center of all you are becoming and soon enough you will be able to love those who hate you and let your critics have their say without being perturbed.  In the darkness of strained and ruined relationships, the light of Christ will shine brightly enough to guide your way through to the other side of the dismay you feel.  Just don’t let your attempts at realizing yourself be the instigator for your conflicts.  You are not, and forever will not be your own.  It is you and the love of Christ in all you do now.  Let Him have His way in your visceral response to broken humanity…in particular the part of that humanity living next door to you…or in your house.

Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.   Jude 21 NIV