Loyalty

(A year later, and there never was a more loyal pup! We love you Sophie!)
When I hear the word loyalty, for some reason I always think of a dog-man's best friend...chew up your favorite pair of shoes, yell at them, ignore them, take away their toys/bones-but yet they always come back, loving still, if not more. Sophie may do some silly things that really set me over the edge, trying my patience, but it doesn't matter how loud I yell in my scary voice or how bad my hair looks when I get up in the morning, she gives me kisses and is always excited to see me when I come home, with a cute little wag of her tail. I think the world would stop if for some reason Sophie wasn't excited to see me-it's just what she does, it's how she was made.

I also feel like this is how God is when it comes to His children, us. We may make some really weird decisions and try His patience with phases we may be going through-but it doesn't matter one bit, we're still loved just as much and there's nothing that can change that...ever.

Today's devotion in Utmost was again I feel written for me, if there's ever a time I feel like I'm being spoken to again-it's now.

The Test of Loyalty

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God." Romans 8:28

"It is only the loyal soul who believes that God engineers circumstances. We take such liberty with our circumstances, we do not believe God engineers them, although we say we do; we treat the things that happen as if they were engineered by men. To be faithful in every circumstance means that we have only one loyalty, and that is to our Lord. Suddenly God breaks up a particular set of circumstances, and the realization comes that we have been disloyal to Him by not recognizing that He had ordered them; we never saw what He was after, and that particular thing will never be repeated all the days of our life. The test of loyalty always comes just there. If we learn to worship God in the trying circumstances, He will alter them in two seconds when He chooses.

Loyalty to Jesus Christ is the thing that we "stick at" today. We will be loyal to work, to service, to anything, but do not ask us to be loyal to Jesus Christ. Many Christians are intensely impatient of talking about loyalty to Jesus. Our Lord is dethroned more emphatically by Christian workers than by the world. God is made a machine for blessing men, and Jesus Christ is made a Worker among workers.

The idea is not that we do work for God, but that we are so loyal to Him that He can do His work through us-"I reckon on you for extreme service, with no complaining on your part and no explanation on Mine." God wants to use us as He used his own Son.

My favorite excerpt from this passage is "If we learn to worship God in the trying circumstances, He will alter them in two seconds when He chooses." How humbling to know that we don't have the power to control our lives and how comforting to know that our best interests are being looked after. While I again was upset by the fact that I didn't get my job, I am more uplifted at the idea that I wasn't placed somewhere I wasn't supposed to be and that all things work together for good to them that love God.