While taking the church school group on a specially arranged field trip to a minimum-security penal farm in Vandalis, Illinois, I noticed some thought-provoking posters for the employees. The messages were very apt, and they can be applied beneficially to the ministry.
Loyalty
If you work for a man, in Heaven's name work for him.
If he pays you wages that supply your bread and butter, work for him, speak well of him, and stand by him, and stand by the institutions he represents.
If put to a pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify, condemn, or eternally disparage, resign your position.
But as long as you are a part of the institution, do not condemn it. If you do, you are loosening the tendrils that hold you to the institution, and by the first high wind that comes along, you will be uprooted and blown away; and probably you will never know why.
Our loyalty to God, His cause, His church, and His leadership should be such as will remain firm and undaunted. To stand resolutely in absolute loyalty to the remnant church is the pillarlike position every pastor must take. With harassment of insidious insinuations and innuendoes from within and without, the church will not get better, but only worse, as time continues. God's sentinels must remain stalwart in their loyalty.
Hear the voice of God: "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." Those who are controlled by the Spirit of God are to keep their perceptive faculties awake; for the time has come when their integrity and loyalty to God and to one another will be tested. Do not commit the least injustice in order to gain an advantage for yourselves. Do unto others, in small matters as well as in great, as you would that others should do unto you. God says, "Ye are my witnesses." You are to act in My place.—Sons and Daughters of God, p. 164.
Where do God's men receive greater portions of the attribute of loyalty?
All who will gather warmth from the coldness of others, courage from their defections, and loyalty from their treason, will triumph with the third angel's message.—Ibid., p. 201.
God and His church have been so very good to us. First of all, we have been chosen to be His full-time servants, and then generously supplied with the needs of life so that we can give our complete attention and time to the work He has called us to do. Our hearts should be overflowing with gratitude. Let us stand faithful and true to all that God, His church, His leadership, stands for.
