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Itai Chapunza
-Continued from last week
In a nutshell, the world will discourage faithfulness to all the things that Christ encourages. Jesus should be at the top of our faithfulness list.
Christ says no sex before marriage, the world says you need practice and get experience, they say I cannot buy a car without doing a test drive. Christ says do not steal, the world says you will never have it if you don’t take it now, Christ says work hard and be faithful, the world says why wait that long if you can take a short cut and have it now.
The world views loyalty and faithfulness as being tied down and deprived from fully exploring the world. This because the kingdom of the devil is characterised by back biting, evil speaking, gossip, planning evil for one another. Unfaithfulness is a characteristic of the devil. It is an evil trait and distance yourself from anyone who shows signs of unfaithfulness if they are unwilling to change.
The devil is opposite of what Christ is. If Christ says go up, the devil will say go down. Since Christ says support the gospel and be faithful in the work of ministry, the devil will say be faithful to the striper pole and avoid these ministry things, they are a waste of time.
But always remember what you give yourself to, gives itself to you a million times more. A friend that is disloyal to their other friends cannot be loyal to you. A friend who loves to discuss their other friends, I can guarantee that they discuss you too in your absence and it is a sign of an evil heart. I learnt this the hard way. I had a business partner and friend in the past, we used to be very close, we would go out drinking beer together, eat together such that people actually thought we were brothers at some point.
He loved discussing other people that he called his friends with me.
The first time this happened I did not immediately condemn it because felt he could never do that to me. Although something in me would insist that this man is doing the same to me. I always ignored it. It went up to a point where people would come to me and tell me what this person was saying.
I then gave it time, just to observe and see if it was really true. I discovered that the same things he used to say to me about his other friends to me, were exactly what he said to them about me in my absence. Before I knew it, this same friend tried to overthrow my business and take it over. I was fortunate that I had begun to observe it and I was not very shocked when they tried to take over my shop.
Do not take disloyalty and unfaithfulness lightly, it is very dangerous. If you are disloyal, change, if you have disloyal friends, distance yourself very quickly if they refuse to change. It’s a cancer that eats up in complete silence. And the signs are always there but we choose to ignore them.
The amazing thing about God is that he always makes sure you see the signs. They are always there. The next time I experienced it was when I got employed at some company as a logistics manager. Everything there was very good apart from one thing.
The person above me in the hierarchy of the company loved to discuss other managers. He always wanted to talk about other managers with me.
He tried to always be alone with me to talk about other workers in the organisation. I immediately corrected this. I told them that I was not interested in other people’s personal lives and work lives that did not in any way affect my job.
He stopped approaching me to talk about other people, and during my time there I watched this same person get into trouble with various people for things he said to another and many other things related to disloyalty. The fortunate thing was that I quickly corrected it, so I was not affected by the fights in who said what.
Teach yourself to work hard at your ministry, work hard at your work place and give yourself completely to the things that are important to Christ.
Practise loyalty all the time, keep promises, if for some reason you will not be able to deliver what you said, communicate. I assure you of a blessing from God Himself, shaken, pressed down and running over.
derick.khumalo