Loyal Love

Today we are looking at an essential aspect of love that is undervalued in our Western culture. We are looking at loyal, faithful, committed love. We all know that we need people who will always be there consistently in their love and care for us. We need people who we can trust and lean on. Who we can talk to and sort things out with, in a safe way. We need a love that lasts through everything. Yet, in our world today, just through how society works, we are being taught to throw something out when it isn’t working. We are taught to follow our feelings, even when they lead us to hatred, abandonment, and inaction. We are taught to go after what makes us feel good, or is entertaining, or what is newest, prettiest, and best. You might be thinking that these things don’t always relate to love, but sadly, in that, you would be wrong. Jesus tells us that how we are faithful with the little things will show how we will be faithful with a lot. 

So first, our great need for faithful loyal love. Can you remember a time in your life when you really trusted someone and you knew they would love you no matter what? Do you remember how that love and trust affected you when you moved out in the world? When I was a kid I was lucky to have that love from my parents and even though I was failing at school,  bullied, and bad at sports, there was a degree to which these things didn’t matter. I had something that would last and hold me through all of this. This love didn’t just help me survive, it helped me to get beyond and overcome. Thanks to my family and God’s immense help, I overcame these weaknesses. When things go wrong, and things will go wrong in life, we need a love that doesn’t. This loyal love goes beyond this though, because it sees the good, the lovable in us, even when we can’t. It seeks our redemption and restoration, even when we have nothing else to give. It holds us up when we can barely move on our own.

Living out this loyal love is hard though. It takes personal sacrifice as we put aside, at least for a moment, our feelings, our desires, our hopes, even our bodies, and more. Most married couples will understand this. One thing I say to almost every couple I prepare for marriage is “the good warm or passionate feelings of love won’t always be there. What a relationship needs to last is a committed love that acts out love even when we don’t feel it or when it is hard. 

We see that same reality in the story of Ruth. Naomi is an Israelite woman who had two sons. When they moved to Canaan, her sons married two Canaanite women. Sadly, Naomi’s husband and two sons died and she had nothing left. She decided to travel back to Israel and see if she could depend on her family or people. Naomi tried to tell her two daughters-in-law to go and depend on their families because she couldn’t give them anything. From a worldly perspective, she had nothing to give. She didn’t have any wealth, obvious connections, or good prospects and she was getting old. All Naomi had left to give was herself, and ultimately her relationship with God. We know how great these can be, but even still in life we can forget them or miss them. We can turn away from a stranger, a friend, or even a family member when it isn’t easy or they don’t seem to be helping us. That’s what one of Naomi’s daughters-in-law did. Yet one, Ruth, saw what was true and good in love. She had a loyal love when all she had in return was Naomi and hope. 

Sometimes, that is all we have or can see in our relationship with God too. When everything is going wrong in our life, when our prayers don’t seem to be answered, when we don’t see the way forward, it can be easy to turn away from God and go to those things which we think we can depend on. Actually, the same is true in our good times. When things are going well and the world seems to be offering us everything we need, it can be easy to turn away from the God who provided, remained, and supported us in loyal love. In the good times and the bad times, we need to be showing our loyal love for God just for who he is. It also helps that he is the God of hope that leads us out of the bad times and he is the God of goodness that gives life and substance to the good times

Practicing loyal love by acting on it and holding on is actually really good for us too and not just for the other person. We have already seen this in our relationship with God to some degree, but God goes deeper. He tells us to keep knocking, to keep searching, to keep calling out to him - why? Because he will respond. Jesus says, “who here if a child asks for a fish would give him a snake, if a child asks for bread would give him a stone, or an egg would give him a scorpion”. No one. We might not give them exactly what they are asking for but we would give them something good, right? Matteo might ask for a cookie or even a rock, and I might give him a strawberry instead. God is better than all of us, all parents, all our goodness, so won’t he give even better than what we would? Do we trust this enough to loyally seek after him?

The interesting thing is that all God has to give us is himself. After all of this talk about prayer, asking for forgiveness, bread, support, and more. Jesus ends it by saying, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” More than anything God wants to give us himself. He wants to give us his presence, his life, and his love. This is all he has to give, because nothing else comes without it. As long as we are alive, we already have some of it as he gives us his life, but he wants to give us so much more of himself. He wants to fill us with Holy Spirit so that we are overflowing with his life, love, power, glory, joy, peace and so much more. God wants to give us himself because he knows that everything else comes from that. We need to be consistent in loyally seeking him out and loving him, or else we aren’t open to or able to receive him. 

We need to practice loyal love for the people around us too, because it is good for us. When I first came to Toronto I had a hard time because I had left a lot of great and rich friendships; some of the first deep friendships I ever had. We need a deeper knowing love and the only way to get there is to stay. How will someone ever get to know you, unless you stay, spend more time with them, and are willing to give them parts of yourself? We don’t find the richness of a relationship unless we invest in them. We know through what Jesus did on the cross that God can bring even more good through the brokenness than we can imagine. With God’s help, Naomi and Ruth found redemption together, in the hardest time of their lives, a redemption that would lead to King David and Jesus - they needed that loyal love.

This brings me to an essential thing we all need to realize: God seeks us for us - there is nothing else we can give him because everything else is his anyway. God is loyal love. He is faithfulness. What is prayer but this amazing invitation by Jesus to turn to God at any moment, in any place and God will be there to converse with you. No one else in life can offer such generous and loyal love. God loves you for who you are, who you are deep down, who he created you to be - he will never stop loving you for that. God loves you not for what you have done, he loves you for you. He loves you despite what you have done - what else is forgiveness? What else was the cross? God loved us while we were still enemies. 

Loyal love should challenge us to live in a certain way. We see this in the Lord’s Prayer and the story of the persistent host. When we meet the loyal love of our Father in heaven, we should want his name to be haloed and kept holy, we should want his kingdom to come and be known, and we should want his will to be done. What else would be better than a world that looked up to, made a king of, and followed such a loyal love as our Gods? When meet a God who forgives us and mercifully feeds us despite everything, how much more should we want to forgive others for the little they have done to us? When God comes to stay as an honored guest, shouldn’t we adamantly look for ways to take care of and serve him, even if that means bothering a neighbor? When we are called by God to serve someone, shouldn’t we adamantly seek his help? God’s immense and loyal love calls us to practice that same love and live in it for our and others' good. 

Loyalty, commitment, and faithfulness are essential qualities of a godly and good love. This does not mean that faithfulness is easy, but it does mean that it is good. It is good because it leads to deeper and richer relationships with one another and God. It leads us to experiencing and live out a better world. It leads us most importantly to desire and love the person for themselves. A loyal love for God means that we desire him and he will give us his Holy Spirit. There is no greater thing we could ever receive. AMEN