Years ago, my pastor, a wonderful man and a loving, faithful shepherd to his flock, ended a great conversation between us with words I didn’t see coming. Words that stopped me in my tracks. “I know I can always count on you to be loyal to me, Beth.” Wait wait wait. Define loyal.

NO. No, you can’t. I’d try my hardest to be counted on to be loving, grace-filled, faithful &, God helping me, Holy Spirit filling me, godly. But when loyalty demands dishonesty & what’s perceived as the right end justifies unrighteous means & piety serves as cover for duplicity,

loyalty to man has demanded disloyalty to Christ. I don’t care how it looks from the outside. Don’t care if it looks like rightness won. Sowing to the flesh reaps corruption. Every time. Every time. EVERY TIME. The only means to reaping what’s of the Spirit is sowing the Spirit.

There will be countless times in a lifetime of following Jesus that we will have to face the fact that doing what is right -indeed Christlike- is going to result in loss. And maybe not just our own. These are tests. This is faith. This is the cruciform life.

Where on earth we got Winner Jesus, I do not know. But it was not from the Gospels. This side of God’s kingdom coming and His will being done on earth as it is in heaven, for those taking up our crosses and following Jesus, our winning can look a lot like losing.