Family Loyalty — The Place of God’s Family

In Week 3 of The Household of God, we explored what Jesus means when He calls us into a new kind of loyalty—one that reshapes our priorities and reorders our lives around the family He gives us. Living in the Bay Area, many of us feel the pressure of full schedules, competing commitments, and constant negotiation of what fits into our week. And yet, when life gets crowded, the relationships we value most have a way of rising to the top. Jesus speaks directly into that reality, inviting us to see that the family of God is not an optional extra but a central part of discipleship.

Together, we looked at passages like Luke 14, Matthew 12, Mark 10, and Hebrews 10 to understand how Jesus reframes family—not by diminishing our earthly families but by expanding them. He shows us that loyalty to Him naturally becomes loyalty to His people, and that belonging to Christ means belonging to His body. The early church saw themselves as true brothers and sisters, a family joined by faith and sustained by the Spirit.

We also acknowledged the honest barriers many of us carry: wounds from churches, strained relationships, fear of commitment, or the subtle idol of prioritizing the nuclear family over God’s larger eternal one. Instead of pushing us away, Jesus meets us in those tensions and invites us into healing, reconciliation, and deeper belonging.

This week, we wrestled together with the question: Have we given the family Jesus forms—the church—the rightful place in our busy, over-scheduled lives? And we considered practical ways we can live as a devoted spiritual household: showing up consistently, carrying one another’s burdens, practicing unity, opening our homes, and becoming “present people” who reflect Christ’s heart through our life together—far beyond Sundays.

As we learn to prioritize God’s family, we discover that we don’t lose anything of value—we gain a hundredfold community, shared joy and sorrow, and a family that points us toward eternity.