“Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? … [The one] who keeps an oath even when it hurts…” Psalm 15:1,4
One of the biggest challenges of being a Christian in modern, western culture is that there are 100 seemingly innocuous choices every day in which we can express faith in the true God, or a counterfeit.
Some of these decisions are complicated, and involve mining the depths of our motivations and sinful tendencies. Some are much easier, or at least simpler. I have seen many young adults humming and hawing over a decision of whether to follow through on a commitment or not, because of its cost. Perhaps we see our commitment as negligible since we over looked certain details, or we forgot how things would precisely look when it came time to follow through.
As Christians, we are to reflect Christ, and one of the things that God emphasizes about Himself more than anything is that He is a God who keeps His promises. And don’t think that it was easy for Christ to keep His promise because He knew what it would cost Him. Remember the drops of blood in the garden? Remember that carrying through in a commitment that had unforeseen challenges in it demonstrates your trust in God seeing you through these challenges. There are times to apologize and admit your failure when you committed to something unhealthy or damaging in some way. However, we need to consider the beauty of Christ’s faithfulness in keeping His promises, what it would have meant for us if He backed out because it became too hard, and seek to follow in His footsteps.
…After all, isn’t that what a disciple does?
Father, Thank You for being 100% faithful in all of Your promises, so that we can trust all Your breathtaking promises for the future. Please help us to image You in our commitments to each other, whether big or small.
By Thomas Pujol
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