Some people refuse to make vows, but in the Bible you will find many great men of God who based their lives on commitments, promises, and vows. King David was not opposed to vows: " O God! I must fulfill the vows I made to you: " he said, " I will offer you thanksgiving. » (Psalm 56:13).
My advice in this matter is that if you are serious about improving your spiritual condition—receiving new power, new life, new joy, and personal revival in your heart—you will do well to make certain vows and keep them. If you should fail, repent in all humility and try again. But you must always keep these vows before you. They will enable you to harmonize your heart with the vast powers that emanate from the throne where Christ sits at the right hand of God.
The carnal man refuses the discipline imposed on him by such commitments. He says, "I want to be free. I don't want to impose any vows on myself. I don't believe in them. They're legalism." Well, if you don't mind, I'll draw a portrait of two men.
One refuses to make wishes. He refuses all responsibility. He wants to be free, and he is, to a certain extent—just like a tramp. The tramp is free to sit on a park bench during the day, sleep on a newspaper at night, get chased out of town on Thursday morning, and manage to take the creaky stairs of a flophouse on Thursday night. Here is a free man, but also a useless one. He takes up space in the world whose air he breathes.
Now let's look at another man—a president, a prime minister, or any great man who carries the weight of government upon himself. Such men are not free. But as they sacrifice their freedom, they increase in power. They could be free, if they were to demand it, just like the tramp. But they choose instead to be bound.
In the world there are many spiritual vagrants who refuse to be bound by anything. The grace of God is for them only license. But the great souls are those who have come before God with reverence knowing that there is nothing good in their flesh; and persuaded that without the ability that God gives, every vow would be broken before sunset. Nevertheless, by faith in God, they have made certain sacred vows. This is the way to attain spiritual power.
There are five wishes I hold dear that we would do well to make and keep…
The first is:
Vigorously fight sin.
These days, sin wears a mask and has a new name and a new face. This is something you might encounter in school, for example. Sin has fancy names—anything but what it really is. For example, it's no longer called conviction of sin, but a guilt complex. Instead of confessing that guilt to God and getting rid of it, they lie down on a couch and try to tell their life story to a man who should have more sense than that. It turns out they were deeply disappointed when they were two years old or something like that. And that's supposed to cure them.
All this is ridiculous, because sin remains the old enemy of the soul. This has never changed. We must vigorously combat sin in our lives. Let us remember this: The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, " said Paul, " but righteousness, peace and joy, in the Holy Spirit " (Romans 14:17). Righteousness is found at the gate of the kingdom of God. The soul that sins is the one that will die » (Ezekiel 18:4, 20).
This is not to preach perfection in the total absence of sin. We are simply saying that every known sin must be named, identified, and rejected, and that we must trust God to deliver us from it, so that there will be no trace of sin in our entire lives. Doing this is absolutely necessary because God is a holy God, and sin reigns supreme in the world.
So don't give your sin another name. If you are jealous, call it jealousy! If you tend to feel sorry for yourself and think that you are unappreciated, that on the contrary you are like a flower born to bloom unseen and to waste your sweetness on the desert air, give it the right name—self-pity!
Then comes resentment. If you have resentment, acknowledge it. I've met people who live in a state of aggravated indignation most of the time. I know a preacher who acts like a hen thrown out of the nest. He runs around clucking and complaining—there's always somebody hurting him. Listen, if you have that spirit, deal with that problem now. You've got to get that out of your life. The blood of Jesus Christ washes away all sin. Instead of covering it up and trying to hide it by some marginal version in the Greek, you've got to call it by its real name, and get rid of it by the grace of God.
Then there is your anger. No, it is not indignation. Don't try to rename it by giving it another name. Call it what it is. For if you are of a choleric temperament, you will either get rid of it, or it will impoverish you spiritually and almost entirely extinguish your joy.
So let us fight vigorously against sin. Let us be perfectly honest. God loves honest people.
Then the second wish is:
Never anything possess.
I'm not saying that you can't have possessions. I mean that you must be free from the sense of possession. It is this consciousness of possession that limits us. All babies are born with their fists clenched, and it seems to me that this means, "This is mine!" One of the first things they say is, "This is mine!" in an angry voice. This sense of possession is very harmful to the mind. If you can get rid of it so that you don't have the sense of possession, your life will be flooded with a great sense of freedom.
Don't think that you have to sell all your possessions to donate them to charity. No, God allows you to have your car and your business, your office and your position, whatever they may be, provided that you understand that in reality, it doesn't belong to you at all, but to Him, and you simply work for Him. Then you can have peace of mind, because you never fear losing someone else's property. If it belonged to you, you would spend your time checking your hands to see if they were still there. If it belongs to God, you no longer have to worry about it.
I'm going to tell you some things you should commit to God. Property is one of them. Some of the Lord's children are limited by the ball and chain they drag around their feet. For a man, it's his big car and his beautiful house. For a woman, it's her china service and her Louis XIV furniture and all the rest. Take this vase, for example; if someone were to drop it and break it, the poor owner would probably lose five years of his life!
to continue….
You must be logged in to post a comment.