LORD, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?… [He] who keeps an oath even when it hurts. Psalm 15:1, 4 (NIV)
Sometimes people think their problem is with faith, when actually their problem is with commitment. Maybe that’s you. You have a problem in the area of commitment. But it isn’t just that you have difficulty in committing to Christ, you have difficulty committing to anything. Your doubts have their root in the will, not in the mind, and the only way your doubts can be answered is through a wholehearted, unreserved, irreversible decision.
Imagine this common scenario. A teenager becomes bored with a sport, so she decides to quit. Her mother asks her, “Didn’t you commit to your teammates and coaches that you would play with them for the entire season?”
“Maybe.” She pauses. “I mean, yes.”
“Well, you can quit at the end of the year,” her mom says.
She most likely won’t like sticking it out for the remainder of the year, but doing so will build character. If we do not cultivate the capacity of commitment in small things, we will not have the capacity of commitment in large things.
We live in a society that discourages commitment. Couples rationalize, “We want to live together, but we don’t want to marry.” Busy people say, “We will be there, if we’re able.”
A culture of half-hearted loyalties can very quickly begin to shape who you are. One college student commented about her relationship with the Lord, “I take my commitment on a day-to-day basis. I see what the day brings, and I go with what I feel.”
Can you read between the lines? She really has no commitment. She determines her decisions by the way the wind is blowing.
Make a list of things you have given up on.
