We expect everything to be easy, nothing wrong with that
expect we want it abundant rewards with minimum effort.
G.K. Chesterton (A
writer) once said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.
It has been found difficult, and left untried.”
Being a committed Christian is not easy, especially in this
modern age world, because following God involves sacrifice, effort and devotion.
Being a young person makes it harder because the world we live in is so
competitive and fast paced. (Exercise machine that only require “15 minutes a
day”) We would rather like to have spiritual growth plans that work with “once
a week on a Sunday”; but the truth is God requires us to be devoted to him
throughout the week, constantly looking to him and living a life that satisfies
him.
But when you really look at it, we really don’t have time!
Forget setting apart time for God, we can’t even afford to set apart time for
ourselves! Fortunately for us God knows our every NEED and he promises that he
will provide everything we NEED when we look for him and look to glorify him.
Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God,
and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Example from the Bible;
Life of Abraham is commitment through faith: He was promised
a great nation if he left his place and went so he went and he faced a famine. God
promises him children as much as the stars and the sands.
He was 99
years old then when he got a son he was over 100 and then god tells him to kill
the son
You would
think God is being funny but he had faith and through that came commitment Abraham
never even got to see God's promise of a great generation... it happened after
he died.
But still he
committed himself towards God, he could have given up when he hit 98, I mean
pretty logical thing to do… he had that choice, we never read in the Bible that
God said to Abraham: go to the land I show you or you shall surely die if you
don’t do what I say!
I believe
commitment is a choice we make, a promise we make to ourselves and to God, the
only two people from who we can never hide from! The only two people that see’s
you without your mask, and in our case as Christians we need to be deeply
committed to Christ, because once we make that commitment Saten will do
everything to make us wonder off that commitment and worse justify the cause of
wondering off course! So we need to a solid foot set down for good!
But how are we
to know that our commitment to God will be honoured? All of the commitments we
make should flow from the commitment God has first made to us. Once God
committed himself to our highest good, his will toward us was sealed. God tells
us that he is committed to all who are in Christ, and that our relationship
with him will last forever. Jeremiah 31:31-36 shows us the covenant
of commitment the Lord made with his people:
Jeremiah 31:31-3: “The time is coming,”
declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their
forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because
they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
“This is the covenant I will make with the
house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in
their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be
my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother
saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them
to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and
will remember their sins no more.”
This is what the Lord says, he who appoints
the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who
stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name: “Only
if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will the
descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.”
The ultimate
basis for security and significance in life relates to commitment (security)
and to how long something will last (significance). In these six verses, God
provides for his people a sense of both security and significance – a sure word
that his commitment to them will never fail.
In spite of the
rebelliousness of the people of Judah, the Lord assured them through the
prophet Jeremiah that he was committed to their ultimate good. Judgment was
inevitable because they had flagrantly violated God’s commands, but the prophet
looked beyond this impending condemnation to a time of consolation. There will
be a faithful remnant, and God’s people will eventually enjoy the blessings of
forgiveness and complete renewal.
In this
covenant, God commits himself to the welfare of the house of Israel and Judah
and predicts a time when they will all know him and when his law will be
written on their hearts. (Jeremiah
29:11) “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’
declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you
hope and a future”.
For God to work in
our lives (plans to prosper us), we need to be committed and trusting in the
Lord to let him work in our lives for our own on.
What does
commitment look like in a leader, and how can we practice it? Jesus reveals his
standard of deeper commitment in Matthew’s Gospel:
Matthew 16:24-26: Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would
come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For
whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me
will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet
loses his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?
Jesus spoke
these words to his disciples, but they still call us to action today. Through
these living words, Jesus makes it clear that he requires total commitment of
his followers. He said that unless one commits everything, one loses
everything. For the Christian leader, that commitment must remain strong until
the end of our earthly walk.
And he portrayed
it in his life; at the garden of Gethsemane Jesus had all the right in the
world to wake away from all that pain, he didn’t have to go through with it…
after all he was human in the flesh! But he was committed to his fathers will
because nothing else mattered to him, he was committed to die!
In conclusion;
Christian faith is based on commitment to God and him service. We have to
reflect that commitment in our day to day life, be it in our work place with
integrity, at our schools with obedience, in our relationships with commitment
the most important relationship being with Jesus Christ.
