Keep Your Word

When I saw that my devotional topic was on “Keeping Your Word” I wasn't sure what I was suppose to write about, but then the vows that four others and I had made on the day our baptism day came to my mind, and I thought this would go well with the command to "Keep Your Word".

At our church we have it that before the pastor baptizes us, he asks us 5 questions to which we either answer “I do” or I am”. As I was preparing for this devotional I reviewed the vows which I had made that day before family, friends and strangers, and I began to realize I had made a great start by making those vows, but then had just brushed them off. Two of the vows that really astounded me as I reread them were:

1. “Are you truly sorry for your past sins, and are you willing to renounce Satan, the world and all works of darkness, and your own will and sinful desires?”

My Answer: “I am.”

2. “Do you promise by the grace of God, and the aid of the Holy Spirit, to submit yourself to Christ and His Word, and faithfully to abide in the same until death?”

My Answer: “I do.”

Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 says,

When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

All I can do is ask for God’s mercy and say I am sorry for my neglect in keeping my word. I know that the first few years of my Christian life did not align with my vows. Praise God that it does not need to stay this way!

When I think of the verse “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (Matthew 5:37), I must honestly say I didn’t know exactly what this verse meant, but I thought of it this way, anything God asks us to do is “Yes", anything the world asks us to do is a “No". This means there is no room for “maybe’s" or “I don‘t know's".

How many vows have you and I made that God is waiting for us to fulfill that He might bless?

You know, even for me this looks like a lot of homework, but I love the “by the grace of God” and “aid of the Holy Spirit” in the second vow I made. It is not on our own that we will get anywhere, but by the “grace of God” and the “aid of the Holy Spirit” that we will.

--Evangelyn Kornelson