Commitments are part of all our lives. There are many situations that require temporary commitments and some require life long. Depending on the situations or individuals involved the type of commitment varies. For example, in a relationship such as marriage the commitment is more serious then on a repair job on a vehicle or home. In a friendship the commitment is more serious then in an engagement to go shopping for clothing. Too often we find ourselves juggling between commitments and their priority. We find ourselves placing in higher priority things that do not merit such stature and lowering the things that are important. It was such in the times of Jesus and the religious individuals where they confessed to have high priority certain things but their actions said otherwise. The religious people in Jesus’ time found themselves swearing oaths towards commitments. Anytime we find ourselves swearing toward an engagement or a commitment the impression is that we normally do not keep our commitments.<\/p>\n
Matthew 5:33<\/p>\n
33\u00a0<\/sup>\u201cAgain, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, \u2018Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.\u2019<\/span><\/span> 34\u00a0<\/sup>But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God\u2019s throne;<\/span><\/span> 35\u00a0<\/sup>or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King.<\/span><\/span> 36\u00a0<\/sup>And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.<\/span><\/span> 37\u00a0<\/sup>All you need to say is simply \u2018Yes\u2019 or \u2018No\u2019; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Our word should be good enough; when we say that we are going to do something, simply saying yes should be enough. When someone has to ask you several times “are you sure that you are going to make it?” has two implications. First, that that person has been let down so many times that they need to be reassured. \u00a0This father had two sons and he asked both to go to the land to work one said yes and did not go and the other said no but he went (Mt. 21:8). Commitments require a positive reaction even when a negative response is present. This father knew his kids and probably was used to having one say yes and never go and having the other committed to his commitments. In the old times if someone brought an offering unto the Lord it became holy and was not to be changed (Le.27:9-10), a commitment should not be altered (Nu. 30:2). What causes us to break out commitments and become full of broken promises? Isn’t it others who have let us down with their broken promises.<\/p>\n The hardest thing is to keep a commitment even if it hurts. Have you ever found yourself in a jam with a commitment? A commitment that after you thought about it it was had to fulfill is the hardest to keep. David understood this concept of hard to keep commitments (Ps. 15:1-4). Hard to keep commitments relate to the principal of eternal life, in order to be accepted into the kingdom of heaven we need to practice integrity.\u00a0As Stephen Covey points out, \u201chonesty is making your words conform to reality. Integrity is making reality conform to your words.\u201d All the things we work for become at risk when we are not to be committed,\u00a0Solomon said “The integrity<\/b> of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity” (pr. 11:3).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Commitments are part of all our lives. There are many situations that require temporary commitments and some require life long. Depending on the situations or individuals involved the type of commitment varies. For example, in a relationship such as marriage the commitment is more serious then on a repair job on a vehicle or home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-september"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}