Keeping Our Promises

If you read Tuesday's blog, you know that God wants some surprising things from us. Instead of the sacrificial things that we choose to offer, he says," I don't need those. Thanks anyway but I have everything I need already." This is against the common thinking of the Christian. It is against my thinking, to tell the truth. I love, love, love to be legalistic. Give me a rule, like go to church every Sunday, give 10% to the church, don't drink alcohol, don't do drugs, ...and I can mindlessly follow it. But this verse is telling me that God is not interested in those sacrifices. I am thinking "What in the world does he want?"
He tells us clearly in Psalms 50:14-15. He wants us to truly be thankful for all he has done, fulfill our promises and trust him in times of trouble so he can rescue us and we can give him glory.
Look with me at the second part of this request...fulfill our promises. I had to get up and walk around a lot when I got to this part. I told God that I was really going to look foolish if I could not come to grips with the reason behind that request. I believe the reason that this one is hard to wrap our minds around is because God is far beyond our thinking as far as making a promise and keeping a promise. In the Old Testament, his covenant with David to "always have his descendants on the throne" is mind-boggling. Who else do you know that can guarantee something like that? God makes an amazing promise with Abraham that he would give him so many descendants that they could not be counted. There are entire books written that compile all of the promises that God has made and he keeps every single one!
I think that most of us make very small promises and we keep them, unless we can't because of an unforeseen circumstance or maybe if we just don't feel like keeping that promise anymore. To us a promise is not that big of a deal.
I got to thinking about when does keeping a promise become a big deal to us. I will give you some clues. Think about the last time you saw a romantic movie and the guy goes off to war and promises the love of his life that he will return. He promises her that he will. He is going to keep that promise no matter what and then there is this tearful scene when he returns and he whispers to her,"I promised you I would return." Maybe you have heard a story about a father that promises their child that he will take care of them , no matter what. What do these two situations have in common? Why do you feel like you would keep your promise in these two situations? You probably guessed it...the depth of love that is involved in the person making the promise. The bigger the commitment to keep the promise, the deeper the love is of the promise-keeper. That is why God takes promise keeping so seriously. It shows the depth of his love. Love is dependable, faithful, unchanging. Our love for God should be like that, not up and down, love him only when convenient, etc.
You are probably seeing, like I am, that God is not interested in sacrifices that do not involve our heart. To be truly thankful and really interested in keeping my commitments to "love the LORD my God above all other Gods, to love my neighbor as myself" it will involve my heart. God is wise enough to know that sacrifices can be made without having a changed heart.
When we make a vow to wait on the LORD, to trust him with all our understanding, to let him direct our paths, it will involve a heart sold-out to the LORD. Again, we want to break our promise if we do not see God bringing a mate into out lives on our timetable. This is a heart problem. We decide to not wait any longer on the LORD. Heart problem. Stop trusting him. Heart problem. The solution is to get our heart problem fixed by the "heart-fixer" and not go back to the "meaningless sacrifices."