Doing what you said you would do

Imagine how difficult this is between things we have agreed on – but imagine an agreement that we have made with God.

Many of us did just that during the preparation prior to Easter – getting our hearts and lives ready to come into the Easter season celebrating the sacrifice of Jesus to give His life, to die – be buried – and rise again on the third day.

I think that just like our New Year’s resolutions, our vows or oaths or commitments that we declared get messed up a bit and we lose our way.

Because I am one that has found myself doing the same, I am very aware of the opportunity to lie or be a hypocrite when it comes to the fulfilling of my promises to God. Knowing how I have failed God in my relationship with Him, keeps me from doing such rash vows and promises.

That is why I stopped with making my own promises – that seemed to be always contrary to the will and mind of God, and ended up not bringing glory to God, to other followers of Christ, to the Church, to myself or the people involved in my promise. Now I wait for God to call me to something and when He calls I then respond.

For example, this New Year, God called me to fast for 21 days and offer the year to Him.  I did and I can tell you that I was never hungry in those 21 days and never broke the fast at all.

I pray that your time of commitment during this Easter season has been more of a spiritual journey called of God into your life and that you are enjoying the preparation of your heart towards the things of God.

Related articles

• Lent: Recognizing God’s Providence in the Midst of the Desert (themissionlife.wordpress.com)
• Jesus Is Risen (godslovevisible.com)

Happy New Year!

Praying that you have as much hope and enthusiasm for the New Year – I sense with anticipation that this will be a year of adventure and trust that I will have much to learn and therefore much to share.

This year I want to focus on life – my understanding of life is that we are given this as a gift and then given the responsibility of stewarding life on earth, in the skies and in the seas.

For sure, I am not joining the bandwagon of emotional dialogue that ranges from our Greenpeace friends to our Mennonite friends to our global warming enterprises.

I am looking for something different – looking for God‘s intent when He made us stewards – responsible managers of things that really matter.  He gave us the wisdom, a relationship with Him, all the tools required to do the job right – so what does that look like?

My fear is always when confronted with the truth that is not the norm in our culture – will I pursue truth or bend to culture or worse, be apathetic.  Hence this is my accountability factor – to share with you each day so that I say the truth – then ask God to make it real in my life.  That is why I believe that this year will be an adventure.

I have only two rules I am following this year.

1. Love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength

2. Love my neighbour as myself

Lord, I give you this year, 2012, make it count, make a difference, let me be part of your plan and give the courage to do what needs to be done.