Keeping Your Vows

"I will enter Your house with burnt offerings; I will pay You my vows that my lips promised and my mouth spoke during my distress." [Ps 66:13-14]

In times of distress people make all kind of promises to God. They bargain with Him saying if He will deliver them out of their distresses they will do this or that. While most of the time those vows are quickly forgotten by the men and women who made them God takes them more seriously.

Many years ago I preached a youth camp in July of 2001. I had preached several camps that summer and had not been home for some time. I will never forget the vow I made to God on July 28, 2001. I have referred to it often. I made that vow in some degree of distress. Yet that vow has governed my life, family, and ministry for the past twelve years.

I will not go into all the story. On that day I made a vow to God that I would go anywhere to do anything at anytime He called me. That vow has caused me to live my life on the altar of God. Because of that vow people have misunderstood me and my motives. They have not been able to see that my vow to follow God and obey Him regardless of logic or personal sacrifice governs my life. I will pay my vow I made to the Lord in the day of my distress.

On that day I made a promise to God. He has taken me up on it and I can tell you it has not always been easy. In fact there have been many times over the past twelve years I have felt like breaking the vow. Yet God has sustained me to keep it. While life in ministry has brought more joy, adventure, blessings, and delight than I could ever put into words, I can say on the other hand, there have been numerous trials, heartaches, sorrows, and heavy burdens also.

A vow is a vow regardless of trials, tragedies, or triumphs. When I stood at the altar and made a vow to Brenda and God on our wedding day that meant when we were young and when we are old. That means when we have abundance or when we live in leans times the vow remains.

So it is with God. Vows made in distress are binding. I wish many times I had a normal life. I wish my kids could of started and graduated in the same school with the same group of friends. I wish Brenda and I could have stayed in one church and in one house for the past twenty-one years of our marriage. Yet the vow to follow God anywhere to do anything at anytime has been binding and has guided all we have done. From leaving east Texas to follow God's call to Paradise, then to Seminole, and back to Paradise to start a church. I no longer take guesses at what the future holds. I obey from day to day knowing God has every right to call me from places of comfort and security to follow Him.

What vows have you made to God? Do they govern your life? We should take our vows to God very seriously. God does.