Newtownards RPC Devotional

Commitment

Commitment is a virtue which people need to have if particular goals are to be achieved. How often, for example, have we heard it said of a Premier League Football Club languishing near the bottom of the League, that its position is due to the lack of commitment on the part of the players? Commitment is important in business life as well. We are all aware of firms that have gone to the wall because the commitment of their staff was not what it should have been. In the work situation it is a fact that many people under achieve because they are not prepared to put in the work necessary.

Lack of commitment is not just peculiar to a person’s work life. How many marriages end in divorce because of the unwillingness of the husband and wife to be fully committed to making their marriage work? Life in the church is also affected by the lack of commitment of its members. In many congregations there are people who are unwilling to put themselves out in the slightest to help the church. With them other much less important activities are given priority to the detriment of their own spiritual lives as well as that of their fellow members and the community at large.

The Bible exhorts us to be committed in many areas of our lives. For example:

	Our loyalty. This could not be spelt out more clearly than it is in Exodus 20:3 " You shall have no other gods before Me". God requires our total commitment to Him. Nothing less is acceptable. We must always give Him the pre-eminent position in our lives. Sadly this is not so for many people. At an important football match in early December between Manchester United and the Portuguese champions Boatvista the following inscription was displayed on a banner hanging over a balcony "Manchester United –the religion". For large numbers of people this is a true reflection of their spiritual state as sport has become to them a religion. It is worshipped in stadia throughout the world. Even Christians are affected. The match on the box on a Wednesday takes precedence over attendance at the prayer meeting. And of course sport is not the only god to which people give their loyalty. It could be money or position or cars or our business or even our homes. What about us? Are we giving allegiance to other gods? Remember God demands that we give Him our total loyalty.
	Our worship. Jesus states in Matthew 22:37 that we are to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind". If we were totally committed to keeping this command our worship would be the most vital thing in our lives. No longer would we be coming to worship purely out of duty or with a feeling of boredom. But we would be enthusiastic to render worship to our God and to hear what He has to say to us. It would be the most important thing in our lives.
	Our prayer life. Prayer is the means by which a person communicates with God. Personal prayer is vital if we are to grow in the Christian faith. But it takes discipline and commitment. Think of the commitment to prayer which some of the great men of the Bible showed. Take Daniel. He prayed three times per day (Daniel 6:10). David also prayed in the evening, in the morning and at noon (Psalm 55:17). What about us? How much time do we give to personal prayer? And what about family worship? The Bible places an injunction on Christian parents that they are to "Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not turn away from it" (Proverbs 22:6). What better place to do this than around the family altar? But family worship takes commitment. It is easy to find what appears to be good and legitimate reasons why it is not possible for us to have family worship. Could it be that we have not the commitment to find time for this most important activity? If we do not have this commitment we are not only short changing our children but experience has shown that the effect of this spills over into the congregation as well as adversely affecting the spiritual lives of the members. This was the experience of those godly preachers of a bygone age, Thomas Boston and Richard Baxter.