Commitment Series

I remember well how when Christy and I were engaged, she used to say to me, “Promise me right now that you will never, ever, ever cheat on me.” That was a fear of hers. She had infidelity in her family background and was really freaked out about this and needed that reassurance. And so I said to her what any loving fiancé would say who cares about his girl and wants her to feel loved and secure. I said, “How am I supposed to know right now what choices I will make in the future? There are no guarantees, darling.”

Now my intention here was just to be honest. I mean, how ARE you supposed to make guarantees about what you will and will not do in the future? Whether I should have said this to my fiancé or not (okay, I definitely shouldn’t have said it!), it kind of makes sense. I mean you don’t KNOW what you’ll do twenty years from now – do you? There are no guarantees, are there?

Of course not. But there’s more of a guarantee than you might think. The guarantee begins with commitment itself. In this case, it would have begun with my looking deeply into Christy’s eyes and saying, “Sweetheart – I love you. And I promise I will never, ever cheat on you.” That’s a commitment. But there’s a second part to that commitment – that’s keeping it. It’s easy to make a commitment, but it’s much harder to keep it. Why? Because you can make a commitment as the person you are now – but keeping a commitment requires you to become a certain kind of person down the road. I can commit to Christy that I will never, ever cheat on her. That’s an easy commitment to make. But if I’m going to keep that commitment, then I must immediately begin cultivating the characteristic of faithfulness. In other words, after making a commitment, I must then intentionally become the kind of person who will be capable of keeping that commitment.

See, it IS possible to know what you are going to do in the future. You simply make a commitment, and then you begin taking the steps that will lead you, slowly but certainly, to become the kind of person who is capable of keeping the commitment you made. Every married person sitting in this congregation tonight who has been faithful to your spouse – you have, so far, managed to become the kind of person who is capable of keeping that commitment. Because temptations will come to all of us. The question is when they come, will we be capable of recognizing them and responding to them in appropriate ways that guard the commitment we have made?

We see in scripture a couple of examples of people making a commitment that they simply were in no position to keep.

Matthew 26:31-35 (NIV)

31 Then Jesus told them, "This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: "’I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’

32 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee."

33 Peter replied, "Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will."

34 "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times."