Our word

DEVOTION

PROVERBS

OUR WORD

Prov 20:25

25 It is a trap for a man to dedicate something rashly and only later to consider his vows.

NIV

It might be this translation makes holy into something, rather than keeps the original word sacred or holy. In the interlinear it says, “a snare the man devotes holy and after vows to make inquiry”. The meaning is the same in a sense, but the word something leaves God out of the equation. We are thinking this has more to do with making a promise to God then considering whether we are able to keep it. More often than not we are not able to keep any promise to God made rashly. In fact about the only promise we can keep is that we will believe. Then that is sometimes in question. Whenever we try to do something on our own, that is trust in our own education, talents, skills, abilities we might not be trusting in God, which we said we would do. It is not that we even have to say, “I promise” for it to be a vow. Our word is our vow. If we say we are going to do something, which is a vow, a promise to do it. We are as good as our word. So when we tell God we are going to do something, we better do it. But the fact is we fall short all too often and do not follow through with what we said we would do. Sometimes we might even be guilty of using God as our excuse. Not doing what we said, saying something like, “God's leading me into another direction” when it is our own self leading us. We did not consider all the ramifications of what we promised God we would do. It is far better to wait on the Lord, to sit, listening for his leading, then simply get to it, without making any promise to complete it. He knows our heart, he knows we make an effort to comply, but we might not finish it all. We just need to follow his direction. We should not make any attempt to promise him we will complete it. Now that also goes, without saying in our relationships with others. How many have dedicated themselves to something rashly? Without judgement, marriage seems to be one area many have made too rash a dedication only to later consider the promise they made to each other. A promise to a friend, it could be trapping ourselves into more then we bargained for. What this seems to be leading to is the fact that before we make any promise, we should sit down and weight the complete cost of that promise. Of course in the beginning of our journey with the Lord, we made him a promise to trust in Jesus, to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We promised to follow him. That may have been done rashly in some sense. Surely we did not sit and read the whole of the bible and worked through how our life would change being a follower of Jesus. Nevertheless we said we would trust him, we would believe in him, and we would follow him. That is what we said and that is what we will do, even after weighting all the facts. Yet, we also know we will fall short of that at times. How can that be? It is a good thing God is forgiving, many people are not. When we fail people, it can cause a great rift between us and them. We also may well be the cause of their sin, by making a rash promise and then failing to fulfill it. Let us remember our word is our bond, so we should be careful what we say we will do.