When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for He will most certainly require it of you, and a delay would cause you to sin.  Ecclesiastes 5:4

 When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said. – Numbers 30:2

 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. – Ephesians 5:21-22, 28, 31, 33 

 

Promises, Vows, and Prayers

God holds us accountable
For our promises vows and prayers.
He doesn’t expect us to throw them aside
When we find the road holds some snares.
Whenever we make a vow before God,
It is sacred right from the start.
And any time we betray that vow
We also betray God’s heart.
We owe obedience to the Father
We owe loyalty to the Son.
We owe fidelity to the Holy Ghost,
Individually and all as One.

So next time you want to break a vow,
When you think that He’ll understand,
That because you’re no longer happy,
You are asking God to bless a new plan.
Remember our Lord in Gethsemane,
He prayed for another way.
Asked His Father to let the cup pass
Free him from the promise He made.
For he knew the road that lay ahead of Him
Was horrific and never been trod.
But because He trusted the Father
In the end, He acquiesced to God.

Whenever we make a vow to the Lord
It’s a promise as well as a trust.
So breaking the vow would be sinful
As well as unwise and unjust.
So if we choose to dishonor our God
By putting our happiness above our vows
We also dishonor our very faith
As we negate the beliefs we espouse.
©Linda Troxell 01/12/17

 

When we talk about honoring or dishonoring our vows to God, we are almost always referring to marriage vows. And that is a very hot topic. There is hardly any true agreement among Christians about if or when God allows the breaking of marriage vows. Some believe there is never any acceptable reason for divorce. Others believe it is permissible if the marriage is unsafe for one of the partners. Still, others believe that if one or both spouses is very unhappy God would not want them to stay together. That decision is not mine to make and I don’t pretend to know the answer. However, I do know that  Ecclesiastes 5:4 says, When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for He will most certainly require it of you, and a delay would cause you to sin.

But then the law of the land in most, if not all, states here in the U.S. says it takes only one partner to legally dissolve a marriage. That complicates things for the spouse who is trying to keep his or her vow to God. Does that spouse need to continue to behave as if he or she is still married? Or is that spouse now freed from the vow? Again, I don’t know the answers to these questions. When it comes right down to it, the answer can only be found between the individuals and God.

But what about all of the other vows we make to God? Do I hear you asking, “What vows?” “I don’t make other vows to God.” Well, how many times have you said, casually and without thought, “I swear to God…? I’ve never been so hot, or cold, or lonely, or angry, or happy…” Whatever the topic, we often say I swear to God as nothing more than a way to add emphasis to what we are saying. But a sentence that begins with, “I swear to God”, is not a metaphor or a simile or an analogy, it is an oath to God, a vow. And if what follows is not the exact and literal truth or something we intend to do, we have broken a vow to God. And what about the many times we make a bargain with God when we are scared or anxious? For example, have you ever been in an unsafe situation and said to God, “if you get me out of this safely I promise I will…” Only to forget that promise once God delivers you safely?

When I was younger I was married to a man who drank heavily. Almost every time we went out he drank so much he was unable to drive safely. But his pride was much too big for him to allow me to drive. So to avoid a scene, I would get in the car with him. Inevitably, I would get frightened by his driving and I would tell God that if He got me home safely I would never again get in a car with someone who was drunk. Yet, God would get me home safely, and the next time we went out my husband would drink too much and I would get in the car with him, get frightened and ask God to get me home safely with the promise of never doing it again. I must have broken at least 100 vows to God about that topic alone in the 7 years I was married. And I never once wondered how God felt about those betrayals. I didn’t wonder because I didn’t think I was making a vow; I thought I was only saying a prayer. But there is a distinct difference between saying a prayer and making a vow.

When we say a prayer we are having a conversation with God in which we may or may not ask Him for something. However, if we do ask for something from the Lord and make a promise in return, we have gone from prayer to vow. Once we say, “God, if you, then I,” we have sworn an oath. And, as the Bible tells us in Numbers 30:2, “When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said”. This is serious business folks. Most of us have broken dozens, if not hundreds of vows and promises to God in our lifetimes, if only through our ignorance or negligence. And while God may not hold us accountable for the past sins of which we were ignorant, as of this reading, you are no longer unaware of your responsibility to pay heed to your language. From this very minute forward, each of us must make a serious vow to God and ourselves to be more aware of how we use our language. We must be more intent to avoid making promises we do not intend to keep be they to God, ourselves or our fellows.

 

Points for Prayer and Pondering

1. Make a list of the most common ways in which you have completed these sentences: “I swear to God_______.  God, if you will___________, I will_______________.”
2. Think about a time that you casually, and without thought, made a bargain with God that you didn’t intend to keep? Things that sounded like the examples above. Write about one or two of those times and how you might view that differently now.
3. Have you had someone you love make a promise to you that they didn’t keep? Have you had someone you cared about make a bargain with you asking you to do something and promising they would do something for you in return only to fail to follow through? Write about one of those experiences and how you felt when you were betrayed. Try to really go back and relive it, bring up the old hurt and disappointment.
4. When you’ve done the writing for #3, take some time to really think about how God might feel when we take advantage of his love in the same way. Perhaps the next time you are tempted to make an empty promise or casual bargain with God, you will remember this exercise and rethink that plan.