Dr. Ron Sumners
January 22, 2006
Covenant Prayer is a profound interior heart call to a Christ-filled life. It leads us to the crossroad of personal decision. It guides us through the valley of sacred commitment. It beckons us up the pathway of holy obedience.
The essence of Covenant Prayer is captured in the confession of the Psalmist: "My heart is fixed, 0 God, my heart is fixed" (Psalm 57:7). At the altar of covenant prayer, we vow unswerving allegiance; we make high resolves; we promise holy obedience.
I can well imagine that you almost instinctively draw back from all this language of commitment. I draw back from it too. Why is this?
First, many people today are simply not very good at commitments of any kind. In the culture of today, commitment means responsibility and responsibility sounds confining. Whether it is Christianity, marriage, or a car loan, we are a culture that does a poor job with commitment.
It is common, in our day, to define freedom as the complete absence of restraint. Once we think about it, we realize how ridiculous this idea really is. Absolute freedom is absolute nonsense!
We gain freedom in anything through commitment, discipline, fixed habit, and hard work. The great Greek orator Demosthenes was free to be a great speaker, who could be heard over the crowd because he had gone through the discipline of speaking above the roar of the ocean with pebbles in his mouth. George Frederick Handel was able to compose his magnificent Messiah only because he had schooled himself in musical composition. Freedom is the product of discipline and commitment. I am not free to do a thing that I am not committed to and have not trained to do.
We fear that commitment will take all the spontaneity and joy from our lives. Solemn vows sound so grim, so much like going through life with clenched teeth. When it comes to prayer, we do not want to feel duty bound. We want to pray as we feel drawn to it. We fear that commitments will make prayer seem like compulsory exercises rather than free-will offerings.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, the truth of the matter is that "prayer is not a free-will offering to God; it is an obligatory service, something which he requires." But duty does not have to be grim and joy less. Do we think that just because many of the Psalms we love were born out of the context of ritual ceremonies that they had no joy in them? Do we think that just because Peter and John went up to the Temple at the regularly appointed hour of prayer that there was no spontaneity in their words to the lame man: "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give to you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk?"
I have found in my own life that often times of great joy and surprising closeness to God have come while doing things that I am duty bound to do.
I think there is one more reason why we shy away from commitment. It is, very simply, the fear that we will not be able to fulfill our covenant. We may have made commitments in the past that we were not able to fulfill - perhaps a marriage vow or a promise to our children. Or it could have been something far more simple - a pledge to be diligent in Bible reading, for example. We may even come across the Bible verse that warns, "It is better that you should not vow than you should vow and not fulfill it" (Ecclesiastes 5:5). As a result, we feel condemned in our hearts over these broken covenants.
If you have these fears, let me speak a word of grace and mercy. Remember, even the Apostle Peter made promises that were too much for him. He promised Jesus that he would never deny Him or forsake Him, yet in his moment of testing he failed.
Remember also that God knows the intentions of your heart. He knows your weaknesses and frailties. Often your heart will condemn you for things for which God does not condemn you. Often, we hold on to our failures long after God has forgiven us. God is for you not against you and He is pleased with your attempts to please Him.
Covenant is a Bible word. God made covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David
and others. Jesus established the New Covenant in His blood for the forgiveness of our sins.
We seldom use the word covenant today, but we all understand the obligation of contracts. We know that two parties enter into an agreement in which each party pledges to a certain action.
The Mortgage Company paid the builder of my house so that I could immediately occupy the house. I agreed to pay them on a regular basis until the debt is paid. They agreed to let me live in the house as long as I meet my part of the bargain.
The point of covenant is commitment - the very thing to which we have such an aversion. But where would we be if God had not committed Himself to blessing the world through Jesus?
Where would we be if Jesus had refused to commit Himself to washing away the sins of the world? Where would we be without the covenant of Love through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ?
When God made His covenant with Moses, He promised to deliver His people from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. He promised to be their God, to protect them, to guide them and to bless them. There were also stipulations to the covenant, those conditions we call the Ten Commandments. These were to be the response of the people to the overwhelming grace and goodness of God, their promise to live faithful, obedient lives, not as a way of earning God's pleasure but as a way of expressing gratitude for God's mercy.
The New Covenant that Jesus established with His blood demands no less. He has written His law, not on tablets of stone but on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. We have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Calvary's sacrifice is God's binding commitment to us. His commitment demands our commitment. What is our response? Are we willing to offer up lives of obedience in return?
We respond to God's love through a Covenant of Holy Obedience. We vow to follow the voice of God without reservation. Thomas Kelley writes, "There is a degree of holy and complete obedience and of joyful self-renunciation and of sensitive listening that is breathtaking."
I know that all this sounds so absolute. How can we possibly fulfill such promises? The truth is - we can't! The matter of obedience is God's business and not ours. We cannot do a single good act except God first gives us the desire for it and then empowers us to do it. But that is just the point. God is giving you the desire. You would not be listening to these words if the desire was not already bubbling up inside you. He will never give you the desire to do something unless He gives you the power to obey. You may choose to ignore His voice, but if you obey, God will supply the power.
Obedience is not as burdensome as we make it out to be. We are doing nothing more than falling head over heels in love with Jesus. We are responding in the only way we can to the invading, urging, inviting, persuading call of God's love.
God rushes to us at the first hint of our openness. He is the "Hound of Heaven”. baying relentlessly on our track. He places within us such a hunger for Himself that absolutely nothing satisfies us except the genuine Bread of Life.
Sometimes we are invaded to the depths by an overwhelming experience of the love of God. Walking down the streets of New York, D.L. Moody was so overcome by God's loving presence that he rushed to the home of a friend and for two hours wave after wave of God's love swept over him. At other times we experience such a flaming vision of Christ that we are blinded to all competing loyalties. At other times we may have a visitation of such indescribable peace that we sit in wordless adoration and submission and wonder and awe!
We emerge from such experiences forever changed. Never again will ordinary goodness do. No half measures can be accepted. We are consumed by a relentless, divine standard of holy obedience.
We obey Him in everything we can and in everything we know. We pray the prayer of Elizabeth Fry, "0 Lord! Enable me to be more and more, singly, simply, and purely obedient to your service."
If we fail and fall down - and we will fall down - we get up and seek to obey again. We are forming the habit of obedience, and all habits begin with plenty of slips and falls and false starts. We did not learn to walk overnight. We have people who play the piano beautifully. They did not wake up one morning with the gift of piano playing. It took as much failure as success to learn to play.
We must not condemn ourselves unduly in the spiritual life either. We are growing in obedience and growth is a process. A.W. Tozer has said, "We pursue God because and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit."
Here is the beautiful thing: finding God only deepens and heightens the pursuit. One taste of obedience and we want more. The Psalmist tell us, "O taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8).
My words are inadequate to express what I want to say. I am trying to say that obedience has a way of strengthening us rather than depleting our resources. If we obey in one small area, we can grow to obey elsewhere. Obedience gives birth to obedience!
I am talking about holy obedience within the friction of home and office and school and shopping mall. We are learning about holy obedience in the midst of pestering children and dirty diapers. We are learning about holy obedience as we deal with the fear, frustrations, and pain of a struggling marriage. We learn obedience as we deal with things that are beyond our control. This is the Covenant of Holy Obedience.
How do we make this Covenant of Prayer with the Lord? We must make a covenant of time. It is an occupational hazard of devout people to confuse their work with God's work. How easy it is to replace ''this work is really significant" with "I am really significant." To combat this, we need to set regular times for prayer. There is no right time for prayer and there are few wrong times for prayer. Simply set a time when you can commune with God. Make a date that you take as seriously as a business appointment and keep it. You will never have time for prayer unless you make time for prayer!
Be assured of this: everything will try to pull you away from this sacred time. Your phone will ring. Someone will knock at the door. You will have a sudden urge to do something that you have left undone for years. In that moment, you will decide whether you will hold steady and be obedient or be sidetracked by the tyranny of the urgent.
You also need a special place. You can call it your Covenant Place. I pray daily. But I have a Covenant Place that I go to a few times a year. On Mt. Cheaha there is a rock formation called Pulpit Rock. It is my Covenant Place. I go there when there is a special burden or need in my life. My obedience has been restored there on several occasions. Where is your Covenant Place?
There is a covenant between you and God. He has been true to that agreement. Have you? If not, make the time and find the place and find obedience to God, which is your part of the Covenant!
Blessed savior, I pace back and forth at the altar of commitment. I really do want a fixed habit of prayer. At least, that is what I want right now. I am not sure if that is what I will want two weeks from now. I do know that without consistent communion with you I will not know holy obedience. So, as best as I can, I promise to set aside time for regular prayer, meditation, and Bible reading. Strengthen me in this covenant. Help me to delight in your presence that I will want to come to you more often.
In your name and for your sake, I make this covenant. - Amen.
Comments