Covenants

I posted this over Christmas break, but somehow it didn’t make it up here. Here we go again…

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Last week at Master’s Commission Lakeland, the theme was “Covenants”…

A covenant is really just a fancy word for a contract. It is a signed written or spoken agreement between two or more parties to perform some action and fulfill stated promises. And, if you think about it, this world is operating on covenants everywhere…

A young man and woman stand at a wedding altar and make a lifelong promise to each other.

2 business men sign a document and shake hands as they make promises to fulfill certain obligations to one another.

A father and mother bring their infant to a Church to have it dedicated and vow to the Lord to do the very best they can to raise them in a Godly way.

A witness in court places their right hand on a Bible and swears to tell the whole truth and nothing but.

A young family “signs on the dotted line” and vows to repay their bank on a monthly basis the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars they just borrowed to buy a home.

Covenants make our world go around… they make things work. They help us to make promises, and they help us to keep them. Trust me - I would love to just ‘obey my feelings’ and stop making those huge mortgage payments on my house. I would much rather do something better with that money… like give it to missions, buy a van for Master’s, or even pay off some bills.

BUT, the moment I stop fulfilling my covenant to the bank, they would come knocking on my door, saying: ‘Hey bro, you PROMISED to pay us back!’. Well, they may not call me bro, but they sure will threaten to kick me out of my house if I don’t ante up some cash.

That’s right… there ARE consequences to not fulfilling covenants that we make. But, I’ll get back to that in a moment.

Every September, our Master’s Commission students make a covenant to Jesus Christ at our opening Covenant Retreat. That covenant reads:

I am a chosen disciple of the third millenium, and I declare this to be my moment. On this night of September 6th, 2007, I pledge my whole heart, my whole mind and my whole life to Jesus. For the next nine months, I will abandon myself to God in my pursuit to know Him and make Him known. As a Master’s Commission disciple, I will uphold the highest standard of character and strive to embrace His purpose for my life. I will die to myself that Jesus may live in me - so I may become all that He has destined me to be. I will run my race and I will win my prize. This is my covenant. This is my calling. This is my destiny.

This is a powerful covenant that hundreds of our other students who have gone before have made and kept. It is a covenant of opportunity. A covenant to be set apart. A covenant of abandon. Of pursuit. Of the highest standard of character. It is a covenant of purpose, perseverance, and a promise to allow the old self to die… making room for the better creation God had in mind originally. It is a covenant of destiny and a covenant of EPIC CHANGE.

It is a covenant that is a lot harder to fulfill than it is to speak.

Nonetheless, our students have all made it. Their names are on the lines. Some signatures more eloquent than others, some bigger and some smaller. But the promises are right there in writing, and the time is right here to live it out.

God knows our nature. He knows its hard for us to fulfill promises.

I believe that’s why He gives us specific ’symbols’ to help us remember. To help us fulfill. Just look in the scriptures. He gave Noah the rainbow as a sign of the Noahic covenant - to never destroy the earth again. He gave Abraham circumcision as a sign of the Abrahamic covenant… Moses the Ark of the covenant as a sign of the Mosaic covenant… long hair to the Nazirites as a sign of their vow. Jesus even gave us communion as a sign of the New covenant… to literally “remember Him”.

God is doing everything He can to help us fulfill our covenants.

Let’s come back to the consequences of unfulfilled covenants…

The young married couple who are now divorced leave a broken family behind, with children who will pay a penalty the rest of their lives, being raised under multiple blended families.

The 2 business men that struck a deal, only to see it fall through, leave a trail of hefty financial penalties and legal fees to be paid, let alone the tarnished reputations that damage years of potential future business.

A witness in court who perjures themself after vowing to tell the truth, face jail time and fines for their broken promise.

The young family who stopped making payments on their new home, have been evicted, possibly go bankrupt and have the black eye of mortgage default stained on their credit report for many years to come.

If these worldly consequences are so heavy for breaking covenant, I then ask myself, how much more destructive are the heavenly consequences that come as a result of our refusal to honor our own personal covenants to the Lord?

Not punishments. Consequences.

If we only knew how much we were missing, I mean really missing… I think I would shock us into a reality of new obedience to take hold of the glorious things that our Father in Heaven has lying in wait for us.

Remember. God is doing everything He can.

We should be too.

JJ

~ by jeffjohnston on January 24, 2008.