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Establishing the Covenant - With Myself

by Jerry Ousley  
3/14/2014 / Christian Living


There it was a bright, red, shiny new car. It was a 1997 Neon. Our old car had all but kicked the bucket and we needed another one and soon. But unless we could keep the payment under two hundred dollars it was out of the question. We figured we'd wind up with a used car. But there it sat. It would be economical on gasoline and much safer and more reliable than our old one. We worked out a lease deal and before the end of the day Deb and I drove home our new car. It was nice not to have to worry if it was going to start in the morning or if it was going to break down before we got to where we were going and safely back home again.

But then we had made the commitment to pay for the thing. The first three years we experienced no unusual problems. Then, our financial obligations grew to the point that we had to pick and choose which one was going to be late. We would determine which late charge would be the cheapest and also we didn't want to be consistently late on the same one. Some of you know where we were at during that time.

I realized that the car, even though we needed it badly, was a lease. When we signed the lease the salesman led us to believe that it would be easy to get out of. He lied. Not only had we signed a lease but it was a five year lease (because that one made our payment to be just under our two hundred dollar limit). Later we learned that we had made a tragic mistake. We attempted to trade it in order to get out of the lease, but we owed more than what we could get out of the trade that didn't work.

We were now two payments behind and the phone calls began. I'm normally a fairly even tempered guy and usually keep a level head about things. But we were backed into a corner and my patience wore thin with the lady who kept calling us, accusing us of not taking care of business and even resorting to name calling. I got very angry with her and finally told her that if she couldn't have patience with us to get the payments caught up that she could go ahead and send someone to repossess it. I told her to just have the guy knock on the door and I'd have the keys ready for him. She didn't. Her words were idle threats.

Even though we did get the payments caught up and finally paid off the lease, we still had to wind up buying the thing because our mileage was way over the limit. I figured that to pay our way out of the lease would cost as much as buying the car outright and so, to make a longer story short, we paid for that Neon one and one half times.

But on the bright side, we are still driving it and it has turned out to be a good investment, even though we didn't know it at the time. I suppose that God blessed us again despite ourselves.

The point is that we signed a contract. We made a commitment and (thank God) we were able to finally meet that obligation. In life we make many commitments, and when we make them we mean to fulfill them. But it doesn't always work out that way, because we just don't know what the future holds for us.

We also make a commitment to God. Ezekiel 16:62 says, "And I will establish my covenant with you. Then you shall know that I am the LORD " Then 1 Thessalonians 3:2 also says, " And sent Timothy, our brother and minister of God, and our fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to encourage you concerning your faith " We are establishing a covenant with God. The dictionary defines the word "establish" as "to make firm or secure." The word covenant is defined as "a binding agreement." God said that He would make firm and secure our binding agreement. Paul told the Thessalonians that he had sent Timothy to establish them.

There are five areas in which we must establish the covenant and the first is with ourselves. We should always put God first. However, how can we establish a covenant with God until we have committed to it ourselves? When we come to the Lord we are promising first that we will take up our cross and follow Him. We are telling Him that we are committed and our old man is to be crucified with Christ. We tell Him, along with Paul, that we will die daily, or in other words, beat down that old man who seems to refuse to die and submit ourselves to the Lord. We can make our promise to God firm and become established. That doesn't mean that we won't fail sometimes. But it does mean that we will always work to make our promise firm. We will establish the covenant with ourselves by daily renewing our promise to our Heavenly Father.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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