Obedience

Psalm 66:13-14; 17-20: "I will come to your temple with burnt offerings and fulfill my vows to you - vows my lips promised and my mouth spoke when I was in trouble . . . . I cried out to him with my mouth; his praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!"

What incredible words of wisdom we find in Psalm 66. First, we see that the author had made vows to God during a very difficult time in his life. We don’t know what precipitated these painful experiences, but we do know that these trials were used by God to refine the author and his people. I can just see the author in agony, crying out to God with cries of allegiance, giving vows of obedience and submission to the Lord. What I find noteworthy is the author’s willingness to follow through with his vows to the Lord, when God’s hand of blessing later came upon him. This honored commitment reveals the character of the author; he truly was a man of his word.

Many times we attempt to "bargain" with God and make numerous promises to Him during painful trials, hoping that His divine favor will befall us and change our existing plot. More often than not, we seem to disregard those vows when the tide of our misfortune changes and God bestows blessing to us. A lack of follow through on our part is representative of a life that treats with contempt our Sovereign Lord and His divine blessings. Matthew 5 tells us that our "Yes" should be "Yes" otherwise it originates from the evil one.

We also find in this passage of scripture that God's responsiveness to us is predicated upon our willingness to repent from sin in our lives. If we cherish sin in our hearts, we should not expect God to honor the requests that we offer to Him, for these requests are likely to perpetuate the thing that we ultimately cherish . . . ourselves. We may even be apt to cry out to God for deliverance from the painful consequences of our sins, so that we can continue in them. God will never honor such requests, knowing that consequences often are His methods to gain our attention leading to repentance.

Conversely, God does hear the penitent heart, and is willing to minister to him or her in such a way that the individual matures in the faith and is conformed more into the image of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This does not mean necessarily that we receive everything of which we ask; it does mean that God wants us to be all we can be for Him. For we know that "all things DO work together for good to those who love God and are called according to HIS purpose. (Romans 8:28).