I Vow

What vows have you made? “If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.” (Numbers 30:2)

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I'm Alexa Lauren and welcome to my podcast, Heart of a Seeker. Today's episode is called I Vow, and we'll be talking about vows that we have made ourselves to ourselves and also how when we make promises to ourselves, how that can manifest in different areas of our lives. So I want to open up in prayer. Father God, thank you for today. Thank you for your love, your kindness, your mercy. Thank you that you're a good father that wants what's best for us. Thank you that you continue to show us as we deep dive deeper each day into getting to know you and this time together. I pray that you would reveal your truth to us. Let it take good root in our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Okay. So something that really started to speak to me this week was the topic of making vows to ourselves and not just others, but I realized just like we talked about last week about forgiveness and how we need to look at ourselves. The whole point of this podcast, Heart of a Seeker, is for us to constantly be looking at who God is, seeking Him with our whole hearts and allowing Him to transform us. So in Numbers chapter 30, 1 through 2, it says, This is the thing which the Lord has commanded. If a man makes a vow to the Lord or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. Have you ever really sat and thought about that? What promises did you make, maybe when you were younger or as an adult? Maybe things that have happened to you that you made a personal vow with yourself, or you made vows to others, and then you didn't fulfill it. It starts with ourselves, what we believe, and if we follow through. If we let our own selves down, we begin not to even believe ourselves. Yes. I said it starts with ourselves, what we believe, and if we follow through, if we let ourselves down, we begin not to even believe ourselves. I remember in my second marriage, a lot of our fights was my ex would tell me that I was, I never followed through, that I would say I would do something and then I wouldn't do it. And the truth was, I used to be someone that would say something and do it. And I realized throughout the years, I felt like so many people had broken promises to me that I just felt like I didn't care anymore. And I began to be that type of person that just didn't care. Like I would mean well. I wasn't like I maliciously was like, oh, I'm gonna tell them to do it, I'm never gonna do it. It was just the fact that I was really focused on other tasks, things that seemed more important to me. And I wasn't really thinking how it was going to affect the other person. And that actually stemmed a lot of our fights in our relationship because he would ask me simple things like, Hey, Alex, can you please call this place to get today? I'd be like, Oh, yeah, sure. Or hey, can you do this? And I'd be like, oh yeah, sure. And then a week, two, three weeks would go by and he'd be like, Hey, Alex, did you ever do that thing I asked you? And then I'd get anxiety and be like, oh my gosh, no, I didn't do it. And of course he'd get upset because he was like, You never do what you say you're going to do. And so that really began to make me then look at myself. Like, I even tell myself, oh, I need to get this done, or I need to get this, you know, finished by this date. And I began to let myself down. I wasn't meeting deadlines. I was starting to really struggle even in my work. It began to manifest not just with people and not just with myself, but even with my clients at a certain point a couple of years ago. And I was just like, yeah, I I don't know at what moment I began to get into this pattern, but it was as simple as me feeling and thinking, oh, well, a lot of people say they're gonna do something and they haven't done it, and they let me down, and I began to be like those people. The first point I wrote down was to be clear and intentional. In Matthew 5.37, it says, But let your yes be yes and your no no. For whatever is more than this is from the evil one. Sometimes we leave off the second part of the scripture. Often people will say, Let your yes be yes and your no be no. And it's easy to want to leave out that if it's not yes or no, that it's from the evil one. But the truth is, if it's not yes or no, there's no clarity. So a maybe is not a clear answer. Therefore, what happens that causes confusion. And God is not a God of confusion. So we often sit here and we say, let your yes be yes and your no be no. But what we are missing is when we don't do those things, we lack clarity. We don't give people clarity, and we're also not giving clarity to ourselves because we're not holding ourselves to a standard of what we should do. And so, therefore, it begins to instill doubt, and the lack of clarity becomes the root of anxiety often in our lives when we don't know what to expect. In 1 Corinthians 14, 33, it says, For God is not a god of confusion, but of peace. Some translations say God is not a god of disorder. So, with that being said, if God is not a god of confusion or disorder, then that means he's a god of clarity, a god that has a plan, a god that has says that he's gonna do something and does it. So if we're to be like Christ, we look at the word of God to see the character of Christ. The next thing that came to me as I was writing was be committed and consistent. When we make a vow, it causes us to be committed and to be consistent. In Psalm 76, 11, it says, So I will ever sing praises to your name as I perform my vows day after day, meaning there's a daily commitment. Every day David was seeking God, he was praying, looking to spend that intimate time with him. And then in Job 22, 27, it says, You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you, and you will pay your vows. So from there, I began to further realize that not only is there a consistency and a commitment when we make a vow, on top of that, when we begin to submit ourselves and seek God daily, we then begin to receive the blessings and our faith begins to increase. Because as you're spending that time with God and reading his word, there's no way your faith will not increase because you will begin to know who God is, begin to trust in him. And as you begin to trust in him, that's what leads to true submission. Submission is nothing but trusting the person to guide you. And what happens is we live in a fallen world where often we have a hard time submitting to people and authorities, even though we're told to, because at the end of the day, God is the one that's in control. But when we begin to know who God is and his love for us and what his plan is for us and wanting to do good things for us, then we realize that we can trust in God, and that's where that submission comes. In Psalm 61, five, it says, For you, O Lord, have heard my vows, you have given me heritage of those who fear your name. So now there's an inheritance, there's a heritage, there's a name, there is a peace in knowing that God is our provider, that we're not alone, and that he is with us. David had great faith and did not doubt God listened to him, to his pleas, and to his vows. We see that when we are intentional and clear with what we say we're going to do, and committed no matter what the cost, we see the fruit of the seeds we sow consistently and our faith increases. But when we do the opposite, we have confusion and consistency, and we become faithless and lose hope. In James 1.8, it says a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, meaning he doesn't do what he says he's gonna do. It begins to cause instability in his life, and therefore there's no peace, and people begin to struggle. Why? Because we're not doing the things we're gonna say we're gonna do, or we say we're gonna do something, then we don't do it, and it begins to manifest in different areas of our lives, such as stress, anxiety, depression, worry, because we're trying to control these things instead of looking to God and trusting in Him to guide us. Through godly sacrifice, our Christ-like character is built. Proverbs 714 says, I had to offer sacrifices, and today I have paid my vows. In the Old Testament, we see the sacrificing of animals, but what did that really mean? Sacrifices in the Old Testament pulled on the senses of the one sacrificing the animal. It wasn't just about killing an animal and burning them, it went deeper. It was the violent resistance of the animal that they had to witness, the splurging of blood, the pulling apart of the animal, and then the smell of the flesh. Can you imagine how disgusting that was? Honestly, like in modern day, I don't even know how doctors fix people that are like coming in bleeding at a hospital. I want to throw up when I see blood like that. Like, I can't imagine in order for my sins to be forgiven in that time, I would have to literally go sacrifice an animal almost weekly. And I think if I were doing that, it would probably make me think twice before wanting to sin. But at the end of the day, we're not perfect humans. We would still commit sin. And in that time, we would have to follow those rituals. I just know that I am so thankful that Jesus was so selfless and he was the sacrifice, the perfect Lamb, so that we could have salvation. And I think that sometimes we don't even realize the free gift that God gave us through his son being the ultimate sacrifice and the shedding of his blood for our sins. The beautiful part is anybody can receive this free gift of salvation by believing and confessing that Christ died on the cross, rose again from the dead, and asking for forgiveness for anything that they've done knowingly or unknowingly. And from there, you can invite Jesus to come be a part of your life and be your Lord and Savior. Today we view sacrifice in a very different way. And sacrificing can now can be time to sell or give something away at a loss and denying our fleshly desires. Those would be our more common thoughts of what sacrifice may look like to us in today's present day. When we sacrifice our Christ-like character is built, and we begin to look more like Christ, the more we turn away from sin. Sacrifice is the price we pay to honor God. We turn away and we turn towards Him by saying no to sin. Psalms 5014 says, Offer God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High. Have you ever given someone a gift and they make a face and you can tell they're not really grateful? How many accept the gift of salvation, not really realizing the value and hope we were just given? Sometimes we take for granted and don't unlock all the other gifts salvation has to offer. Almost like the Russian dolls, there is one inside of another, the larger one, and by creating greater intimacy with God, you go deeper and deeper unlocking the next gift. The sad part is sometimes people just receive the gift of salvation and they don't ever really realize all the other gifts the gift had inside of it. Sometimes they just pray. And recently I was asked, do you think that someone, if they call themselves a Christian and try to live a moral life, will go to heaven? And I said, you know what? I believe if you confess it through your mouth that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, rose again, and you ask for forgiveness and repent and ask Jesus to come be your Lord and Savior, I believe, yes, you'll go to heaven. But you're disservicing yourself by not seeking God and reading his word so that he can guide you in this life because God wants what's best for you. But often people just stop at the gift of salvation. It's like the person that gets the gift, they're not really grateful for it. They take it home anyways, and they just put it on a shelf or leave it there, not realizing that if they'd opened it up and kept seeking deeper, they would have unlocked so many more gifts inside of that one gift. God desires intimacy with us. He wants us to truly know him, and he wants to reveal our true selves to us as we seek his face. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. That shows us that God is always looking at our heart. He knows the true desires of our heart. He knows that even if we're struggling with something or we're having, you know, a hard time submitting in an area, he sees our heart. He sees if we are genuinely trying and seeking his face versus purposely choosing to be disobedient and purposely engage and sin constantly. There's a difference between trying to really overcome a battle and overcome a sin in your life, and the person that says, Oh, I'm just gonna do this, God will forgive me later. There is a difference in the position of the heart, and that's what God is looking at the position of the person's heart, of our hearts. So I want to ask you, what personal vows have you made to yourself and God? I want you to kind of think about that. What personal vows have you made to yourself and to God? Because I've realized sometimes we need to come out of agreement of the vows we have made to ourselves in ignorance or in anger and ask God to forgive us. There is so much power in our words, and you know, one of the biggest illustrations of this is when God created the earth. And how did God create the earth? He spoke it into existence. So, what are you speaking into the existence of your own life? What are you saying over your own life that is now creating the world that you live in today, your own personal world? As a child, I made a vow that I would never let a guy tell me what to do or have any power over me. Sometimes, very innocently, we make these kind of vows to ourselves because maybe something happened where someone broke our trust or we felt like we couldn't count on them. So therefore, we now made a vow saying, I would never let someone do this to me, or I won't ever let this happen, or I will do this, or I will do that. Those are vows that you're now creating to yourself. What I didn't realize was making that vow from a young age, whether I thought it had a lot of weight or not, I realized as I got older, I struggled first submitting to God for years, even as a Christian. And then on top of that, I had a hard time submitting to my husbands because I didn't trust them. And not because they were terrible people, but just because I did not trust a man to lead me in the right direction because of things that had happened when I was younger where I felt like I needed to do everything on my own. Had I submitted and trusted God to guide me at a younger age and obeyed him early on, I would have saved myself years of heartache and abuse. I encourage you to pray and ask God, what vows did I make that need to be broken, and which vows did I make that I need to fulfill? When He reveals them to you, I want you to pray and say, God, please forgive me for the vows I made in ignorance and anger. I pray that they be broken in the name of Jesus. Release me and help me keep the vows I made to you in Jesus' name. Amen. It starts with our hearts first, and we really need to begin to come out of agreement of certain vows that we made in life and come into agreement with who God says we are, with who God is, and begin to be faithful to Him by seeking Him and building that intimacy with Him. Also, we need to be mindful of the words that we're speaking over our life and the world that we want to create. Because the word says, call things that are not as though they are. And that can go positive or negative. What are you speaking? And I want that's another thing I want you guys to think about. And just kind of a summary of the points that we went over. One, be clear and intentional with what you say, be committed and consistent. You will receive blessings and increase faith as you begin to seek God and do the things that He's called us to. And through godly sacrifice, Christ-like character is built. And intimacy with God is ultimately what God wants. He wants us to unlock different gifts that he has for us. Father God, thank you for this day. Thank you for your love, your kindness, your mercy. Thank you that you gave us this word, and we pray that you would give us wisdom and that we would be more mindful and slow to speak instead of speaking out of anger or ignorance, Lord, but that we would speak from a heart of purity and trusting you and allowing that your word take deep root in our hearts so that it produce good fruit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.