Keeping Our Word — Sunday Thought For The Day

As Christians we should never cease to be amazed by what God does in answer to prayer. Earlier this week I saw a brother in Christ who I’ve had on my prayer list since May 27, 2015. I remember the day that I had assured him of my prayers for his healing. He had shared with me that he was suffering from a disease for which the recovery from was not good. As he and I sat at the table in the board room of our club, he shared that he had resigned himself to prayer and trusting God for his healing.

We had seen one another perhaps perhaps twice since that day, but earlier this past week we literally bumped into one another in the parking lot of our club. After the hugs and hellos, I asked the inevitable question: “How are you; how are you doing with the disease?” He said: “I’m healed!” I replied: “What! You mean you’re…” He stopped me in mid sentence and said: “Im completely healed.” He said that he felt like he had been “born again.” We had a “praise the Lord party” in the parking lot before heading inside our club.

I shared with my friend that I had kept him on my prayer list since the day I had assured him of my prayers. I also shared with him that I had been praying for him that very morning. God had saved my friend from a punishingly slow death sentence.

Here is the point I wish to make. Words have meaning and when we make an oath God expects us to keep it.

Many times people without thought or consideration for their words casually tell another person that they will be praying for them. Then not only do they not pray for the person, but they forget that they had even made the promise.

When we say to another person that we’ll be praying for them, that is a promise made before God. When a person asks us to pray for them and we assure them that we will, that is an oath before God. If we fail to keep said promises/oaths we make ourselves liars and scripture tells us that God takes a very dim view of those who do not tell the truth or keep their word.

An even greater indictment is when the person we assure of our prayers takes for granted that our words are nothing more than platitudes.

God has His reasons for how, when, and whether He answers our prayers when it comes to our desires. But through faith we can say, “Thy will be done oh Lord” even as we lift another in prayer. People on our church prayer list, people who ask us to pray for them, and people whom we pledge to pray for are counting on us to keep our word.

God healed my friend in response to his prayers and the prayers of others, mine included. And earlier this past week God blessed me beyond measure as I hugged my friend and we said thank you to God for His answered prayer.

READ: Ecclesiastes 5:1-6
5 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.

2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.

3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.

4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.

5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

6 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?