Have you ever made a promise to someone that you later realized your couldn't keep? Do you remember how you felt when you had to confront them about it? The look of disappointment on their face when they realized you couldn't live up to your own commitments...
I made a commitment to God to stay single for this past semester...a commitment which I did not hold to. Instead of trusting in God and relying on his strength, I decided to trust in what I could see and what was in front of me. Choosing to do this left me with several consequences. First off, I had to stand before God and ask for forgiveness. After all, I made the commitment to Him and when I broke it I offended God first. However, I also let my friends down.
Working through forgiveness between God and I was hard but adding disappointment from my friends onto that made it much harder. As much as I hate it at times, people watch me and look up to me. I honestly don't know why anyone would want to look up to me at all cause I seem to do a pretty good job at messing up, but people do anyway. What I didn't know was that my commitment to trust in God and stay single was a really bold statement, and several people looked up to me and respected me for that. When I broke that, they lost some respect for me.
Now I could say that I don't care what people think about me, but that would be a lie.
I want to write this to my girls,
I'm not perfect I'm learning and growing, and sometimes that means failing...that being said...what I did by dishonoring my commitment to God was wrong. There's no way around it...I broke a commitment. Because of that I know that there are consequences. I know that and will accept them. One of the consequences have been letting people down. I'm a people pleaser and so whenever I let someone down it kills me! I'd prefer for people to be mad instead of disappointed.
Please don't think that I just made a decision based off of emotion without considering the commitment I made to stay single. Now you may think "wow how could you knowingly make a decision to break a commitment with God and then how could you be okay with it." Well...I began breaking the commitment without knowing it and then when I became aware I had two choices, one to stop lying and call the relationship what it was, or continue lying. I decided to fess up. And I wasn't okay with it at first, I would've loved to continue lying to myself and I considered it several times. But I didn't. I decided that although coming clean meant subjecting myself to the possible scrutiny of others it was the right thing to do. I had a long talk with God and was very ashamed to come to him. I was so mad at myself for not honoring a commitment and even more ashamed to have to tell people about it.
The truth is, my actions were called out by God and because of that I had to deal with it before him first. But I am aware that people are also affected. If I have made anyone stumble I'm truly sorry. Know that walking with God is a learning process...and when you fail God's not the only one who sees it...which I guess is good cause it means the body of christ can hold you accountable :)
Everything we learn now is meant to teach us later in life. I know that God is continuing to teach me...sadly I'll continue failing but hopefully through my failures God teaches me who he is and who I am in him. The battle will never be over until we are in his presence....which could be considered depressing but when you think about it, it means that your always being given a second and third and fourth chance. Gods grace and mercy is INCREDIBLE and yet when we choose to walk with him, he gives it to us in abundance!
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