| THE PRAYER OF COMMITMENT Joyce Meyer HIS GLORY REIGNS B. Childress Jan 4, 2008 There is no way for us to live as victorious, overcoming Christians apart from trusting God with our lives. The prayer of commitment brings us greater freedom because we are giving our situations to God. This prayer should be prayed often remembering that nothing is too big or too small to pray about - pray about everything. We all encounter problems in life. Those problems may stem from other people, relationships, managing our money, the workplace, family, or trying to discover and fulfill God's purpose for your life, or grow spiritually - just to name a few. Problems are a part of life, and when you get rid of one problem, you will most likely have another one right behind it! That is true for all of us, and even though we can develop and mature in our abilities to confront, endure, be steadfast, and live in victory, we will always be contending with one problem or another. If you have problems, then the prayer of commitment is for you. The prayer of commitment is giving our problems to God. It means committing things to Him, releasing the pressures and the problems of life and letting Him work everything out. If we will learn to commit our stresses and situations to God, we will enjoy our lives more - we will be happier and more relaxed. God can do more in one moment than we can do through a lifetime of struggles. Nothing is too big for God to accomplish, and nothing is too small for Him to be concerned about. He cares about everything that concerns you, so give it all to Him and start enjoying your life. GIVE IT TO GOD Most people respond to problems in a similar way; they immediately begin to try to solve the problem themselves. If that does not work, they pick up the phone to call a friend or someone else they think can fix the situation. But what we need to do is run to the throne before we run to the phone! When does God really begin to intervene in our lives? When we stop trying to live them for ourselves and according to our own good ideas. When does God begin to straighten out our problems? When we give up our attempts to solve them. When does God get involved in our situations? When we quit worrying about them. When does God give us answers? When we finally cease trying to figure everything out for ourselves. Psalm 37:5 says, "Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." and Proverbs 16:3 says, "Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established." Many times, our "works" are the things we "work" in our minds - our reasoning, our analyzing, and our attempts to figure out what is going on or what we should do. But God says that if we will commit our works to Him, our thoughts will be established. In other words, if we can get our minds to calm down, we will be clearheaded and God can give us ideas, strategies, and directions. When we get the wrong thoughts out of our minds, God can give us the right thoughts. The first step in the prayer of commitment is to stop worrying and reasoning and to commit our works (our thoughts) to the Lord. The prayer of commitment says to the Lord: "God, I give this to You. I give You this problem. I give You this situation. I give You this relationship, I completely release it and let it go. It is too much for me. I cannot handle it. I am going to stop worrying and stop trying to figure everything out - and I am going to let You take care of it." ("God, I also give myself to You because I can't do anything about myself either. I give it all to you. I give you my weaknesses and problems. I want to change, but You have to change me.") What does it really mean to commit our ways to God? It means to "roll" them off us and "roll" them onto God. Remember Proverbs 16:3 says to "Roll (commit and trust them wholly) upon (to) the Lord and He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and so shall your plans be established and succeed." When we "roll" our problems and human reasonings onto God, which means to trust them wholly and completely to Him, then He changes our thoughts and makes them agree with His will. In other words, His thoughts become our thoughts so that we want what He wants. When that happens, our plans will succeed because they are in complete agreement with God's plans. So many times, we have problems because we try to resist God's will or we do not want to agree with His way, but when we roll those problems onto Him, we end up blessed. DON'T TAKE IT BACK Once we have prayed, committed our situations to God, and truly given our problems to Him, we have to leave everything in His hands - something that is easier said than done. We tend to take our problems back because we are afraid God won't do anything, or we do not think God is acting quickly enough, or we do not like the way He is handling things. Many of us give our problems to God many times a day and say, "All right Lord, I put this person in Your hands. I give You this situation." Then we walk away only to find that person or situation following us once again. We soon find ourselves thinking about it again, worrying about it again, or the devil gives us a new idea about how to handle it. How do we keep from taking back things we have already given to God? By learning to rest our cares in Him. When something is resting in God's hands, we are not to go check on them! We are to leave them alone. At the same time, we need to keep our minds at rest, being fully confident that God will do a masterful job handling what we have entrusted to Him. Remember 1 Peter 5:7 which says, "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." Notice that this verse says we are to cast all of our anxieties, all of our worries, and all of our concerns upon Him once and for all. That means we cannot take them back. Once we commit them to the Lord, it's hands off! When we are tempted to pick up our problems again, in our minds, or tempted to try to do something about them in some natural way, we have to stop and say, "I cannot think about that. I have given it to God once and for all and I will not take it back. I am not going to try to do anything about this." We have to refuse to revisit what we commit to God, because that is what the prayer of commitment really means. Source: The Power of Simple Prayer, by Joyce Meyer, Copyright 2007, Hachette Book Group, USA. |
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