Psalm 76:11 Make vows to the LORD your God, and pay them; let all who are around Him bring presents to Him who ought to be feared.

  Almost since I first entered into the ministry of the gospel I have enjoyed telling congregations, “Every Christian ought to be committed!” I have said it jokingly, not meaning that Christians are all crazy and need to be locked up somewhere. I have said it meaning that every born again child of God should be sold out, fully committed, to obeying God in all things as far as is humanly possible. I think that is what the psalmist is saying in this verse of scripture – “Believer, get committed, and then live up to your commitment!”

  A vow to the Lord our God should be a solemn promise made with the deepest possible intention of fulfilling that promise to the “nth degree.” Not only should our vows be made with total sincerity, they should be made in compliance with Holy Scripture. I will never forget the initial commitment my wife and I made to become tithers. It was in the first few months after we came to the Lord, and we knew that tithing is something God has commanded His children to do. We made a serious commitment to begin right away giving a little each Sunday. When we got comfortable with that, when it didn’t hurt any longer, we would increase it a little bit. We would continue that course of giving faithfully (?) until we worked up to giving a full ten percent to the Lord. We were sincere in our commitment, but our commitment was not according to the scriptures. That was over thirty years ago, and we laugh about it to this day, knowing that, had we stuck with our original commitment, we probably still would not be tithers. Probably because that commitment was not one of obedience, the Lord ensured that those weekly increments never did stop hurting. He brought us to a point where we gave up on that plan. I recall us talking about how it never got any easier. We both remember well how we agreed to just write a check for the full ten percent and let the chips fall where they may. Interestingly, the pain of giving ended almost immediately, we have never looked back, and we have never lacked for anything in our lives.

  Most of us believers make many different types of vows unto the Lord. How many do we actually keep? I believe we can gauge our own personal contentment by the answer to that question. The more faithful we are to honor those biblical commitments that we make the happier we will be.