|
"When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for He hath no
pleasure in fools; pay that thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou
shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay."
Ecclesiastes 5:4-5
Just as it isn't enough for a man to have a general belief in the Lord Jesus, but he must make a definite act of accepting Him, so it isn't enough to admire a consecrated life. We must come to the point of solemn, definite, personal dedication. Seek some quiet place and let it be done deliberately. Do it thoughtfully, as when the Scottish Covenanters signed that historical document with their blood. Believe that your Lord is there to take what you give and seal it with His Holy Spirit.
James Brainerd Taylor, who died at the age of 28, and who followed in the apostolic order, has left on record his holy, solemn vow of dedication:
"It was on the 23rd of April 1822, when I was on a visit to Haddam, in Connecticut. The time and place will never, no never, be forgotten. For a long time, my desire had been that the Lord would visit me and fill me with the Holy Ghost. My cry to Him was 'seal my soul forever Thine.' I felt I needed something I did not possess. I lifted up my heart in prayer that the blessings might be sent. I felt that I desired it, not for my own benefit only, but for that of the Church and the world. At this very juncture, I was delightfully conscious of giving up all to God. I was enabled in my heart to say, 'Here, Lord, take me; take my whole soul and seal me Thine - Thine now and Thine forever. If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean!'
"Then there ensued such emotions as I never before experienced. All was calm and tranquil, and a heaven of love pervaded my soul; I had the witness of God's love to me, and of mine to Him. Shortly after, I was dissolved in tears of gratitude to our blessed Lord. The name of Jesus was precious to me. He came as King and took possession of my heart; and I was enabled to say, 'I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' Let Him, as King of kings and Lord of lords, reign in me, and reign without a rival forever."
We have seen what it means to make that initial surrender to God, but the Christian life is one of continual dedication unto the Lord. This life of surrender and dedication is made up of a chain of holy vows unto the Lord. While it's true, and very essential, that there should be one great crisis in the believer's life, when he yields all to the Lord, still we must never forget that dedication is not so much an act as an attitude. Our attitude of obedience is the eternal "yes" to that one great act of surrender. To live and walk well-pleasing to God, one must maintain this habitual attitude of obedience. The Holy Ghost is "given to them that obey Him" (Acts 5:32).
The Lord loveth a cheerful giver (II Cor. 9:7). The Psalmist cries out with holy joy, "I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His people." As we go on in the Christian life from our one great act of surrender, we discover with overwhelming glory the joy of making vows unto the Lord. What is dedication or sanctification except the making of sacred vows unto the Lord? In the book of Leviticus, the one Hebrew root from which the words holy, holiness and sanctify are derived, occurs 131 times. In the last chapter of this book, we have remarkable instructions concerning the extraordinary vows of a holy life. In verses 9-13, we read these words:
"And if it be a beast, whereof men bring an offering unto the Lord, all that any man giveth of such unto the Lord shall be holy. He shall not alter it nor change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change beast for beast, then it and the exchange thereof shall be holy. And if it be any unclean beast, of which they don't suffer a sacrifice unto the Lord, then he shall present the beast before the priest. And the priest shall value it, whether it be good or bad, as thou valuest it, who art the priest, so shall it be. But if he will at all redeem it, then he shall add a fifth part hereof, unto thy estimation."
A clean beast, after it had been vowed, could neither be employed in common purpose nor exchanged for its equivalent; it must be sacrificed. If, through some discovered blemish, it was unfit for the altar, it might be sold and the money applied to the sacred service, but it could not be exchanged. At the moment of consecration, God wrote across that offering, "Holiness unto the Lord." If, through some defect, it was unfit for sacrifice, and another beast substituted, God said both were holy, and He followed the defective ram back to the flock, while "holiness unto the Lord" was ever upon it.
The solemn lesson for us in these words is that with God, dedication is always a reality, however much we play and trifle with this sacred subject. Oh, dear believer, God never trifles! One of the hindrances to revival today is the superficiality of our public acts of dedication in our conventions, campaigns and camp meetings. Thousands of consecration hymns are sung, thousands of consecration prayers are offered, thousands of consecration vows are made, only to be kept so loosely or not at all!
We desire to emphasize the truth that God always reckons as His own that which we have solemnly invited Him to take, and the sin of misappropriation is so much the greater after we have devoted ourselves and our possessions to His service.
This is copyrighted material from James Stewart's book Come O Breath!, available from Revival Literature, PO Box 6068, Asheville, NC 28816.
|
