Making Promises To God

When you vow a vow unto God, defer not to pay it, for he has no pleasure in fools: pay that which you have vowed. 5  Better is it that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay" - Ecclesiastes 5:4-7
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Vows made unto God is a form of prayer, accompanied with an obligation. For example: when a man is in distress and feels desperate to get out of a troubling situation, he may be inclined to making a promise unto God to do a particular thing, in exchange for getting him out of the situation, thereby, placing himself under an obligation to pay what he promised. But how soon is the promise forgotten when he is gotten out of trouble. The gains, pleasures and enjoyments of life has rushed into his mind, and flushed out the recollection of the promised vow.  

When you have opened your mouth and made a vow unto the Lord, know that there is no turning back. You cannot go back and say that you have changed your mind, or made a mistake, especially after God has delivered on his part. It is better to not vow, than to vow and not pay.   

When vows are left unpaid to God, it is as if we had planned from the beginning to fool or trick him, with no intentions of paying the vow in the first place, as if God did not already know this. Hastiness for the resolution of a troubling situation should never lead you to making any kind of a vow unto the Lord, but instead, it should lead you to leaning on the Lord even more to help you through the situation. 

In making requests unto the Lord, no matter how urgent the request, God never said that our prayers should be accompanied with a promise to do some deed before he would answer. But, blinded from the ability to think clearly and wisely in a desperate situation, we feel that in doing so, this might speed up God's help for us, or move us to the front of the line before the request of others. But, the truth is, it is God's grace, mercy and prerogative to answer us now, later or never. With some of the promises that have been laid before God, one can only hope that he will never answer them, so they would never be held to keeping them.  

If you have made a vow unto the Lord, do not try to avoid it, or find excuses to be cleared of it. Pay it in full, hold nothing back. If it is in your power to pay up today, do not delay it until tomorrow. The more it is put off, the more difficult it will be, or the less obligated you will feel in paying it. 
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Supporting Scriptures
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• Psalms 66:13-14
• I Samuel 1:28
• Jonah 2:1-10

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Copyright © Gale Wilcox. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages quoted are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.