PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
1 Samuel 1:10–11, 24–28
In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.” . . .
After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. When the bull had been sacrificed, they brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, “Pardon me, my lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there.
CONSIDER THIS
When I officiate a wedding, one of the sweetest moments is the moment the bride and groom exchange vows. As they promise to have and to hold each other from this day forward, they end their promise with these words, “this is my solemn vow.” Again, it is the offering word from this week: selemim. It is a moment that is marked by their promise, and it is one they will return to and celebrate each year on their anniversary along with many “just because” days, I’m sure!
In our passage today, Hannah makes a solemn vow to God as a promise. If we were to read Hannah’s whole story, we would see that her vow is actually a promise wrapped in a gut-wrenching prayer for God to provide her a son. As a woman who was not able to conceive, she was lost in her culture. A barren woman would be missing her identity and her value much like we feel when we’ve lost a spouse or a career that defined us. As she cries out to the Lord, she tells the priest she is pouring out her soul. Isn’t that imagery reminiscent of our reading from yesterday when Mary poured out the oil on Jesus? Hannah held nothing back from God in her request and in return, she held nothing back in the vow she made.
God, in His faithfulness and compassion, answered her prayer and Hannah’s response was to be thankful and keep her vow. She took her son back to the temple and to the priest Eli. Alongside her burnt offering, she surrenders her son in one of the most dramatic offers of thanksgiving contained in the Scripture. Perhaps it is because I am a parent that my heart is in awe of Hannah. The closest I’ve come to releasing my child into the hands of another person is dropping them off at camp for a couple of weeks or college for a couple of months. Yet Hannah presented her son at the temple where he would “stay there permanently” (1 Sam. 1:22 CEB). It was a lifetime vow.
When Jesus entered this earth, His life was a vow to us, an offering. He chose to give His life for ours and He will never break that vow. In response to His faithfulness and compassion, we have a choice to offer ourselves to Him, a selemim.
As a pastor, I know after a bride and groom make their vows and walk down the aisle to cheers and celebration, they will have to choose to keep those vows every day going forward. They will have to cling to those words in the midst of pain and disappointment. They will need to claim those words in seasons of change. Those are the moments when the real value of our vows becomes evident. We have a choice to offer our vow to the Lord and we have a choice every day to be faithful to that vow.
THE PRAYER
Lord, we recommit ourselves to You. We remember our baptism and we are thankful for the gift of salvation and the relationship You offer. May our vow be as strong today as it was the first day we claimed faith for ourselves. Amen.
THE QUESTIONS
Have you walked through seasons where you struggled with your commitment as a follower of Jesus? How did you make it through? What encouragement do you find knowing that Jesus has made a vow to you that He will never break?
For the Awakening,
Susan Kent
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3 Responses
We keep vows as long as they keep us. Let the honor of a vow fade, and watch the commitment crumble. Divorce courts are full because of a lack of honorable commitment. When the vow no longer carries benefits, commitment disappears, and blame and accusations take their place.
How do wedding vows of love turn into hateful attitudes of separation?
Selfish commitments from oneself to another are destined to fall or, at best, survive through habit. Commit a vow IN Christ to another, and Agape love is the seal that cannot be broken, nor can anything separate it.
Romans 8:38-39
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
When we commit to being IN Christ, Jesus’ vow of a life of abundance is ours.
Jesus sealed His vow by giving up His life for us on the cross.
We also seal our vow to him by giving up our lives to Him.
John 3:30
“He must increase, but I must decrease.”
Staying 💪’ n Christ
Epeshians 6:10
Finally, stay strong IN the Lord and IN His mighty power
Yes, the vows we make at our baptism are quite similar to our marriage vows. And they should be, as corporately, we the Church are the Bride of Christ. In the same way our response to Christ’s call to discipleship involves our denial of self, and picking up our crosses DAILY and following him. Often, I’m not as faithful as I ought to be, but fortunately Jesus always remains faithful.
I make it through times of struggling with commitment to daily follow and obey the risen Jesus by:
* Opening my heart to the promptings of God’s Spirit,
* Saying and doing what the Spirit tells me to do,
* Letting the Holy Spirit freely flow from my innermost being,
* Pondering in God’s Presence,
* Worshipping the Lord with passionate adoration,
* Two-way conversation with Jesus,
* Contemplative Bible reading,
* Praying in tongues (languages I don’t know),
* Striving to bring every thought into obedience to Christ,
* Opening my heart to other people,
* Letting people open their heart to me,
* Praying over other people and getting words for them,
* Letting Christ’s presence awe me through nature,
* Spirit-led interaction with other people,
* Testifying to and proclaiming the reality and power of Jesus,
* Reading the writings of Spirit-led Christians throughout history,
* Repeating Scripture over and over in my mind,
* Tasting and seeing that the Lord is good,
* Drawing near to God and letting Him draw near to me,
* Beholding the Lamb of God with the eyes of my heart,
* Letting God’s Spirit lead me moment-by moment,
* Rejoicing in the Lord always,
* Thanking God for my many blessings,
* Resisting the devil until he runs away from me,
* Being still and knowing that Jesus is the Creator in human flesh.
* Writing about what Jesus is saying and doing in and through me.