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“Past boldness is no assurance of future boldness. Boldness demands continual reliance on God’s spirit.”
Andy Stanley
We will be reading through Nehemiah 10:1-39
Promises are significant things to make and even more so to keep. Covenants are promises, deals, or agreements, but with the acknowledgement that both sides are keeping it regardless if the other is holding up his or her end. We see the covenant made with Noah that he and mankind did not maintain. The same was true for the covenant with Abraham and then with Moses. Now Nehemiah, Ezra, and others are saying they recognize these past shortcomings and promise that this time will be different. (We will see in the last chapter that it isn’t, but I’m getting ahead of myself.)
In this text, several promises were made to renew the previous covenants and establish these promises to God. The whole list ends with one last strong promise:
We will not neglect the house of our God.
Nehemiah 10:39c
As church technology team members, we have made promises to the local church we are serving at, but even more so to the whole Body of Christ. We will ensure that we promote the Gospel to all who will listen, unify our worship to God for all, and do so without sin.
Further, there are undoubtedly promises you have made to your church technology ministry, as well as promises they have made to you. You’ll be on time, do your best, work as a team, and work on your feet. They probably have stated they will train you in that position, give you a timely heads up, and offer support where needed. These are the basics, so I assume that it goes beyond this, maybe way beyond.
The problem with promises is that we tend to make them before we fully understand the responsibilities they entail or the possible complications they will bring. Even more so, we are probably in a good head space when these promises are made and it is guaranteed thanks to sin that not every day will be that great. Accountability is necessary; grace even more so.
This starts to get into leadership material that is beyond the scope of this devotional. What I will say is this: you need to have goals established as we shared in the last devotional chapter. You need to evaluate how all parties have done, and then you need to figure out the next steps. In so doing, I won’t promise it will be smooth sailing, but I can say that the conversation will be open to making improvements.
Use these reflection questions for the comments section.
- What promises have you made to your team and church?
- What promises have your church and ministry made to you?
- How do you evaluate these commitments from the ministry and church as well as the individuals on the team? What will be the next steps if you have not hit the mark with your goals?
Speak your mind...