Commitment means being “dedicated to a cause, purpose, activity, duty, or responsibility.” Also, dedicating oneself, time, and energy to something or someone you believe in. Commitment is actually an obligation, meaning something you must do at all costs. There are numerous things in life we are legitimately committed to. For example, our family, our jobs, our church, our studies, and the list goes on. However, as christians, our commitment to God surpasses all other commitments.
The christian’s commitment is based squarely on the extent of our love for God. Jesus in His day, told the Pharisees, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). If I am not loving the Lord with all my heart, soul, and mind, how can I be sincerely committed to Him, His church, His cause? In addressing the crowd that followed Him, Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me. And whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:37-38). True discipleship demands sacrifice and selflessness. “He [Jesus] must increase, and I decrease” (John 3:30).
To the Roman christians the Apostle Paul wrote, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2). “Living sacrifices” to God demands that we completely turn ourselves over to God in obedience and total submission to His way, His will, and His purpose. This is what true commitment demands.
The human mind is “the everything” in a person. We decide what to focus on when thoughts enter our minds. The Bible says, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot” (Romans 8:6). The Bible exhorts us, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). The prophet Isaiah also wrote, “God will keep him in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3). Commitment to God requires the “renewal of our minds.” This is essential to Godly living. Transformation starts with our thinking processes in obedience to God’s word. Our minds can be easily contaminated with the filth of sin in the world. As the old saying goes, “I can’t stop the birds from flying over my head. But I can certainly stop them from building a nest there.”
Prior to trusting Jesus as our Savior, we were “dead in trespasses and sins’ (Ephesians 2:1).
However, because of salvation we are “A new creation in Christ. The old has passed away; behold the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We no longer conform to the world, the flesh, and the devil. “God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). This is exactly what mind renewal does for the believer in Jesus Christ.
Considering the reality of these things, shouldn’t our commitment to the Lord be “solid as a rock” that nothing can change? As sinners, we were hopelessly lost without God in a sinful world. But, ah, consider this, God sought us with love and compassion, and by an act of grace and mercy He did not spare His only Son to die for our sins. Where would we be today without the presence of merciful, loving God in our lives.