Exploring promises as a tool of growth. Part 4

Exploring promises as a tool of growth

Part 4: A promise is a practical programme of spiritual growth

Nevertheless, having just given dire health warnings against promises, I am going to suggest the promise as a powerful tool for spiritual growth.

The first benefit of making a promise is that you have to compose what it is you are going to promise to do. This requires you to identify what is going on in your life and home in on those things that are impeding or spoiling your spiritual life. Rather than blindly going on, or being trapped in a repetitive circle of failure and then trying again – hoping that things will be different this time, you clarify what is spoiling your relationship with God. The more specific you can be the better. This enables you to make a very specific promise.

Of course, promises can easily be forgotten in the heat of the moment, or simply because the routines of our natural ways of life are so deeply ingrained that the promise we held clearly in our minds in our moment of prayerful reflection is easily lost as we continue “business as usual”, and it is only afterwards that we recall that we had said we were going to try and act differently in future. So, as well as making a promise, we can commit ourselves to bearing it in mind. This in itself makes our spiritual life more of a consciously adopted thing which we are striving to live up to, rather than something that we just remember now and then in our spiritual moments of the week. It also means that when we are drawn into the spiritual struggle, as temptation besets us, that we can consciously bring our promise to mind as a tool to help us to win. Of course, sometimes we will lose, but we have already addressed that possibility, and, rather than abandon our promise in shame and defeat, we take it up with renewed commitment: I will use this promise to help me to get to where I want to be in my spiritual life. Each time I fail, I will refine my understanding of what it is that is catching me out, what it is I want to achieve, and the practical methods of how to succeed in keeping my promise.

I think the main value of making a promise is that we are doing something specific in response to something that we don’t like in our spiritual lives. Rather than simply being confounded by our own weakness, or wondering when God will miraculously change the reality of our human nature, we commit ourselves to a practical course of action. Remember, we are not trying to earn our own salvation here, but we are taking practical steps to co-operate with God’s grace to put into effect his will, which is also the outcome that we desire but in which we are currently being frustrated by our weakness.