Exploring promises as a tool of growth. Part 5

Exploring promises as a tool of growth

Part 5: Fashion your promise carefully

Yes, our promise might be only addressing one area of our lives, but we are making a start. And one promise can lead to another – especially if we actually achieve success on one point. Rather than aiming for perfection overnight – a great ideal, but one in which we will certainly fail – we are committing to an incremental growth. We can still have perfection as our goal, but initially, we are trying to keep this one promise. Certainly, I have been so distressed and dismayed by my failure to keep to those spiritual goals which I truly do desire, but which remain out of reach. It would be good to have at least one thing where I can say, “I said I’d do this, and I have”. Not that I will boast, but I will rejoice that I have found one thing in which I wanted to please God by doing something, and I showed that I could do it. And very importantly, I did it because I had clearly identified this as something that would honour God, that would be a way in which I can show that I can do something because I love God, and because it is something that was undermining my peace with God – but now it does not.

The promise can be anything you wish. You will know, and be able to work out, what it is that is spoiling your relationship with God and undermining your spiritual integrity. Many of these things will be sexual matters, and I must leave it to you to consider what they might be. However, we mustn’t underestimate the very wide range of challenges which people face. Our personalities are deeply intertwined with the desire for self-esteem, which is good in itself, but it comes with all sorts of temptations to dominate, control or exploit others. We react so negatively to hurts and slights, real or imagined, and fall prey to bitterness, anger, jealousy. And this is even before the terrible challenges imposed on us by the injustice that is all around us in the world. As people who love God, we are called to follow a path of righteousness and compassion through an obstacle course of violence, suffering and injustice. There is nothing, no matter how intrinsically good in itself, that cannot be twisted into something harmful. So, miserable sinners that we are, let’s show a little gentleness towards ourselves, and a little humility too, and simply make a promise that we are going to do our utmost to keep.