The five commitments

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, “Kingdom Cells”. Tell me what you think.

You’ve gotta stand for something

Books are dangerous. They are full of ideas, and ideas by themselves do nothing.

The Pharisees had lots of good ideas, and Jesus counselled his disciples to listen to their teaching, but to be careful to separate their ideology from their practise:

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. (Matthew 23:3)

Commitment is not about theology, philosophy or ideology. Commitment is about will. Commitment is about making a choice and then acting.

The bible talks a fair bit about the need for an act of the will. Many of the times it does, however we misunderstand what it is saying because the words mean something different to us.

It is one thing to translate words from the original Greek or Hebrew, it is another thing to understand what the writers were trying to say when they used those words.

Idiom, is the word used to describe how words or  phrases mean one thing literally, yet mean something completely differently when used in a particular culturally understood context.

Heart is one such word. Of course, your heart is literally the organ currently beating in your chest to pump blood through your body.

Idiomatically, we in the Western world also use heart to represent our emotions in phrases like “I love you with all my heart” or “He died of a broken heart”.

For the Hebrew people though, the heart was not the centre of emotions, that was the bowels or stomach (which possibly would not look so good on a Hallmark card!).  The Hebrew people used the word heart to mean will or choice.

This is an important understanding. All of a sudden many bible verses take on a new meaning when read from this perspective.

For instance Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.

Or Mark 12:30

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Can you see how a better understanding of biblical idiom gives a much richer, and also more confronting, understanding of the writer’s intentions?

Do a word study on heart and I think you will find that many verses make much more sense through this lens.

One of the things that will emerge from an exercise like this will be a very sharp focus on the fact that God doesn’t just want your emotions or your intellect: He wants you, all of you. He wants your commitment.

Many Christians do not get to the point where they own a challenge with God.  They never get to the point where there is something important enough for them to rearrange their priorities past what is “normal”.

Prolific author on the subject of leadership, John Maxwell said:

“Until I am committed, there is a hesitancy, a chance to draw back. But the moment I definitely commit myself, then God moves also, and a whole stream of events erupts. All manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, persons, and material assistance, which I could never have dreamed would come my way, begin to flow toward me – the moment I make a commitment.”

The world try to keep you from making a commitment.

The world will keep giving you an agenda:

1. Get good marks at school.
2. Then you need to get a good job and to move up in that job.
3. Then you need a good partner.
4. Then you need perfect children.
5. Then your children need to be the most important thing in your life.
6. Then you need to provide for your children when you are gone.
7. And then you die.

So many people get to the end of their lives leaving the world no different to how they found it.

In outlining the elements of Kingdom Cells, this book is primarily a challenge to commitment. In fact this book is a challenge to five commitments that ultimately all stem from the first and main commitment – to Jesus.

Each and every element of the Kingdom Cell requires a commitment of the will, a choice to turn against what one part of you will desperately want and what the world will tell you that you definitely need.

Without Jesus though, the other elements will eventually disappear too. The weight of our own drives for safety and security, and the pressure of the world will be far too great without the Resurrected life of Christ as the nucleus.

As I will describe in the coming pages, following a real commitment to Christ, there must also be commitment to Mission, Fellowship, Leadership and Hospitality if the life of the Kingdom Cell is to be present.