Vows, visions and voices - Chambers, Oswald

1. The vices and virtues of vowing

When thou vowest a vow unto god, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou vowest. (Ecclesiastes 5:4 RV)

At new year time we hear much of vowing. Solomons advice is dont vow; because if you make a vow, even in ordinary matters, and do not fulfil it, you are the worse for it. To make a promise may simply be a way of shirking responsibility. Never pile up promises before men, and certainly not before god. It is better to run the risk of being considered indecisive, better to be uncertain and not promise, than to promise and not fulfil. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay (Ecclesiastes 5:5).

The vices of vowing outweigh the virtues, because vowing is built on a misconception of human nature as it really is. If a man had the power to will pure will it would be different, but he has not. There are certain things a man cannot do, not because he is bad, but because he is not constituted to do them. We make vows which are impossible of fulfilment because no man can remain master of himself always; there comes a time when the human will must yield allegiance to a force greater than itself, it must yield either to god or to the devil. Modern ethical teaching bases everything on the power of the will, but we need to recognise also the perils of the will. The man who has achieved a moral victory by the sheer force of his will is less likely to want to become a christian than the man who has come to the moral frontier of his own need. It is the obstinate man who makes vows, and by the very fulfilment of his vow he may increase his inability to see things from Jesus Christs standpoint. When a man is stirred, either by joy or sorrow, or by the seasons of the year, he is apt to make vows which are beyond the possibility of human power to keep. Jesus Christ bases the entrance to his kingdom not on a mans vowing and making decisions, but on the realisation of his inability to decide. Decisions for Christ fail because the bedrock of Christianity is ignored. It is not our vows before god that tell, but coming to god exactly as we are, in all our weakness, and being held and kept by him. Make no vows at this new year time, but look to god and bank on the reality of Jesus Christ.

2. The direction of vision (acts 26:19)

It was no passing emotion that came to Paul on the road to Damascus, the vision had very clear and emphatic direction for him, and he says, i was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim, he was brought into a vivid, personal, overmastering relationship to Jesus Christ: i have chosen him (mof- fatt). There are pietistic movements started by certain forms of vision which are characterised by fasting and times of prayer and devotion, but they are the antipodes of everything Jesus Christ taught. Jesus Christ taught absolute abandonment to himself and identification with his aims. The test of all spiritual vision is, that i may know him.

Recall the time when you knew without any doubt that the spirit of god spoke to you and brought you to see what god wanted you to do; if you obeyed the vision, it has led on to emancipation in your life; but remember, every enlargement of vision has to be paid for by increased concentration. We all have moments when

The spirit’s true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones,
And apprise it if pursuing
Or the right way or the wrong way,
To its triumph or undoing.
Robert Browning

We are inclined to be ashamed of the vision we get because it marks us out as being different from other people, and we are afraid of being considered speckled birds. 14 the vision will mark you out as different, but if you take your direction from the vision, you will not only make a straight path for yourself but for others also.

3. The inspiration of voices

And i heard the voice of the lord saying, whom shall i send? (isaiah 6:8)

The call of god is best heard when the soul is in a state of obedience to the known will of god, when, as it were, gods soliloquy is overheard whom shall i send, and who will go for us? And the ready response is, here am i; send me. The call of god is difficult to state, it is implicit, not explicit. The call of god does not come to everyone, it comes only to the man who has the nature of god in him. For every man who is true to the call of god, there are many who are true to the call of a creed or doctrinal evangelism. There are voices that are not true to the character of Jesus Christ (see Matthew 24:2324); the inspiration of these voices is not to glorify Jesus, but to glorify something which he does. Give time to heed the call of god. The voice of god never contradicts the character of god.