James 5:12 "Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” This episode talks about how important it is to keep our word to ourselves and to others. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no.
James 5:12 "Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.”
What caught my attention about this verse was the part where it says, “let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no.” I talked on Monday about trusting in the Lord and how it is difficult to trust others because they will let us down. Today this verse is teaching us the importance of keeping our word. It starts off by telling us not to swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath. When the verse is talking about not swearing, it is not talking about using bad language or cussing. Although, you probably shouldn’t do that either. Have you ever said something like, “I swear on my… that I am telling the truth? We all have filled those… in with various words. We do this to convince the other person that we are telling the truth. However, this verse is telling us that we shouldn’t have to do that. If you were a person that always told the truth, you would not have to swear by anything.
God is calling us to be men and women of our word. He is telling us in this verse that if we say something we should do it. Also if we say no to something we should be true to that as well. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble with both of these. I think we live in a busy world these days and many of us are doing more than we should be doing. We say we will do something even though we don’t really have time to do it and then we are surprised when it doesn’t get done. We also live in a distracted world, so even if we do have time to do it, we get distracted so easily we forget to do it and it doesn’t get done. Does this sound familiar to anyone, or is it just me? The thing is, it isn’t just God that wants us to keep our word. We want to be someone people can trust as well. We don’t feel good when we say we will do something and then we don’t do it.
Do you know the person we tend to let down the most? Ourselves, we tend to do things for other people more than we do them for ourselves. Working out is really good for me and yet, I don’t show up for myself in that area. For instance, I am running a half marathon with my sister for her birthday. I know I need to train. I told myself that I would run Thursday and Saturday this week. I didn’t, even though I didn’t have any reason not to run. Yet, I wasn’t feeling well this morning and I still showed up for workout because I didn’t want to leave my friend hanging. Do you have areas in your life where you do this too? You will show up and do what you said if other people are involved, your kids, your spouse, your parents, but if it is just for you, you don’t show up. I know I can’t be the only person that does this.
Why is it important to realize if you are keeping your word or not? There are a few reasons. First, God is telling us right here is this scripture to keep our word. To let our “yes” be a yes and “no” be no. One reason it is so important to keep our word is because if we start to think of ourselves as someone that doesn’t keep our word we might not think it is as important to tell the truth. We may start to tell little white lies to cover up for the fact that we did’t do what we said we would do. For instance, you might say, “I was sick and couldn’t get it done,” when really you just forgot. Or maybe you say that you emailed it to them and it must have gotten lost or sent to their junk mail folder. You didn’t intentionally mean to let them down, you just forgot to do the thing and now you don’t want them to be upset with you so you are covering up for it. I am willing to bet that we have all been on one end of this type of situation. Either you have been the one telling the little white lie to get out of trouble for forgetting to do something, or you have been the one let down and you knew they were lying to get out of it. Why do we do that? Why do we instinctively make up a story sometimes when we feel like we might be in trouble or we might hurt someone’s feelings?
I am not sure why we do it, or why I do it. I am guessing it is because we don’t want to admit that we messed up. I don’t want to feel like I let someone down again, I feel vulnerable, and so I make up a lie to protect myself.
Did you know when we consistently let ourselves down, we stop believing in ourselves. We start to tell ourselves, consciously or subconsciously that we can’t do things. We start to believe that we are not someone that keeps his or her word because we haven’t been keeping our word to ourselves. Then we stop making commitments to ourselves because we assume we will just break them. We might stop making commitments to others too. Say you decide you want to say the rosary every day to grow closer to God. If you have consistently been blowing yourself off, then you may decide not to even try to say the rosary because you tell yourself you will just quit anyway. This can happen in all areas of our life. We may talk ourselves our of volunteering at church because we tell ourselves we will not show up and then will let someone down. Do you see how this can spread and start to limit you in your life?
Besides giving up on believing in yourself, telling these white lies can also spread to you telling bigger lies. Luke 16:10 says, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” If we are dishonest in the little things in our lives, we will start to get comfortable telling these little lies and then we might start to tell bigger lies. This verse is telling us that if we lie in little ways, we will also lie in big ways. Lying is one of those things that can snowball. You can start off telling a small lie with the best of intentions and before you know it the lie has gotten out of control. Even if this has never happened to you, I am sure you have seen this in enough movies. The guys makes up a little lie about having a dog to get the girl to go on a date with him. What could it hurt? Then they hit it off and start dating and she wants to meet this dog. So he borrows his neighbors dog and says that it is his dog. And then they get serious and she is spending more time at his house and wondering where the dog is but now he is afraid to tell her the truth because too much time has gone by and I am sure you can tell the rest of that story. Even if we don’t know exactly how it ends, we know it doesn’t end well. Lying doesn’t get us anywhere. The truth always comes out in the end. We should all save ourselves time and pain and learn from this wise verse. “Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.”
Just real quick, I want to address the you may not fall under condemnation part. Sometimes this condemnation comes from the person that you lied to. When they find out you lied, they will not be happy and you will feel their condemnation. Other times the condemnation will come from yourself. You know when you are being honest and when you are not. When you are lying, even if you don’t get caught you will feel awful. You know that you deceived someone and you will feel it inside. And finally, God knows when you are being truthful and when you aren’t. You may be able to hide it from others, you may even be able to justify it to yourself, but you cannot hide the truth from the Lord. We are not perfect, we will all make mistakes. However, let us try to be men and women of our word. Let’s be different from the rest of the world. God set us apart, let’s act like it and be a people who take our word very seriously. Take time and answer questions intentionally. If you don’t have time, be honest and say no. If you say no, make sure to do it. Try not to tell a lie, even if it seems little and harmless and like no one will get hurt. You never know the unintended consequences.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be men and women of honor. Help us to keep our word and do as we say we will. Help us to pause and consider what is being asked and then help us to discern if it is right for us. Lord, we want to be truthful people, help us. Help us also keep our word to ourselves. Help us to show up even when we feel like no one is counting on us but ourselves. Help us see our worth and that we are worthy of the same consideration we give others. We love you so much Lord. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance of your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!