Making A Covenant with God

Yesterday, and over the next few weeks, many British Methodist Church will have held or be holding their annual Covenant Service.

I used to hate this service.  When I was young I thought it went on for far too long and it didn’t really mean much to me, possibly because by the time we got to the actual Covenant promise I was half asleep.

I now love the Covenant service and see it as one of the jewels in the Methodist crown; something I am told other denominations are quite envious of.

Covenants are part of the history of God’s dealings with his people:

1.     1.  There was a Covenant between God and Noah in Genesis 9, “I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  The rainbow is a reminder of the first Covenant

  There was a covenant between God and the people of Israel in Exodus 24.  “Then Moses took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people.  They responded, ‘We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.”  Unfortunately the Israelites broke their Covenant with God time and time again.

God spoke to Jeremiah of a new Covenant.  Through Jeremiah God said, “I will make a new Covenant.  I will put my law into their minds and write in on their hearts.”  This Covenant was made by Jesus himself at the Last Supper when he said, “This is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many.”

The Covenant promise can be scary to some people.  I have talked to some Methodists who go to the Covenant Service but feel they cannot make the promise – it is too binding, giving too much, they are not sure that they can keep it.

It can be dangerous promise to make – it led to my being called to Methodist ministry, totally disrupting my life, changing everything.

The Covenant promise is a promise to be disciples of Jesus.  It is a promise to give everything we have and everything we are to him.  It is a promise to put Jesus first, to make him the Lord of our lives.

The words of the promise are:
‘I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing,
put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you,
or laid aside for you,
exalted for you,
or brought low for you;
let me be full,
let me be empty,
let me have all things,
let me have nothing:
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.'

Over twenty years ago David Watson, an Anglican evangelist and Vicar wrote:
“Christians in the West have largely neglected what it means to be a disciple of Christ.  The vast majority of Western Christians are church members, pew fillers, hymn singers, sermon tasters, Bible readers, even born again believers or spirit filled charismatics – but not true disciples of Jesus.  If we were willing to learn the meaning of real discipleship and actually to become disciples, the church in the West would be transformed, and the resultant impact on society would be staggering.

This is no idle claim.  It happened in the first century when a tiny handful of timid disciples began, in the power of the Spirit, the greatest spiritual revolution the world has ever known.”

Martyn Atkins, the General Secretary of the Methodist Church, has written:
“Methodism is, at its roots, a discipleship movement and a disciple-making movement.  Yearning and actively seeking to become better disciples of Jesus Christ and offering him to others, lies at the heart of being Methodist Christians.  It resulted in the Methodist movement coming into being and my own view is that the future of Methodism is closely connected to the degree to which it is committed today to being increasingly shaped as a contemporary discipleship/disciple-making movement.”

To make the Covenant promise is to promise to be a faithful disciple of Jesus.  It is a promise I make with joy, because nothing can be better than following Jesus, our Saviour and Lord.