Commitment to God

by Henry Morris III, D.Min.

“Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.” (Psalm 37:5)

Frustration must come as the saints of God battle with evil forces. The pain and pressure of torment is nonetheless real as these evil “devices” (Isaiah 32:7) take their toll on the people of God. The Lord will destroy the plans of the wicked (Psalm 33:10), but while those plans are active, they can cause much hurt.

Nevertheless, we must maintain trust in the Lord and commit our lives to Him if we are to be victorious. The unusual Hebrew word galal used here is more often translated as “roll on” or “roll with” something. It seems to imply a unity in the commitment, that the committed one is bound up in the actions or activities of the thing or person committed to—we “roll on” or “roll with” the Lord in our “way.”

Paul spends much of his letter to the Philippians describing the link between the Creator-Savior and the mind, heart, and lifestyle of the Christian who has given his life over to God. “Being confident of this very thing,” Paul says, “that he which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). We are to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).

While admitting that he had not yet “attained,” Paul was so focused on the work of the Kingdom that he was “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14). God’s promise to “bring it to pass” is conditioned on our being committed to His sovereign will for our “way.” HMM III