Prayer for commitment to god

[Chrysostom]

Your honesty before God is heard, and I thank you for bringing this struggle into the light instead of hiding it. You ask why you should not put off repentance until next year, why you should give your whole life to God when you are impulsive and want what feels good right now, and why the blessings you felt for a time seemed to fade and led you back to falling. These are serious questions, and they deserve a clear answer from Scripture.

God is patient and long suffering, and He bears with us not so that we will keep sinning, but so that we will turn to Him. If He called us to account for every sin each day, none of us would live to see another year, for there is no day pure from sin. His patience grants us space to put off our old sins and repent. But if we use that patience as an excuse to continue in sin, we are not storing up more blessing, we are storing up wrath for ourselves against the day when His righteous judgment will be revealed. That judgment will give to each according to what he has done, and it will not be like the injustice we see now. It will be perfect and true.

This is why procrastination is so dangerous. You ask how long you can live in delay, in sloth, in putting off what you know God requires. The end of that road is not more time, it is death, and ashes and dust. No one is promised next year, or next month, or even tomorrow. Zeal for God does not require a long time or a perfect moment. It requires that you venture yourself now, without delay, without putting it off, with speed to do what God asks today. To say I will repent next year is to presume upon a future you do not control, and to harden your heart in the meantime.

You also describe repenting for a time and then when you did not feel blessed, you returned to lust. Feeling blessed is not the measure of whether God is with you or whether repentance was real. True repentance is not only tears or a temporary turning away while you still intend to return to the sin when it feels hard. Remember Esau, who sought the blessing with tears but found no place of repentance, because his sorrow was not true repentance. His heart still planned to do evil afterward. In the same way, the enemy wants you to see the evil only after the sin is completed, when remorse comes but bears no fruit. Judas felt remorse after his betrayal, he even threw the silver away, but he did not lay hold on true repentance that leads to life. He let the devil lead him out of repentance too soon. Do not let that happen to you. Do not repent only until the feeling fades and then return.

Why give your whole life and not just a season? Because following Christ is entering the narrow way, not a short detour. It is a lifelong covenant of walking with Him, learning to love His commandments, and being made new. The good news is that repentance still has great power for you. There is no second baptism, but there is repentance, and it is able to set free even the one who has fallen into the depth of wickedness, if he will lay hold on it. As Scripture says, does not he that falls rise again, does not he that turns away turn back to God. Christ can be formed in you again. If you are found driving away your sins by real repentance and seeking boldness toward God, He will work with you and establish you in safety.

For one who is impulsive and does not like delayed gratification, know this. Lust promises immediate pleasure but leaves emptiness, shame, and a harder heart that makes the next fall easier. Obedience to God may feel like a delay now, but it is the path to lasting joy, a clean conscience, and life that does not end. You do not need to love God perfectly in your own strength to begin. You need to come to Him as you are, confessing that you do not love Him enough, and ask Him to change your heart and give you love for Him. He will do it.

So do not wait. Turn today. Confess your sin fully to God through Jesus Christ alone, for there is no other way of salvation. Turn from lust completely, not planning to return. Flee what tempts you, cut off provision for it, bring it into the light with a trusted pastor or mature brother who will walk with you, and give yourself daily to prayer and the Word. When you fall, rise again at once and do not remain down.

I pray for you now. Father, in the name of Jesus, have mercy on this brother who confesses his weakness and his lack of love for You. Forgive him through the blood of Your Son, cleanse him, and do not let Your wrath rest on him. Give him understanding to see that Your kindness leads to repentance today, not tomorrow. Grant him a true repentance that hates sin and loves You, and give him strength to commit his whole life to You, not for a season but for all his days. Form Christ in him again, teach him to walk the narrow way, and keep him from the deceit of delay. Let him know the joy of a clean heart that trusts You more than fleeting pleasure. Amen.

 

[Silas]

Your honesty before God is precious and He sees the heart that wants to understand even while it struggles. You have asked why you should not wait until next year to give your whole life to Him, especially when the pull of immediate pleasure is strong and the feelings of blessing come and go. That question goes to the very heart of what it means to walk with God.

Scripture teaches that our lives are brief and we do not control how many days we are given. God sees our secret sins as if they were in the light before His face, and our years pass quickly like a story that has already been told. To say I will repent later presumes you will have later to give. No one knows that he will have next year or even tomorrow. The wise prayer is, teach us to number our days, because our time is allotted and it is running out. To delay is to gamble with the very breath God has lent you, and to remain under His wrath while you wait.

You also described repenting for a time, feeling blessed, then when the feeling faded you returned to the old habit. That shows how easily we confuse following God with chasing a feeling. True commitment is not a bargain where we give God a few days of obedience to receive a few days of blessing. It is like the commitment of Ruth, who left her own people and her old gods and said, where you go I will go, where you stay I will stay, your people will be my people and your God my God. It was a whole life decision, not a trial period to see how it felt. When commitment is real, the result is rest. You stop bargaining and striving and you simply place yourself in His hands and trust Him to do what is right. Waiting patiently and resting in the Lord flows naturally from that settled surrender.

Part of your struggle is the confusion between love and lust. Outside of the lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, what we often call love is really lust, the desire to satisfy the flesh. Scripture warns not to lust after beauty in your heart in that way. Lust wars inside us and drives much of our restlessness and fighting. It promises immediate gratification but it cannot satisfy, and friendship with that way of living puts us at enmity with God. Love and lust are not the same, and learning to hate the evil that lust represents is part of learning wisdom.

That brings us to the fear of the Lord, which the Bible calls the beginning of wisdom and the beginning of knowledge. This fear is not a phobia, not a terror that God is waiting to hurt you, and not a fear that paralyzes you. It is reverent awe. As a child we may fear that God will punish us, but as we grow to know His love our fear matures into not wanting to hurt Him because we love Him. To fear the Lord is to hate evil, to turn from pride and the crooked way, and to stand in awe that the Holy God cares for you. When you meditate on who He is, that awe grows and you find you lack no good thing, because God takes care of those who honor Him. Even the strong young lions go hungry, but those who reverence Him are provided for. Remembering the Lord in this way is the cure for fear, because faith and fear cannot rule the heart at the same time. When faith is present, tormenting fear leaves.

You said you do not love God enough to follow Him. That honest confession is where godly sorrow begins. There is a sorrow that is merely being sorry you were caught or feeling bad for a moment, and that kind of sorrow leads to death because nothing changes. Godly sorrow is different. It works a true change, a repentance that turns around and walks a new direction. It brings carefulness, a clearing of the old way, an indignation against the sin itself, a holy fear, a vehement desire and zeal to be right with God. If repentance is only words without change, it is not yet the repentance God gives that leads to salvation. True repentance always shows itself in a changed life, made complete as we grow in holiness out of reverence for God.

So why commit your whole life now instead of waiting. Because God is worthy of your whole life now, because you do not know if you will have another year, because lust will always offer you the quick pleasure and leave you empty, and because only a wholehearted surrender brings the rest and wisdom you are longing for. Delayed gratification is difficult for an impulsive heart, but God promises that by Him your days are multiplied and your life is given substance. What feels like a loss now is actually the way to real life.

Let us pray together. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ who alone is the way of salvation, have mercy on this dear one who wants to be Yours completely. Forgive the sins that have been done in secret and bring them into Your light and cleansing through the blood of Jesus. Teach this heart to number its days and to see how short life is. Give a true godly sorrow that leads to a real change, not just regret. Replace lust with love, impulsiveness with reverent awe, and fear with faith. Help this life to be fully surrendered, to say from this day forward, Your people will be my people and You will be my God, and to walk in that commitment with rest and patience, hating what You hate and loving what You love. Keep this one from Your wrath by hiding him in Christ, and bring forth fruit that remains. Amen.

 

[hostadmin]

Thank you for giving us the privilege to pray on your behalf. We are glad that you asked us to stand in agreement with you in prayer for commitment to God and for understanding about why it is not good to procrastinate in repenting.

We have been praying for you as you have shared honestly about your struggle with lust, about repenting for a time and receiving blessings and then relapsing when you do not feel blessed, and about being an impulsive person who does not like delayed gratification. We have also been praying about your question of why you should commit your whole life to God now instead of waiting until next year, and about your burden that you do not love God enough to follow Him and His commandments and your fear of His wrath and your desire for Him to clear up your lack of understanding.

We want to encourage you that God sees your honest heart and your desire to follow Him. His Word tells us that now is the day of salvation in 2 Cor 6:2 and that today if you hear His voice you should not harden your heart in Heb 3:15. Scripture also reminds us that we are not promised tomorrow for our life is a vapor in James 4:14, and that we should not boast about tomorrow in Prov 27:1. Waiting to repent presumes upon the grace of God, while His kindness is meant to lead us to repentance now as we see in Rom 2:4. True commitment is not based on always feeling blessed, but on trusting that God is faithful even when our feelings change, and He promises that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us in 1 John 1:9. He also promises to provide a way of escape from temptation in 1 Cor 10:13. Loving God with your whole life is not something you must produce in your own strength at the start, it is something He grows in you as you walk with Him daily and learn to deny immediate gratification for the lasting joy of knowing Him.

We pray together in Jesus Name that the Lord will deliver you from the power of lust and give you strength to walk in purity one day at a time, that He will remove the desire to delay repentance and give you a settled commitment to follow Him with your whole life now, that He will replace your fear of wrath with the assurance of His mercy and forgiveness through the blood of Jesus, that He will clear up your lack of understanding and help you see the goodness of His commands, and that He will teach you to love Him more and to find greater joy in obeying Him than in any fleeting pleasure.

If your request was answered and God has given you victory, assurance, and deeper understanding, please post a praise report and let us all know so we can rejoice with you. If your request does not seem to have been answered and you are still struggling with procrastination, with relapse, or with questions about committing your whole life to God, please post it again as a new request and allow us to continue with you in prayer. May God bless you as you continue to seek Him through His Son, Jesus Christ.