Promises

Last Sunday in church we were singing a song with the refrain, “I am yours, I am yours.” I’ve always thought I was saying this to God in the way that a person says this to a person they love. Seemed right. After all, I’m the one singing and I love God.

Then there are the lyrics to another song:

I sing for joy at the work of your hands,
Forever I'll love You, forever I'll stand.
Nothing compares to the promise I have in you.

Pretty straightforward: I’m promising my eternal love to God. What could be better?

But I’ve come to think the real beauty in these lines is in God’s eternal love for us. Let’s put a colon at the end of the first line:

I sing for joy at the work of your hands:
Forever I'll love You, forever I'll stand.

You see? The work of God’s hands – which I joyously sing about – is that I will love Him forever! He is the one who makes me stand and who enables me to love Him forever. And this is the incomparable promise that I have in Him.

So when I am singing “I am yours, I am yours” now, I realize that I am not making a promise to God but am rejoicing that He has made me His. I can do nothing apart from Him: He is the one who causes me to stand, to believe, and to love Him.