May 13. What Are Acceptable Exceptions?

What are your expectations today? It might be that you will delegate with your team. You might have a date planned with a loved one. Maybe you have some appointments on your calendar or have some projects planned. But with those expectations of the day will come interruptions.

What are you going to allow for exceptions to keep you from progress today? What exceptions will you take to your team that will keep them from performing to their best ability? Our exceptions or excuses can keep us from achieving elite performance.

They keep us from fulfilling our promises. Did you make any promises this week or this morning? If we do not make any promises, we certainly will not keep any. Living without making promises allows us to make exceptions and excuses more easily.

Where did you miss the opportunity to make and keep a promise last week? Where could your team’s performance have been enhanced by making and keeping a promise from you? What is the first thing you can do about it in the next seven days?

When Saul lost the kingdom, it was his lack of fulfilling God’s expectation that caused it. Saul broke the covenantal relationship that was created. God, through Samuel the prophet, had sent him to war to eradicate a people, no exceptions. That makes it a level of a promise.

But Saul gave in to the warriors, the people, and let them loot the country as well as they kept the king alive. These were exceptions that kept the level of fulfilling a promise from occurring. Where can we, as brothers and sisters in Christ, make some promises this week?

I think that our worship and our walk with Christ can be strengthened by making and keeping some promises to God and to ourselves. We do not have to make life shattering promises to honor Jesus. He will accept the small promise as well if we will just keep them.

Our promises will help us live into the behaviors that draw us nearer to him. Making promises to one an

other in the church helps us to collaborate more effectively. What area of your faith can you make a promise in which you can target to keep in the next seven days?

Let us pray, Heavenly Father, you gave us the promise of the rainbow as well as your son Jesus. Send your Holy Spirit this week so that we might strengthen our ability to make promises, to uphold them, and to draw nearer to you. Our promises to you are a way to honor you.

Embolden and strengthen us through our intentionality and promises, to draw nearer to our families, to our church, to our brothers and sisters in Christ. . In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen,