[33] “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

In the Wesleyan tradition, it is our custom to make a personal ‘covenant’ with God in one of our beginning of years services. This may be why resolutions have never really featured in my start the year consciousness, surely the commitment to God and his purpose and priorities is enough to be going on with? Our covenant remembers the covenants God has made with his people throughout the generations – from Noah to Abraham and Moses through to the prophets – and particularly this beauty from Jeremiah which is so intimate and so deeply personal that it vanishes any perceived distance between us and God who promises to be embedded within heart and mind. The covenant then culminates in Jesus who offers The Sacrifice of the New Covenant in his blood Mtt 26:28; Mark 14:24; Lk 22:20; 1Cor 11:25.

“With joy we offer ourselves anew to you. We are no longer our own but yours.” It is no burden to be under God’s authority and to be overtly and joyfully God’s people. Where others may resolve to do the things and to be better – we release ourselves to the commitment of service and the honour of following the good purposes of God wherever and however he chooses. It is a prayer of joyful yielding and total surrender to God.

Over the years I have prayed this in dark moments of unknowing, when my experiences of life seemed to be at odds with the promises of God. When we were anxious to meet the promised but difficult to conceive child who would complete our little family, nearly nine years after the the arrival of his older brother. Each time God has moved me with my family to a new area to ‘begin again’. When in the depths of a spiritual and very real experience of depression. In times of fruitfulness and in wilderness times, I have remade my covenant with God – and as I lead churches in making the ‘covenant of God their own’ – I retrace its weight and mystery, its honour and responsibly several times each year, often within hours, regularly within weeks. 

Called to be a holy people

Complete surrender to God doesn’t sit easily with my independent and often wayward thinking and impetuous nature with a desire always for tangible outcomes. Complete surrender to God may, and I think often does jar with the societal pressures to be as and like the peoples around us … and how many times do we see the people of God fall away from him throughout the Old Testament due to their falling in with the cultures amongst which they dwell? We are living in a cultural time of ‘easy yes’. Where we are very much on show for what we believe and how that works out in real life. Viewpoints and decisions made that are counter to the prevailing culture are shot down in flames of shame and derision… and still God calls us to be his own and to keep being his holy people.

I have found that this covenant commitment looks like seeking God to be Lord of the impossible. Trusting God to champion me when faithfulness feels like failure. Remembering that He supports me when obedience seems to resemble loss and rejection. Knowing that the Lord will lift up my heart when others take plaudits for my work and initiatives. 

On my own, I am a person of little courage, and when alone I have even less strength than I do courage – but this covenant prayer of surrender and total yielding to God’s utter and ultimate authority? Oh, my friends – here is freedom to be the person that God creates with his breath of love each day and in the grace of his Covenant love, I am whole and I am strong, courageous and fulfilled. 

I have included the Wesleyan version Covenant prayer here in case you would like to take hold of it yourself, beginning with the line that assures us of our corporate connectedness in Christ before we make it our own:

We are no longer our own, but yours…

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. So be it.
And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.

About Catherine…