Promises to God?

[British Chris]

Hello I,m Chris
Some of you may know this but I have obsessive compulsive dissorder.(ocd)
Now I want to ask a few questions.
If anyone decides to reply if they could explain their answer I would be grateful.
Sometimes if I don't know why people think what they do' I tend to ask and it takes longer.
I suggest you read this carefully and ask questions if you are not to sure what I mean.


Anyway for quite some time now I have been worried about accidentaly promising something to God.
I,m talking about mental promises not verbal oaths or vows.
Basically say I was thinking about reading something I would just start to think about promising God I would read it and then I would try not to and sometimes my mind would slip and I would accidently tell God I would read it.
This isn't deliberate but would that count as a promise' do I have to fulfil it?


Secondly for about a month when I got these thoughts I got into a bad habbit.
Basically when I was getting these thoughts about promising God something I wouldn't actually want to promise I would do soemthing because it can be difficult to fulfil promises' sometimes when I thought I had made a promise to God' e.g. promise to read something' I have read it over again and again because I wasn't satisfied I had read it properly.

So when I got these thoughts I would deliberatley promise NOT TO DO IT.
I think my way of thinking was that if I promise not to do it I just won't do it where as if I promise to do it it could be difficult.
This seemd to help take the stress away.
People with ocd sometimes think certain thoughts to neutralise their ocd' possibly thats what I was doing.
I don't think I really meant them.



I think after a little while my way of thinking developed and I started to think that if I had promised not to do something I couldn't promise to do it afterwards because I would be promising to break a previous promise and so if I promised not to do it accidentaly it wouldn't count.

.
This basically became something I would do without much thought and alot of the time I would make the decision very qucikly to do it.
Sometimes I may have put a stipulation on that if I broke them I could not do certain things which I want to.
Unfortuanely I have broken a few of them so now I,m not sure if I can do these things which I want to.
I wondered what people on here think do these two scenarios count as proper promises or not?
Chris

 

[British Chris]

Hello
I,m just putting a reply on to get this post to the top so hopefully I get some replies.
Chris

 

[nzguy]

Well... promising God you will do something or won't do something .. is bound to be a failing system.. because we are sinners.

Inevitably, we always fail at keeping promises.

This is where God's unconditional commitment of His will to us comes in.. where by His grace, He stays with us and never leaves us.

I have been caught a number of times of making a promise to God.. like after sinning in a lust way.. saying I will never do that again.. like a vow..

well that lasts about 2 or 3 days.. and then I am back again in the old bad habit!

They key thing to breaking bad habits and keeping your word with God, is meditating on His sacrifice for our sins.. by realising that we are forgiven, this allows us to make a healthy choice to flee from our sins, because we are set free. That is allowing the Holy Spirit to empower us, relying on God.. rather than our own strength.

My experience with other people having OCD is that they find it hard to not see things as HAVE TOs.. most things.. are must.. must .. must... should.. should.. should..

when God is saying.. no, you don't have to do anything.. but if you want to love Me, then acknowledge Me and walk after me out of love for what I have done for you.

So I don't know your situation really.. but I think meditating on Christ's sacrifice for your sins is the key to being set free from bondage to having to please God by works.

This is how we can conquer all bad habits.. mental illnesses etc.. through giving our lives over to God..who works in us to break down mental sickness and barriers.. so that we can live in liberty and joy.

2Co 3:17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Ga 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Jas 1:25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

Lu 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

From

NZguy

 

[nzguy]

Okay well.. if you are crying wolf to God.. like saying.. I will do this.. I will do this.. and then not doing it.. then God will put some boundaries down, and work on your heart to discipline you so you begin to be faithful, but only if you let Him. Otherwise He will deny you blessings, because you haven't been a friend to Him.

So any promise you make that isn't backed up by a faithful step to God would lead to God having less input into your life, because you aren't following Him in the promise you made.

But aside from that.. like I said before.. God forgives all sin.. and never condemns us personally once we are saved.. He will never send a Christian to eternal separation from Him. So the question is begged.. why get caught up in promising God stuff..getting hooked into good works.. when works are not what saved you in the first place?

from

NZguy

 

[British Chris]

Hello nzguy
So do you think the accidental promises count as proper promises that I must keep or just the deliberate ones?
Sorry I,m un certain of what you think.
Chris

 

[edie19]

we all make promises to God - intentionally, unintentionally doesn't matter. Chances are good that we'll fail in >90% of our promises. Mankind is a fallen race, we're sinners - even after conversion we're simply not capable of keeping promises we make to God. We can't keep the 10 Commandments for 24 hours (probably not even 24 minutes), our promises - no matter how well intentioned - are the same.

Fortunately for us we don't need to stress over it - our promises are covered by the life, death and resurrection of the same man who kept the law for us.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to be obedient, to keep our promises. We should continue striving until the day we leave this world to be in our Father's presence. Just means we don't need to beat ourselves up over our all too human failings.

edie

 

[edie19]

mod hat on


oops, almost forgot
thread moved to new forum per staff


mod hat off
​

 

[Jayangel81]

Making promises and vows to God is definitly something I dont have the capability of doing. Actually for anyone lol.. not that I do it on purpose (altho cant say I havent) or not but I have this mental issue with actually never following thru with what I say..


I was in a huge cycle of this and well lets just say God gave me a kick in the butt for doing it heh...I had one today which is why I think its coinidence to see this post.

If your say afraid to make promises to God, and you do have OCD your mind is conciously going to do it because you fear it.

Just like alot of us, we are afraid to blaspheme God so what are our minds gonna do? our minds are gonna blaspheme God.

OCD loves to play with our fears.

 

[kaykay9.0]

OCD loves to play with our fears.

You nailed it here, Jay! Whatever we have issues with, whatever we love and fear losing, OCD often latches onto. Then we get into an obsession cycle about it etc.

 

[Ariel]

Hello nzguy
So do you think the accidental promises count as proper promises that I must keep or just the deliberate ones?
Sorry I,m un certain of what you think.
Chris

British Chris--welcome!

To answer your question--no, you don't have to keep accidental promises. As Jayangel and kaykay said, a lot of those thoughts are being driven by fear. So these don't count.

As for other promises--even these are covered by God's grace. God knows our hearts and our limitations. He knows that sometimes we promise things we can't do, but even then His love reaches out and covers us. This is grace. He loves us, and He covers our sins.

 

[gracealone]

HI Chris welcome to the forum, glad to have you on board,

It's good to know that you have been diagnosed with OCD because that explains what's going on here - OCD, OCD, and even more OCD.
Firstly it's clear that you don't want to make the promise but rather that this thought/statment pops into your head and causes you to feel that you must or should make the promise.
I would classify that as an unwanted/intrusive OCD spike - not a real promise that your heart desired to make. For instance when I promised to be faithful to my husband till death do we part and all that I didn't do it by accident but because I really wanted to - my heart desired to do so. I don't think there's any such thing as an "accidental promise", if it's accidental, unintended it can't be viewed as valid.
Now onto the "bad habit" The compulsive activity of reading the material over and over again was likely driven by the anxiety response over whether or not you'd really intended to make this promise to God. You had doubts and remember OCD is called "The doubting disease." So then you felt compelled even though you really didn't want to, to keep "checking" to be sure that you'd really done it and done it right or else you had to live with the fear and uncertainty caused by the "spike". Pretty typical OCD response. But learning to manage our OCD is learning to live with, put up with and endure the fearful and uncertain feelings without engaging in the compulsive activities.
The other compulsive activitey of "deliberately promising not to do it", is a form of cancelling or undoing the original spike and that too, if you don't stop it could become a problem because then reading anything at all could in the end be percieved by you to be a sin. All compulsive activity is done by those of us with OCD to try and feel better, but the feeling better is always only a temporary thing as the original spike will keep coming back at us in a new way.
So all of what you wrote is pretty typical of a classic OCD cycle. In order to break that cycle you just have to ignore the spikes about promising or not promising when they pop into your head. Just think of them as annoying static on a radio and read or don't read whatever you want to without paying any attention to their suggestions.
All of this is only my opinion gleaned from my own experiences with OCD cycles. I'm not a Dr. or an expert on these things - just a fellow sufferer.
Praying for you.
Mitzi





So when I got these thoughts I would deliberatley promise NOT TO DO IT.
I think my way of thinking was that if I promise not to do it I just won't do it where as if I promise to do it it could be difficult.
This seemd to help take the stress away.
People with ocd sometimes think certain thoughts to neutralise their ocd' possibly thats what I was doing.
I don't think I really meant them.



I think after a little while my way of thinking developed and I started to think that if I had promised not to do something I couldn't promise to do it afterwards because I would be promising to break a previous promise and so if I promised not to do it accidentaly it wouldn't count.

.
This basically became something I would do without much thought and alot of the time I would make the decision very qucikly to do it.
Sometimes I may have put a stipulation on that if I broke them I could not do certain things which I want to.
Unfortuanely I have broken a few of them so now I,m not sure if I can do these things which I want to.
I wondered what people on here think do these two scenarios count as proper promises or not?
Chris[/quote]

 

[kaykay9.0]

HI Chris welcome to the forum, glad to have you on board,

It's good to know that you have been diagnosed with OCD because that explains what's going on here - OCD, OCD, and even more OCD.
Firstly it's clear that you don't want to make the promise but rather that this thought/statment pops into your head and causes you to feel that you must or should make the promise.
I would classify that as an unwanted/intrusive OCD spike - not a real promise that your heart desired to make. For instance when I promised to be faithful to my husband till death do we part and all that I didn't do it by accident but because I really wanted to - my heart desired to do so. I don't think there's any such thing as an "accidental promise", if it's accidental, unintended it can't be viewed as valid.
Now onto the "bad habit" The compulsive activity of reading the material over and over again was likely driven by the anxiety response over whether or not you'd really intended to make this promise to God. You had doubts and remember OCD is called "The doubting disease." So then you felt compelled even though you really didn't want to, to keep "checking" to be sure that you'd really done it and done it right or else you had to live with the fear and uncertainty caused by the "spike". Pretty typical OCD response. But learning to manage our OCD is learning to live with, put up with and endure the fearful and uncertain feelings without engaging in the compulsive activities.
The other compulsive activitey of "deliberately promising not to do it", is a form of cancelling or undoing the original spike and that too, if you don't stop it could become a problem because then reading anything at all could in the end be percieved by you to be a sin. All compulsive activity is done by those of us with OCD to try and feel better, but the feeling better is always only a temporary thing as the original spike will keep coming back at us in a new way.
So all of what you wrote is pretty typical of a classic OCD cycle. In order to break that cycle you just have to ignore the spikes about promising or not promising when they pop into your head. Just think of them as annoying static on a radio and read or don't read whatever you want to without paying any attention to their suggestions.
All of this is only my opinion gleaned from my own experiences with OCD cycles. I'm not a Dr. or an expert on these things - just a fellow sufferer.
Praying for you.
Mitzi

[/quote]

Excellent advice, very well said, Mitzi! I would just also add that "vows" and that whole subject is something I also have had some issues with and yeah, I can tell you that this is definitely an area OCD can latch onto pretty easily!