Hi, and welcome to Five Word Prayers Daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the

word prayers in our heart. I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me,

which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent. Today is week three, and incidentally, the last

week in our Word series based on Deuteronomy 3020, taking a look at the three things

Jesus said we must choose to do in our life if we want to have a thriving life. Love, obey, and

commit. We've looked closer at love, pulled that apart a bit, then in obedience, and now we've

come to something I find especially important in this culture,

that of commitment. You ready to dive into it? Let's do it. So here's something I've said

before, and I firmly believe it's true. I don't believe we necessarily have a commitment

problem in this world. We have a problem with something else, and I'll tell you what that is in just a

minute. But when I say that I don't think we have a commitment problem, people sort of have a mixed

reaction to that, and sometimes it's one of pushback, and they disagree with me. So they say,

Lisa, how can you say that? Have you seen how people have dropped out of church and how people aren't committed to

marriage anymore and how people don't keep our word anymore?

Commitment isn't valued anymore in this society.

And let me say on one hand that I sort of agree. I do think commitment is undervalued in

many ways. I do think as a whole society doesn't take marriage as seriously as we should, or

doesn't take parenting as seriously as we should. And I'm not talking about getting our kids in

every sport so they'll go pro, okay?

I do see us devaluing our faith in the community of church in many cases, yes,

but I still don't know that we have a commitment problem necessarily as our greatest problem.

Because listen to this, lose your cell phone for a day and see what happens. Or even have it around and just try not to use it for a day and see what happens. For a large majority of us, that would prove, I think, quite difficult, maybe even painful. We're quite committed to our cell phones. What about our kids' ball schedules? They're out-of-town tournaments that we wouldn't dare miss, and we're going to find the money to pay for it no matter what?

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