I was home for a few days over the Christmas holiday. While searching through dusty boxes of old memories amid report cards, old worn out Bibles, and school pictures I found this index card.

This card represents just one of the many promises I made to God as a child. As a church, we were constantly telling God what we promised we would do or wouldn’t do. Pastor Nolan constantly asked us to make him promises. And this one obviously made when I was very young.

I was almost six when I made this promise to God. Obeying parents was a very popular promise to make as a kid. We didn’t steal. We told fibs but promising to not lie was sort of easy. And we hadn’t yet become old enough to commit adultery.

And since we really wanted our parents to like us… and for our parents to be liked by others in our church (parents with obedient children were treated better than those with disobedient parents)… we were always promising to be obedient to our parents…

Plus, if we did, we’d live long upon this land!

For some reason, old age was a big selling point for Baptist children.

Do you make promises to God?