Martin Luther King Jr said: "Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude." Likewise, the commitment that we make to God isn't a one-off or sporadic declaration, but an action that we have to periodically repeat, a way of life.
There's a need to say "yes" to God - and more than once. It's not always easy to say "yes" to God even if we do accept that He exists and loves us because sometimes the tasks He calls us to carry out require us to venture outside of our comfort zone. We can find similarities to our own experiences of responding to God in the stories of many of the major characters in the Bible including Abraham, Jeremiah and Mary. Responding with an unwavering "yes" is something that many of us can struggle with.
Here are two reasons why saying "yes" to God repeatedly is important for our faith.
It reaffirms our commitment
Marriage is used as a metaphor for the church multiple times in the Bible, Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," is just one example.
Just as when couples say "I do" at the altar and afterwards have to continually reaffirm those vows through their actions every day, so too do we have to continually reaffirm our vows to God through our actions and words.
Sometimes saying "yes" to God means saying "no" to a lot of other options but our faith in Him means that we believe what He's offering is better than anything else that we're promised. We need to be faithful to God and that means making choices which reaffirm our faith every day.
A declaration of our availability
How many times have you accepted a friend's invitation to an event but failed to turn up, and even failed to notify them that you were no longer able to make it? You're initially available, and you demonstrate this in plain view but when it comes to actually following through, thoughts of: "Others will be there so it doesn't matter if I don't show up", "There's always next time", "I have better plans" and "I'll never be ready in time" flood in. We can adopt this same mindset in our relationship with God but it's worth remembering that if we don't respond to His call, someone else will, there might not be a next time, God's plan is always greater than ours and if He's calling us to do something, we're as ready as we need to be. He'll do the rest.
Essentially, we need to do more than say "yes" initially. We have to say "yes" to the invitation to accept His grace, mercy and love, and then "yes" to everything that comes after.
