by Dionne Mahaffey

Created on: June 30, 2009

Is your Word BOND?

For those of you who know me then you well know that my word is good and I always try to honor what I say I will do. The most precious gift God gave to man is HIS word. When I give my word, I will die about mine! That is how serious I am about TRUTH... My word is my bond.

These days, guarantees and promises often mean nothing! Everyone at some time or other has been kept waiting. You make an agreement to meet someone at a specific time and place, you are there and they don't show up. Your time is wasted and you begin to feel something akin to skepticism with regard to any further agreements you may make with that person. Eventually, when that person finally does contact you, he or she has what seems to be a perfectly valid reason, excuse or justification (and profuse apology) for not being where they said they would be. And yet, it never seems to make any difference. Your wasted time is never recovered and you still wonder whether or not that person is really dependable.

Keeping your word is a black-and-white issue. Ther are no gray areas as far as truth is concerned. You either make happen what you said is going to happen, or you don't. If you said you are going to produce some result by a certain time and you don't, no amount of reasons, excuses, justifications or apologies alters that fact. Reasons are one thing. Results are something completely different.

Keeping your word has consequences for those who depend on you doing what you said you would do. If you don't keep your word, that has consequences too.

While it is true that you always have the choice not to make agreements that are impossible to keep, it is in your best interests to become known as someone who can be depended on to keep their word and simply produce the result, rather that someone who knows all the reasons why what they said is going to happen, does not.

If what I said I would make happen does not happen exactly as I said it would happen, for whatever the reason, then I did not keep my word. Whenever we give our word, we can phrase it whichever way we choose. There is a subtle lack of fit between what we say we will make happen, and what actually happens.

Don't just keep your word in order to be right: you keep your word in order to... keep your word! You make happen what you said is going to happen just because you said you would. Keeping your word makes a difference.

Proverbs 19:1 - Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse in his lips, and is a fool.

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