If there is one thing that truly makes me frustrated is when
someone ‘promises’ to do something and breaks it. We hear telemarketers promise
all of the time to remove our name from the call list. It never seems to
happen. We hear customer service people promise all kinds of things but do it
simply to pacify you and get you off of the phone.
I remember
one time my wife and I were having trouble with our long distance carrier, MCI.
We could make local calls but not long distant calls. I was working with
Bellsouth at the time and knew my way around the phone industry.
I first
contacted Bellsouth who referred me to my long distance carrier. When I called
MCI around 6pm I was treated
cordially and guaranteed that my problem would be fixed in two hours. Well, at 8pm , as you can imagine, I was not quite as
polite as I could have been, after all, a guarantee is a guarantee. I was
placed on hold on and off for about an hour and a half. They could simply not
figure out what was wrong with my long distance. The customer service
representative has becoming frustrated as well. She offered to refer me back to
Bellsouth to which I refused, stating that I worked for the phone company and
knew for a fact the problem was on her end.
It was then
the promises starting flying. She promised to have an MCI technician at my
house no later than midnight . I kindly
directed her attention to the fact that there was no such thing. Bellsouth was
the only phone entity in the area that actually went to a person’s house. It
was then that she swore up and down that someone would be at my house from MCI
by midnight and there was nothing more
she could do.
Needless to
say, no one came to my house, mainly because there was no such service from
MCI. I called them back at 1215am. I asked to speak to her supervisor. After
another 30 minute hold, I finally reached someone claiming to be as such. The
person laughed when I told them about the representative promising me to send a
warm body to my house. They verified that they have no such technicians. When
all was said and done, my problem was in their software, and I received a $50
credit for long distance on my phone bill. After the $50 credit was used up, we
switched long distance service and never returned to MCI.
How many
times as Christians do we break our promises? It seems to be an epidemic in our
country that you simply cannot trust someone’s word. We as Christians must
strive to honor our words. We must make every effort to follow through on the
things we say we are going to do. There are times when we are the only witness
for Christ that someone encounters. If we break our word to
them, we may also lose our ability to witness to them as well. Let our yes be
yes and no be no.
This isn’t
to say we should beat ourselves up but to say that we must be careful with what we
say. I have let people down before and it pains me when it happens. But God can
cash in on our busted promises. Take a look at Peter .
He denied Christ during His darkest hour three times! God
still used him to preach a sermon that resulted in 3,000 baptisms. He was an
apostle that truly demonstrated a zeal and boldness for Christ
even though he failed on many occasions. How can God redeem your broken
promises? Start with one relationship. Pray over it. Ask God to help you fix
it. Wrestle with how to mend it. Then start with one…
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