The New Nazarite Vow

# 10 – Today's Du-votional comes from 1Sa 1:11 Then she made a vow and said, "O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head." Desperate times call for desperate measures. The anguished soul, is the desperate soul. Isn't that the truth? When our souls are overwhelmed with anguish, we are ready to promise just about anything to find relief. Hanna was so desperate for a male child that she was willing to give him up to life long service to the Lord. “ She vowed what is known as the Nazarite vow which you can read about in Num 6:2-21. This vow set one apart for a specific time of exclusive service to the Lord. It involved distancing oneself from the things of the world. It serves as a picture of our response to God's NT grace E. Stanley Jones had this to say about God's grace, “Grace binds you with far stronger cords than the cords of duty or obligation can bind you. Grace is free, but when once you take it you are bound forever to the Giver,” When our anguished souls surrender to Jesus the Nazarene, in a sense we become Nazarenes, and the Nazarite vow serves as a type for us to follow, whereby we allow the Holy Spirit to set us apart from the world for indefinite service to Him. As the Holy Spirit spoke through the Apostle Paul in Rom. 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And in James 1:21, we are told to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world.”