Ph: Love: Bible: A Promise Of Covenant Relationship Poem by Brian Johnston

1. Covenant of Affirmation
(Unconditional love, agape love) Rom.12: 10, I Thess 5: 11
There is nothing you have done or will do that will make me stop loving you. I may not agree with your actions, but I will love you as a person and do all I can to hold you up in God's affirming love.

2. Covenant of Availability
Phil 2: 2-4, Acts 2: 44-45
Anything I have - time, energy, insight, possessions - is at your disposal as God reveals your need to me, even to the limit of my resources. I offer this to you both in recognition of the importance of convenant relations over other non-covenant demands in my life and to honor Christ's esteem for the value of serving others. As part of this availability I pledge my time on a regular basis, whether by letter, by phone, in prayer, or in an agreed upon meeting time.

3. Covenant of Prayer
James 5: 16
I covenant to pray for you in some regular fashion. I do this because I believe that our caring Father wishes his children to pray for one another. I will ask Him not only for the blessings you need but for wisdom and clarity as to what part I am to play in His answer.

4. Covenant of Openness
Gal.6: 2
I promise to strive to be a more open person, disclosing my joy and my pain to you as well as I am able. The degree to which I do so implies that I trust you with my problems and my dreams, that you contribute to my well being just by listening, even when you say nothing. By this I affirm your worth to me as a person.

5. Covenant of Listening With Love
I will try more often to mirror back to you what I hear you say and feel. I will do this not only to give you confidence that I have understood you but to also test and grow my own listening skills. I will endeavor to view every communication from you as a precious gift of your spirit instead of a potential threat to mine.

6. Covenant of Honesty
Col 3: 9
I will look for ways to praise you when I see you are deserving of praise, I will gently question you if I suspect or believe you are taking the wrong path, and I covenant to pursue your best interests, not mine, in this endeavor. If this means risking pain for either of us, I will trust our relationship enough to take that risk, believing that it is in 'speaking the truth in love that we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head.' (Ephesians 4: 15) I will try to express this honesty in a sensitive and controlled manner and to meter it, according to what I perceive the circumstances to be.

7. Covenant of Sensitivity
Even as I desire to be known, understood, and accepted by you, I covenant to be sensitive to you and to your needs to the best of my ability. I will try to hear you, see you, and feel where you are.

8. Covenant of Confidentiality
I promise to do all that I can to keep thoughts or feelings you share confidentially with me private in order to provide the atmosphere of permission and safety necessary for openness. Should I feel the need to discuss a confidence from you with another for my own growth or edification, I covenant to never do so without your permission.

9. Covenant of Forgiveness
Matthew 18: 21-35
I covenant to forgive you as often as necessary whenever you earnestly desire this, and, with God's help, to wipe the slate clean between us as if no wrong was ever done.

10. Covenant of Accountability
I consider that the gifts that God has given me for the common good should be liberated for your benefit. If I should discover areas of my life that are under bondage, hung up, or truncated by my own misdoings or by the scars inflicted by others, I will seek Christ's liberating power through his Holy Spirit, through covenant relationships with others, and through other sources of God's revelation, so that I might give more of myself to you. I am accountable to you to become what God has gifted me to be in His loving creation.



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