Word of Encouragement (08/11/2022)

Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do." (Ex. 24:3)

We often think of prayer only in terms of petitions, by which we make requests to God. But there are many different kinds of prayers—praise, thanksgiving, confession of sin, lament, etc. We this verse, we see another type of prayer, which we don’t talk about very much—prayer of promise, by which we commit ourselves to do certain things. When was the last time you prayed this kind of prayer to the Lord?

Because we are under the covenant of grace, many think that there is no place for the kind of (votive) prayer that the Israelites prayed. Why do we need to promise to keep God’s law? Has Christ not fulfilled the law on our behalf? Are we not saved by God’s grace, not by the works of the law? Of course! But does that relieve us from the obligation to keep God’s law? Of course not! We may have been saved apart from the law, but we are not without the law! The law of God is not just an arbitrary set of rules we need to keep in order to be saved; it is also the way we ought to live as God’s redeemed people.

So, what do we ask when an adult is being baptized? One of the questions is, “Do you now resolve and promise, in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, that you will endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ” (BCO 57-5)? And didn’t Paul say, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it” (Rom. 6:1-2)? We cannot follow Christ as His disciples without committing ourselves to keep His commandments: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Even apart from this general promise to keep God’s commandments, we can promise in our prayers to do specific things. This can be very helpful in our spiritual walk. We usually pray, “Lord, help me do this!” This is a good prayer because it acknowledges that we need God’s help in all things: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1). However, this can foster an unnecessarily passive and helpless attitude in us: we want God to work out everything so that it will be easy for us. Yes, unless the LORD builds the house, our labor is in vain. But that doesn’t mean that the LORD will build the house all by Himself without our labor! Just because we work hard doesn’t mean that the house will get built: so many things can happen that will not only delay but destroy everything we have worked on. But if we do not put our work in laying down the foundation and laying the bricks one by one and everything else that needs to be done, the house will not be built, either!

So, there are times when we should pray, “Lord, today I promise to do this. Please help me not to break my promise!” Is there anything in your life that you have put off far too long? Has the Lord been tugging at your heart to attend to it? Are you growing weary of being disappointed in yourself for not getting to it? How about praying a prayer of promise today? As you do so, may you experience the Lord’s mighty power to help you!

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