Praying the promises of God. . .

In nearly uniform tradition, Christians have repeated the Apostles' Creed, the Our Father, and the Psalms as part of their daily devotional routines.  This is good and salutary and should continue.  If you cannot think what to pray, at least pray that.  But there is an eminently practical reason for this.  God does not repent of his promises.  Let me go one step further.  God cannot repent of His promises.

Much is made of God's freedom to do what He pleases but He also lives within limitations upon His absolute power.  He cannot deny His Son nor what His Son has accomplished by His blood shed for sinners.  He cannot deny the self-offering of Jesus Christ on behalf of those who had nothing to offer of their own righteousness or goodness.  He cannot deny what that once for all sacrifice has accomplished in the full and free payment for sin rendered by our Lord Jesus Christ.  He cannot deny the boundaries He has placed upon Himself for our behalf -- from the rainbow reminder in the wake of the flood to the watery rebirth that raises up the dead to life everlasting to the words by which bread and wine feed the faithful the flesh and blood of Jesus.  Praying the promises of God is praying what God has solemnly pledged and sealed with the blood of Christ so that there is no going back.

I only wish I were as resolute.  I am not.  My promises are weak and frail, easily broken and sometimes repented of because I find the cost of those promises too high or they were made in haste or passion.  But not God.  Not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Not the God born of Mary, Virgin mother.  Not the God incarnate for us and for our salvation to fulfill the first promise of Eden.  Not the God who watched His Son suffer in the place of the guilty and pledge His own agony and blood for their sins.  No.  This God cannot repent of His promises.  That is why we pray them to Him and so reinforce our confidence in His Word while pleading what we could never plead for ourselves.

In one very profound sense, this happens supremely in the Eucharist.  We pray the promise of Christ, His blood that continues to cleanse us from our sin and His flesh that feeds us eternal life.  We pray this to the Father not as another offering to repeat the once all sufficient offering of Calvary but as the remembrance His own Son has commanded us to make.  We pray it best by trusting what it says.  We pray it best by giving thanks.  We pray it best by ordering our lives by its life and truth.  We pray it best by cherishing the precious gift of forgiveness which continues to be offered by the merciful God to unmerciful people.  Pray the promises of God.  Recall the history of God's saving acts among His people Israel and their ultimate fulfillment in Christ.  Everything in the Old Testament is about Christ, the promise of God kept in His incarnation, holy life, life-giving death, triumphant resurrection, ascension in glory, and coming again as Lord and Judge of all.

Every morning we rehearse this promise in the invocation of the Triune name of God, in the confession of the creed, in the sign of the cross, and in the Our Father -- even before we get to our own petitions we pray the Psalms, some of the greatest prayers of the Bible.