Stop Making Deals With God

Ever caught yourself praying like you’re negotiating, promising God you’ll do better if He just fixes the situation you’re in? We’ve all felt that pull, and it can sound spiritual, but it quietly turns faith into a transaction. I unpack why “bargaining with God” is more than a quirky habit. It reveals what we truly believe about God’s nature, our worth, and whether love and protection can be earned. 

Transcript

Why We Try To Bargain

Jephthah’s Vow And Its Cost

Grace Over Works And Real Trust

Encouragement And Weekday Invitation

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mack. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and let me help you start your day right. Have you ever tried to bargain with God and make a deal with him? I think many of us have. Teenagers tried to make a deal with God that, you know, God, make sure my parents never find out about what I did tonight. And if you do that, God, I will be a missionary to China for you. I really will. We say, God, I will pay my tithe and an extra fifty bucks. If you make sure I get the winning lottery ticket. Sometimes it even sounds somewhat noble. We will say something like, God, I will be nice to that person that I absolutely hate, but then I expect you to make sure that I get the promotion instead of them. Some people seem to have this idea that God is in the business of trying to make deals, or that we can actually earn his favor in our lives. God, if I do for you, I want you to give to me. And that's trying to strike a deal with God, and there's all kinds of problems with that. In the Old Testament, there is a man who had a huge problem arise because he did that. His name is Jephthah. We read his story in Judges chapter eleven. Jeffta had a rough life early. He was born into a family where he was the youngest. All of the other children were born from the other wife of his father. So Jephthah sort of got thrown out because they didn't want to share their inheritance with him, and he went to live in a land called Tob. Well, living there, he sort of caught on the ways of these people in Tob, had a bunch of nefarious men start to join up with him in a gang, and in that particular culture he learned that sacrifices were used to try to convince and coerce gods to do whatever you wanted them to. If you gave the proper sacrifice, you could get anything done that you wanted. Jephtha had grown to be a very strong military leader, and when a war broke out with the Ammonites, the people of Israel called him to come back and fight with them. Jephthah gladly joined. But just before a major battle with the Ammonites, he figured he had to make a deal with God. So he said, God, if you will give me the victory here over the Ammonites, I will sacrifice to you the very first thing that comes out of my house when I come home. He fought the battle, he won the battle, he came back home. And the first thing that came out of his house when he got home was his only child, his daughter. And yes, he fulfilled his promise to God. There are many lessons for us here in this story, but I want to focus on one in particular, and that is that if we have a wrong view of who God is and how he wants to function, we will set ourselves up for disaster every time. I remember particularly one woman who had just been diagnosed with cancer. As I sat down with her to talk and pray with her, she said, I've served God for over twenty five years. I have cleaned the church, I have been at every meeting, I have helped serve the dishes, I have helped feed the needy, I have been there as a church secretary, I've done all of these things for God, and now here I am with cancer. Bad theology will make you believe that you can buy God's favor by what you do. Over in Ephesians chapter two, starting in verse eight, Paul says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast. It's because of our relationship with God that He will begin to work in our lives. It's not because of what we do for Him, it's the relationship. In James chapter four, he writes, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. We are never in a place to try and bargain with or manipulate God. We just do not have that authority or power. But we do have a relationship with him, so that he is with us always, even through the times when it's tough. We need to remember too that a good understanding of who God is reminds us that God wants to help us. Lamentations chapter three, verses twenty-two and twenty-four. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him. God will continue to work for us and in us. And in the last verse of Matthew, chapter twenty-eight and verse twenty, it tells us, be sure of this, I am with you always, even until the end of the age. God is always with us. We never have to face anything all by ourselves. That does not mean that we will not face problems and challenges. It means that God is with us no matter what those problems and challenges are. We get ourselves into all kinds of problems when we try to bargain with God and believe that he owes us because of something that we've done for him. We must remember that God loves us because of our relationship with him, and he will always be there for us and always be there with us. He will give us the strength that we need every step of the way, every day. I hope you have a really great day, my friends, and we will talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.