Blessed Are Those Who Don’t Bargain With God

Common to the grief process, bargaining is a state of mind we enter into to escape from a reality that brings us to our knees.  We enter into such thinking both consciously and unconsciously, and out of such motives are driven our actions.  We can be willing to sell something precious for a song in the process.  And God knows that’s no good for anyone, let alone ourselves.

Of course, God won’t endorse such transactions.

It’s been said to be a legalism for those of a prosperity gospel; “God, you give me this, and I’ll give you that.”  Faith this way is stuck to outcomes we, ourselves, have engineered, where God alone is the engineer of all providence.

Still, there is empathy for any of us — all of us — who find ourselves given to such desperation we’ll bargain our way out of it.  It’s our human nature, and we find it hard to keep such a check on our motives.  But we must.

God understands the lonely sense of deprivation that brings us to the point of bargaining.  But instead of bargaining, God seeks us that we would seek Him.  Instead of bargaining with God we ought to find God to be the bargain.  To find in His Presence, the best bargain of all.

Blessed are those who don’t bargain with God, but instead trust patiently in His provident grace.

It is a blessing to forego the human limitation we would often place on God.  Why do we settle for lentil stew (Genesis 25:34) when we could have an entire banquet at the proper time?  But it does take faith to let go of something we think we could have now.

In God’s economy, it’s best to do without that which was never intended to be ours, to accept, in time, what was always destined as ours.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.