At one time or another, I’m guessing that all of us have prayed a “bargaining prayer.” You know the kind I’m talking about. It might occur as we’re waiting to interview with the personnel director, for example. “Dear God, if I can just get this job, I promise you this time I’ll work hard, I’ll be industrious, I’ll get along with my colleagues.” Or it may happen as we’re driving home during an ice storm. “Dear Lord, if you can just make sure I get home safely, I swear to you I’ll never be foolish enough to try something like this again.” Even pastors are not immune to the practice. “O Lord, if you could just help me out a little with this sermon, I promise I’ll start working on next week’s before Saturday night.”

It’s what you might call the “Let’s Make A Deal” approach to our relationship with God. We’re facing a tight situation, and we’re not sure how we’re ever going to manage it all by ourselves. And so, we fire off a quick request toward heaven. “Let’s make a deal, Lord! You help me out of this jam, and I promise you from now on that I’ll be a better, more faithful person.”

As far as I can tell, it’s a ploy at least as old as Father Abraham. He could wheel-and-deal with the best of them, and on more then one occasion, he tried his hand at haggling with God. But ultimately, what Abraham discovers is that God doesn’t make deals … God makes covenants.

What’s the difference between the two? Plenty. In the Bible, almost every covenant is initiated by God. In other words, the mistake of a “bargaining prayer” is that, when we are in need, we think we somehow have to attract God’s attention. We have to make God an offer God can’t refuse.

But nothing could be farther from the truth. We don’t need to entice God into action with our seemingly irresistible, limited-time-only deals. God is already well aware of our situation, and more important, God has already promised to be there for us.

As the Apostle Paul so eloquently writes in his letter to the Romans, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Frankly, that’s a better deal than any of us could have ever imagined—much less cut on our own!