The Promising Prayer

It bothers me to hear people making promises to God. “If You will heal my husband, I will go to church every week.” “If You will just get me out of this mess, I will never do this again.” “I will give one million dollars to the church, if You let me win the lottery.” But I too have prayed such “If You... then I will...” prayers!

Not long ago I had a disagreement with a lady. I knew I had to apologize for my impatience and attitude. But I knew she was going to rub it in and I would be even more tempted than before to be rude and retaliate. I found myself praying “God, please help me through this one tomorrow. I can’t be nice to her! If You will just work some miracle to get me through this one with her tomorrow, then I will be nice to her on my own from here on out.” If You... then I will...

God reminded me that day, that He would help me - because He loves me and knows that I truly need His help. And He would keep on helping me every day after that too! He is good to us without us having to persuade Him to be good! We only have to ask. We don’t have to barter with God!

Sometimes we make promises to God without “if” conditions. At Mount Sinai the Israelites promised God: “All that the Lord has said, we will do.” (Exodus 19:8) The Israelites didn’t say “If You just get us to Canaan, then we will do whatever You say.” They weren’t exactly bartering. At the moment their attitude was, “Wow, You just rescued us from slavery in Egypt. We owe You one! Whatever You tell us to do, we’ll do it!” Such promises always seem to go along with the idea of paying back a favor.

One year I made a vow to God that I would commit the whole year to only working for Him. He had been so good to me that I wanted to bless Him somehow - pay Him back something, I guess. So I vowed to not pursue any hobbies or outside relationships... that year was going to be %100 percent for God, because I owed Him a lot.

Set aside the fact that we can never “pay back” to God anything that is not already His! Now think about this idea of promising God. What else is wrong with this scenario?

Isn’t it some kind of pride that makes us think we can pay God back for His favors? We ask for things and try to assure Him that we are worthy of His help. Like the elders of the Jews who came to Jesus asking him to heal the centurion’s servant: “And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with Him earnestly, saying, ‘He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.” (Luke 7:4,5) We need your help Jesus to heal this man’s servant. You should do it because this centurion is good to have around; he helps us out; You owe him one.

I think I promise things to God sometimes because I don’t realize just how good He is! He would have healed that centurion’s servant even if he hadn’t built the synagogue. He would have helped me to be nice to that lady without my impossible promise to behave on my own after that.

We don’t have to try to make ourselves more worthy in order for God to hear our prayers. We don’t have to persuade God to be good either!

Did we have to persuade God to create us? Did we have to promise Him anything before He would decide to create the earth with all its bounty and beauty? How many times has He rescued us from dangers before we even recognized them and started making promises? Did He make the sky azure blue and the sun cozily warm because we promised to appreciate it? Does He so lovingly forgive us because we are useful to Him and reciprocate (pay back) His love?

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly...

“God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us...

“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.” Romans 5:6,8,10