Does anyone believe that you can make deals with God? For example, If I quit being the terrible, misbehaving young woman and turn my life around and follow you, will you in turn never make me go through the pain of losing a child again.
Tonight at True's priesthood preview, yes I attended, a story was given of a mom who kept making promises to God if God would keep his side of the bargain in return she would get this or that and he would get baptisms and missions and such. Do you believe there are times, God is in the, "Let's Make a Deal" kind of mood. And how do you know if he really wants to make that deal, and you're not just left holding your end of the bargain in your hands, life in shambles, wondering where you went wrong? I am being a little sarcastic here but just wondering and putting out feelers, looking for maybe people I can cling to that might have a greater Karma than me.
5 comments:
I make such deals all the time - I call them "covenants". I write down the help I need from Heavenly Father (usually something pretty BIG), and my personal promises and sacrifices (mostly overcoming my weaknesses - so, it's always a lot of work on my part), and the time frame of the "deal". When I mess up I have to start all over again. It works every time. I believe when we try our hardest to please Heavenly Father, He blesses us more than we even hope for. I always get more than I ask for.
(for example, one of my wishes was to have my breach baby regularly, without the C-section. Couldn't do it without His help, but the 3-months "deal" worked :)
Hmmm, I am probably going to get myself in trouble here, and Kenda, you have my permission to pretend we aren't related.
One thing that has always bothered me about the church is when people speak of experiences where they are "blessed" from their goodness. While I definitely believe there are blessings that come from making good choices and living life in a prayerful, somewhat deliberate manner, I don't like what statements like that tend to infer. The flipside of stories like that is that if something bad happens to us, that means we did something wrong or weren't following the rules. Then you end up with people like my Grandma Gubler, who when April, at 12, was diagnosed with cancer, told my mother that April must have been living an "evil" life and that is why she had cancer. As if.
I think that if we truly believe that we have fee agency then doesn't that mean that Heavenly Father isn't always stirring the pot so to speak. If he made things happen to us or for us, then isn't that removing our agency and really removing our ability to learn ang grow throughout this life? Like I said, I think he gave us principles that will help us avoid self inflicted grief in our lives but is he deliberately making things happen for us - no, I don't think so.
After April died I was angry with God. Here we had lived according to the church's teachings, people fasted and prayed and blessed her during her illness and still she died. I had a tough time reconciling that with what I had been taught. I felt like I had been given a raw deal or sold a bill of goods. With a lot of thought and time, I ended up deciding that death is part of us being on this earth and having a physical body. And, because we have a physical body, we are subject to cells mutating or accidents happening and again, it would remove our agency if there was some master hand always stepping in and preventing anyting bad from ever happening to us. Part of the journey on earth is death and for the most part, I don't think it matters to God when or how we die. So April's journey here was just shorter but she still fulfilled her measure by getting a phyisical body and being tested here on earth. It just sucks for those of us left behind to try and sort it all out.
Anyway, hope that doesn't get me into too much trouble. :)
Kenda, most of the "deals" I make fail. The major one being on the way to the hospital during Evan's crisis event. It took another hour to find out the deal was off and a bit more time to understand that my son had died.
That said, one deal that I can think of right now did work out. I was newly in the MTC and I had a testimony crisis. Like in either I could have my heart and mind come together with solid faith and go on a mission, OR I could go home and never go to church again.
It took work. Lots of prayer and fasting as well as a ton of scripture reading. Of course, I was in the right spiritual environment and we had tons of great speakers/firesides/etc to help fill in the gaps in my understanding and to help me feel the truth. I was in the MTC for 9.5 weeks and struggled for 7 of them. It was miserable those weeks. Knowing that everyone else was feeling the spirit while I was in a stupor caused me much self reflection.
My answers came...with time to spare. My Heavenly Father loves me and my hard times there have sustained me the rest of my life. I don't have the same questions or concerns that I did then. If anything creeps back in then I only need to open my journal and read and remember.
I'm happy for Natalia that she has worked deals with God into a fine art. How wonderful that she didn't have a c-section when all signs seemed to point to that. It seems to me that her key is writing things down AND she was asking God to do what he already was willing to do.
Heavenly Father is anxious to bless us. The trick is to ask the right questions in order to cut the right deal.
Best wishes figuring out if your deal is the Lord's will. It just may be. Write it down to keep you accountable to yourself. It's so easy to forget the finer points of our "deals".
I have learned not to "make a deal" with God. I have attempted many times to but they usually come back with the "I have a better plan that you will enjoy so much more just wait and see". I still pray very hard for things I desire because the Bible Dictionary says that pray is a form of work and has blessings attached to it-However, I have had far to many opportunities to "trust God and he will show you"
Heather
You will never be in trouble with me. I feel so many of those same feelings and if God is kind of a Howie Mandel figure, I seem to always open the wrong case......
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