The Deal You Never Said Out Loud

He sat in the car park for eleven minutes after the second interview, because he did not trust himself to drive yet.

The engine was off. The window was down an inch because it was warm. Somebody two rows over was loading shopping into a boot and having a whole argument with a trolley.

And he made an offer.

He did not call it that. He would have told you he was praying. What actually happened in that car was a trade, laid out properly, with terms: God, if this one comes through, I will sort myself out. I will be back on a Sunday. I will stop the thing I do at night. I will give more than I have ever given. I will be the man I have been meaning to be since I was thirty one.

He has never said one word of that to another living person. He would be mortified. It sounds, when you write it down, like a man haggling in a temple courtyard.

And here is what he has been carrying ever since, which is worse than the deal: the job did not come through, and somewhere underneath everything he is now quietly certain that the reason is him. That the offer was not good enough. That he was outbid.

If you have a deal running that you have never said out loud, come and sit on the step with me. I am not going to tell anybody.

I am not going to correct you

Before anything else: you are not the first, you are not unusual, and you are not in trouble. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who has read what was actually going on in you when those terms were offered, and it was not commerce.

Bargaining is what love does when it is frightened and it has run out of options. A mother trades. A man in a car park trades. If you have been offering God terms, that is not evidence that your faith is shallow. It is evidence that you want something badly and you have been taught, somewhere along the way, that wanting badly is not enough on its own.

So let us take the sting out of it first. You have not damaged anything with God. He is not offended, He is not scoring this, and nothing you offered Him in a car park has changed how He looks at you this afternoon. That is not me being soft with you. It is what is written, that the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and that He has not dealt with us after our sins (Psalm 103:8 and 10), and it is His Spirit and not my paragraph that makes that land in the actual week you are having.

Now let me tell you the part that will do the real work.

Nobody took your offer, because there is no counter

Isaiah stands in the street and shouts at people who are trying to pay for something that is already free.

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.Isaiah 55:1

Read it again slowly, because it is one of the strangest sentences in the book. Come and buy. Without money. Without price.

It is deliberately absurd. He is describing a market where the stalls are full and nobody is taking payment, and the people standing there with their hands full of what they were going to trade look ridiculous, and God is the one telling them so, and He is laughing while He does it, and there is no contempt in it anywhere.

That is the room you have been standing in with your offer.

You are not in a negotiation with God, and you never were. There is no counter to stand at, no one taking bids, and nothing you have to raise. The written word says the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23), and a gift with a price on it is not a gift, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that stop being theology and start being relief.

Then what was the fasting for

Somebody may have told you to fast about this, and if the deal was already running in your head, fasting is exactly the shape that deal will pour itself into. That is worth naming plainly.

Going without food does not raise your offer. It cannot, because there is no offer. It is not currency and God does not take currency. What it actually is, when it is anything at all, is your body turning toward God alongside a prayer you were already praying. Your stomach joining in. Nothing more mystical than that, and nothing more purchasable than that.

And hear this next part properly, because it matters more than the teaching. Some people must not go without food at all, and it costs them nothing with God. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with eating, if you are unwell or frail, or if you are simply unsure, then speak to your doctor first and let their answer stand. Nothing about God's welcome is behind a door your body is not allowed through. It is written that God accepts according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not (2 Corinthians 8:12), and the Holy Spirit is not held back from a body with limits on it.

And if what is sitting on you today is heavier than a page can hold, ring somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight.

You are welcome at that stall with empty hands and a bad week behind you. Not tolerated. Welcome. Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out, is the sentence Jesus used (John 6:37), and the Spirit is the one who walks a man who has been haggling all summer up to the front of it.