Bargaining with God

I have been trying to bargain with God – for a long time. And, I have failed – consistently and miserably. I am a reasonably good negotiator (going by the standards of the world); but that didn’t really help – actually that might have made the matters worse.

I thought I was making a good offer. And I did revise the offer – many times – when the previous offers seem to be getting rejected.

The initial offer from my side was ‘I will pray to you and I will keep away from major sins and in return please keep me away from major problems’. For a while, it seemed to work, and then it failed. So, I deduced that immunity from major problems in life was not a realistic demand. Hence, I revised my offer to “I will pray to you and I will do the best I can and in return please don’t give me any trouble that I can’t handle”. This also didn't work. Then I tried a variation of the same. "Please give me the strength so that I can deal with any trouble that I need to handle". The variation also failed to do the job. Then I realized that the rationale behind the last two offers was that while I was prepared to face major problems, I was scared that if I was hit with something that I couldn’t cope with I will lose control. And I was mortally afraid of losing control. This offer was also ‘rejected’. Hence I realized that ‘not losing control’ or ‘not being broken’ was also not an acceptable demand.

Now I am not sure what to bargain for. I do have some ideas- like asking God to “make me fruitful in my land of suffering” or to ‘be with me in my suffering’ or to ‘show me the meaning of my suffering’ or ‘to show me the light at the end of the tunnel’. But, I have a nagging suspicion that ‘God does not want to negotiate with me at all’! It might be that any offer that I come up with (and even the very attempt to negotiate) will based on a certain underlying belief about God. As I had mentioned in the previous post, any belief or definition of God will limit God and hence it might not be a good idea to have any such beliefs or definitions. May be pure faith – without any beliefs – might be the answer. But is that also a kind of belief??!!