Have you ever tried to bribe children into doing something for you? Something like getting you chips from the pantry or finding your TV remote or maybe even to stop crying? I’m sure that when you did make the lucrative bribe, it was a worthy exchange. The children scratch your back and they get something for their troubles, usually green pieces of paper or sugary snacks. But have you ever bribed a child into forgetting something? A memory you want stricken from everybody’s collective memories? What usually happens is that the secret weighs so heavily on them that the price you pay them isn’t enough to keep the secret under wraps and you lose both the bounty and the secret. It doesn’t work with kids and we definitely know adults can’t keep any worthy secret, but interestingly enough, we try. In fact, we stretch the failing practice to God!

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” – Psalm 50:14-15 Most of the time, and you can email me if you think I’m wrong, our sacrifices/offerings are made out of a sense of duty/ religiousness/ obligation/ guilt and under the false hope we won’t be judged by our faulty actions. There is nothing wrong with offerings and on it’s own, offering is a good thing. In fact, if you read verses four and five of this Psalm, you see sacrifices and offerings as a sign of covenant linking ourselves to God. It only becomes a problem when our sacrifices and offerings to God become something of an arbitrary bartering ploy. We think we’re offering God something He wants from us and we hope He will give us something in return. We all know God is not a kid, nor is He a frivolous blabbermouth and yet we think our bribery tricks (obligated guilt offerings) will work on Him. He created us and knows our hearts. I don’t know whether its immense pride or just plain stupidity leads us to believe in our tricks. What I can tell you is that God cannot be bought. God cannot be bribed. God cannot be played by a two bit con that pretends to give with contriteness in the hopes of becoming absolved from guilt. The reason we can’t buy God off is because He doesn’t need our offerings like a child “needs” our bribes. Everything belongs to God in this universe because He is the creator of all things. So why do we believe He needs anything we offer? Honesty, if He really wanted, he could just speak it into existence. However, if we are going to offer God anything from ourselves, God says to make our offering one of “thankfulness.” That is to say, God just wants you and me to reflect upon life and try to understand how God has provided us with a life to be grateful for. We have so much to complain about with our first world problems; but we forget way too quickly and far too often that we have so much more than we are allowed to imagine. I mean, we are alive and we eat to the point of overindulgence. To be thankful wouldn’t be enough if we truly looked at our lives. As judge of this world, we must understand our lives to be fashioned with righteousness because God is the epitome of righteousness and He is the great judge. It’s hard to believe sometimes with all the travesty going around in the world, but it’s an undeniable fact of life that sometimes righteousness and judgment may not seem fair. Being linked to God in a covenant of sacrifice found in our relationship with Jesus Christ, God’s Son, provides for us a very unique disposition. Our disposition becomes one where we can ask and receive freely. Where we do not need to barter or vie for God’s love and tender touch. God provides our lives to be a place of thankfulness. Here is a promise and the greatest reason for us all to stop trying to buy off God and absolve our own guilt: when we are thankful, God comes to the rescue in our need. God can’t be bought off. God can be appreciated and adored. We definitely don’t adore and love God with enough thankfulness. We know our thanks should indefinitely resonate with the actions we take and our lives should become living sacrifices of thanks to God. Shouldn’t we stop trying to buy God off with obligated sacrifice and give Him loving thankfulness instead?