"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him" (Matthew 7:11)?

One of the first things that a person needs to learn when they go to visit or live in certain cultures is the art of bargaining. While in the Western cultures most things have a "fixed price," in other parts of the world the price you pay depends on how good you are at bargaining.

When we landed in Pakistan, the expatriates introduced us in the fine art of bargaining. They told us that a merchant will often double the price of a particular item, and you are not being rude when you counter by offering him only half his asking price.

Bargaining can make a person feel cheap, especially if the vendor is a poor person selling a souvenir and here I am trying to get them to lower the price from $5 to $2.50. The little boy or girl who is selling is lucky to make a profit of fifty cents a day, and I am trying to save myself a couple of dollars. How mean and cheap can you be?

But not following certain protocol of bargaining could have complications beyond saving a dollar or two. I learned that if we didn't agree on a price before the time came to pay, the seller could began to protest loudly, a crowd could quickly gather, and things could become tense. For this reason, before I went shopping or rode in a taxi I would ask what the going rate was. When the merchant knew that I knew the true value of his offering, there would rarely be any argument.

In bargaining, a person tries to get as much as he can for as little an investment as possible. It's the old saw, "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" thing. There is no doubt that life is about give and take. If you want to get ahead, the prevailing practice is that you must take more than you give.

Every culture has its form of bargaining. In Western cultures, business deals are made based on negotiation. In a negotiation, both parties must be satisfied. This process is better than bargaining because things are more likely to be out in the open. At its best, negotiation tries to be fair.

Sometimes a person tries to get what they want by overt or covert manipulation. Often when we want something we are afraid to just come right out and ask for it. So we hint, coax, charm, or even wheedle. Some consider these techniques to be skills. Admittedly, while they may get you what you want, they can easily cheapen a relationship. A relationship where one person is manipulating the other is one in which sooner or later respect will be lost.

Much of our life is about bargaining, negotiating, and otherwise making deals. Among huge retailing companies there is competition that seeks to offer the better deal. Sometimes I have wondered what life in heaven can possibly be like inasmuch as so much of our existence here is about "wheelin' and dealin'" (I wonder what a person who is a born salesperson will do to exercise their talents in heaven!).

What does all this have to do with prayer? The answer can be, A lot. In our prayers we often try to make deals with God or otherwise negotiate an answer that is to our liking.

Is it wrong to try to cut a deal with God? Is our communication with God supposed to include bargaining, negotiating, coaxing, or even threatening?

If you are like me, somewhere along the line in your prayer life you may have done all of the above. It could sound something like: "God, if You will do thus and so, I will do such and such." We may not like to admit we bargain, negotiate, or otherwise try to make deals in our prayers. But if we would only listen to ourselves once in a while, we might be surprised.

The average person would have to admit that in his prayers he tends to make a lot of promises. But, someone may ask, what is wrong with making promises to God?

There is a lot of Bible precedent for making promises to God. One that immediately comes to mind is the experience of Hannah. Her husband Elkanah had another wife with whom he had children. Hannah had none, and the other wife wouldn't let her forget about it. One year it was really getting to her, and so Hannah went to the tabernacle and promised God that if He would give her a son she would dedicate him to serve the Lord. The result was Samuel. The rest is history.

Someone else may ask, "But isn't the Sabbath school investment program about making promises to God?"

So it is. You know how it goes. We pray, "Lord, I have an apple tree in my orchard that doesn't bear fruit anymore. If You make it bear fruit, I will give half the proceeds for investment."

Aside from the fact "promises are made to be broken" (I am surely glad God doesn't sue us for breach of contract); there is no objection to making promises to God. Experience has demonstrated, as in the case of the mother of Samuel and in other important instances, God has often obliged when the prayer was based on a promise.

On contemplating the role of making promises in prayer, the question that occurs is, once we have established a relationship with our heavenly Father, must we feel that somehow in order to maintain it we must make promises; i.e., "Lord, I'll do this for You if You will do that for me."

Think about it for a moment. In life's closest relationships we don't need to hint, coax, charm, wheedle, bargain, negotiate, or even make promises. The highest and best way to get something from someone, particularly someone we love and who we know loves us, is simply to ask.

Asking is one of the most intimate methods of communication because it creates freedom for the one who is being asked. They are now free to accept, decline, add to, or take away from the request. Put another way, asking is a freedom-giving request.

Obviously, asking for a favor can be risky. It is risky because it gives the choice away. It lets go of control. Asking means allowing the other person to choose their response. A person who gets right to the point and just asks must be willing to accept either yes or no as an answer.

Some might believe that when the Bible says to ask, this, too, could be interpreted as wheelin' and dealin', bargaining, or negotiating. However, the conditions for answered prayer are not based on tit-for- tat or I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine. They are based on the relationship we have with God. Prayer is communicating with God, and communication to be effective must be based on a relationship.

Notice what word the following texts have in common:

Ephesians 3:20: "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us."

James 1:5,6: "But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed."

1 John 5:14-15: "And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us."

When Scripture speaks of asking, it means choosing something or wanting something at a heartfelt level. It means craving something that we need very badly. The texts noted above and others establish that for our part when we come to God in prayer He expects us to simply present before Him our heartfelt needs. Asking in this sense is not checking God out, testing the water, or otherwise the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket.

For some, prayer is often what could be termed in computer language a "backup.". Pray about it, but have Plan B ready. Neither should prayer be a last resort, as in "When all else fails, pray about it." This tendency may spring out of the non-existent but oft-quoted text, "The Lord helps them who help themselves." A close relative of mine developed cancer. A date for surgery was arranged. Two weeks before the surgery was to take place, our extended family came together for an anointing service. This service is usually requested when every other remedy has failed. To some it is seen as a type of last rites. We felt differently. As a family we decided that we should bring the problem to Jesus first rather than last.

Praying about something should not mean we now take no responsibility or initiative. Prayer is not something we do instead of doing something about the problems of life, but rather it should be what we do before we set out to try to solve a particular problem.

In our family prayer we simply turned the matter over to the Lord. We asked Him to be with us as a family through the ordeal that was about to come. We asked Him to guide the doctors and the nurses who would participate in the procedure.

By the way, have you noticed that many times when we ask the Lord to do something for us and the outcome is favorable, we tend to thank everyone who had a part except the One who made it all happen.

Friend, we must remind ourselves that when we ask Jesus to do something for us and our prayer is answered, we ought to thank God before we thank the doctor or give credit to some wonder drug. But it seems that is the way it has always been. When Jesus healed the ten lepers, only one came back to say thanks (Luke 17:17).

I often tell people that if they or someone they love gets sick, they probably don't want to call for me to pray for them. If you expect to see a show of force or power, you might be disappointed. You see, I don't make it complicated. I don't insist, I don't "storm the gates of heaven," I don't make promises. When I pray, I simply ask.

There are some who sincerely believe that if you pull out all the stops in prayer, God will most surely say yes. One lady assured me, "I am sure that if I agonized with the Lord, He would answer me."

I can understand how a person would be in agony over a particular situation in their life, but I am not sure that agonizing is the silver bullet that makes God respond favorably to our petition. God is nicer than we are, and we really don't need to twist His arm.

I like the text in Matthew 7:11: "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?"

When I looked up the word prayer in the dictionary, I found that it is rooted in the Latin word, precarious. We use the word precarious when something is ... well, when something is precarious, in the sense that something could go either way. Precarious means being dependent on circumstances beyond one's control; uncertain, unstable, insecure; or dependent on the will or pleasure of another, liable to be withdrawn or lost at the will of another.

As I contemplate the meaning of the word, I can understand better now the deeper meaning of prayer. Prayer is a precarious activity because when rightly understood it gives the freedom of choice to another--that is, to God. In a real sense when we truly ask from our hearts, we are actually surrendering our will to God.

In its highest sense, asking is an act of faith. To have faith in God is to ask. Of course, asking is possible only with someone we love and trust, because we are in effect turning the choice over to the one who is being asked.

It is easy to understand why we get into the habit of bargaining, negotiating, manipulating, or trying to sign on the dotted line. In the work-a-day world it's a jungle out there, and the rule is the survival of the fittest. We feel we must be in control.

True prayer from the heart doesn't need to be complicated. If with all our hearts we seek Him, we know He hears us. We don't need to persuade the Beneficent One to be beneficent, and we don't need to feel that we have to try to persuade Him to give us what we really need.

When Jesus talked with Nicodemus that night long ago, He said that unless we become as little children we cannot see the kingdom of heaven. When little children have a need, they simply ask mommy and daddy for it.

I almost decided to title this chapter, "When All Else Fails, Ask." If before you read this chapter you had been making deals with God, I hope that here at the end you can feel safe now to simply ask. In a very real sense, asking is the way we surrender our will to God. It's all right to ask.

But if prayer is about the will of God, and we have the promise in Philippians 4:19: "But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus," then why do I even need to ask?

That will be the subject of the next chapter.