Bargaining with God for a Better Deal: Personalise Your Relationship with God to Leverage for More Blessings
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About this ebook
fl exible, open, Fatherly nature of God. We do not have to accept everything life throws
at us we can bargain with a loving God without Him becoming angry. Since all good
and perfect gifts come from above, we can bargain with God for better personalized
deals - better benefi ts packages. The book gives a fresh perspective on how we can
leverage our personalised relationships with God for more blessings. Some of the
tricks used by Job and others to secure better deals are highlighted.
Fanuel A. Demas
Fanuel A. Demas, PhD is an inspirational writer who believes we can receive better deals from God through knowing and experiencing God personally through personalised relationships with God. He grew up in a Christian home and is an inspiration to his family, friends and colleagues. His true journey with God started after he lost his father in 1997 and then fi ve of his close family - mother, two sisters and two nieces - in a single horrifi c car crash in 2009. He had to fi nd answers on his own and quickly learnt that bargaining with God is the way to go.
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Book preview
Bargaining with God for a Better Deal - Fanuel A. Demas
Copyright © 2011 by Fanuel A. Demas, PhD.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011913981
ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4653-0321-9
Softcover 978-1-4653-0320-2
Ebook 978-1-4653-0322-6
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This book was printed in the United States of America.
To order additional copies of this book, contact:
Xlibris Corporation
0-800-644-6988
www.XlibrisPublishing.co.uk
Orders@XlibrisPublishing.co.uk
302399
Contents
Foreword
One: Introduction
Two: Daily struggles
Three: Personalise God’s attention
Four: ‘Search engine optimise’
Five: Personalised attention when needed
Six: Custom-made temptations
Seven: Trust your personalised relationship
Eight: Job gets God’s attention
Nine: Job’s first leveraging
Ten: Job’s second leveraging
Eleven: Penny-wise leveraging
Twelve: Leverage for better deals
Thirteen: God, the personal mentor
Fourteen: God is flexible
Fifteen: Starting all over again
Sixteen: On earth as in Heaven
Dedicated to God who gave me the
strength to write this book.
In memory of my late father, late mother,
two late sisters, two late nieces and late
father-in-law. May their souls rest in eternal
peace.
Foreword
Do you have problems getting God’s attention, let alone getting personalised attention? Have you prayed for many years, gone to church and done all things you think are right and good enough to make God rain down His Heavenly blessing on you without success? Have you gone through painful experiences like the loss of loved ones who were supposed to have been protected by God? Have you sometimes reached a point where you feel that God is no longer interested in you? If your answers are yes to these questions, you have made a good investment by buying this book.
I am from a close-knit Christian family. Despite having strong Christian convictions, I went through terrible rough patches in my life as I lost more than half of my family—first my father in 1997, two days before my wedding, and then my mom, two sisters, and two nieces, five very close family members at once, in a horrific car crash in 2009.
Ever since the death of my father, I have been reasoning with God, as my father was a good man who really cared for his family.
As I reasoned with God for twelve years regarding my father, I was struck with the horrific crash that almost wiped out my entire family and made me the eldest and head of my parental home overnight—an incident that raised more questions, reasoning, and bitterness. I could not understand how the once good and loving God that I came to know through my parents as a young boy would turn so cruel and become a slayer of those I thought He loved. Finally, as though that was not enough, I lost my father-in-law in 2010.
Although I was bitter and depressed, I could not find enough tears to fully mourn the deaths of my beloved family members. It was as if something was deliberately holding the grieving back. These were tough lessons I went through, but through the heartache and depression, I came to understand God’s general and personalised attention better.
I studied the cases of some biblical greats to better understand how the general God and personalised God work. This understanding helped me to handle my pain, grief, and depression better and hence my decision to share my story with you through this book.
Through studying biblical greats like Job, I understood that I was not the first person going through a terrible loss of family members. I learnt that Job’s suffering was worse than mine, and best of all, I understood Job’s trick to beat the hard times through endurance and ‘outlasting and outsmarting’ the tests of time, to stick around longer than the hard times to get through to the other side where there is peace, calm, and compassion.
In this book, we will explore how God’s personalised attention works and how we can apply the same principles in our lives to achieve more through bargaining with God.
I thank you for buying this book and trust that the good Lord will console you if you have gone through or are going through a family tragedy or any other rough patch in your life. I also trust that this book will help you in improving and personalising your relationship with God so that you attract His favourable, personalised attention, tailor-made for your circumstances and what you want to achieve in life.
May the good Lord bless you and the lives of those around you abundantly.
Fanuel A. Demas, PhD
One: Introduction
Waking up on a sunny day, listening to the birds and taking in the aroma of nature, is a true blessing from God—something one easily overlooks as not part of God’s attention, grace, and favour. After going through a number of rough patches in our lives, we come to a point where we only count the rough patches as areas where God still needs to beef up His blessings and forget about the smooth patches.
We regard the smoother parts of life, like seeing the sunrise in the morning, waking up alive, being able to live in peace, having food to eat, and so forth as ‘formalities’ that will happen even without God. Alternatively, we regard those blessings as God’s duty and nothing to be thankful about as God is doing the bare minimum as our Father.
Only when our surroundings become unstable through war or civil strife, or when our loved ones and friends are no longer there to support us do we realise that we were sitting on a gold mine of blessings. The bitterness, depression, and the refusal to accept the losses of loved ones and losing some of the ‘formalities’ are because these ‘formalities’ were in fact very valuable to us, but we did not think that we have to give credit to God for the time we could make use of these formalities.
Our thoughts and prayers are governed by being granted more blessings instead of thanking God first for the ‘formalities’. The blessings we ask for today will become formalities tomorrow once we receive them, and we no longer count them as blessings.
This reminds me of a small boy who may have many PlayStation games but will demand the latest versions of the games he already has once new versions come on the market. The older versions of the games (older blessings) are not counted anymore, the focus is on the new games only. The thinking is that the old games will no longer give joy and that life will be empty without the new games.
Some children gauge the love of their parents towards them by the number of new things they receive and not by the number of old things they already have.
Understanding and attracting God’s personalised attention is triggered by our appreciation of God’s blessings in our lives and our personalised interactions with God, leveraging those ‘old’ blessings to bargain for new blessings.
During the bargaining process, we need to demonstrate to God that we are using the ‘old’ blessings fully and time has come for us to take on more blessings.
Thank and praise God constantly for the ‘old blessings’ that keep us going day in and day out, year in and year out. ‘Old blessings’ help us to put the full blessings package that we already enjoy together. It is important to first understand the ‘benefits package’ we have, identify what is missing, if at all, and then ask for the missing benefits—but be absolutely sure that what you ask for is really missing from your current ‘benefits package’. Otherwise, God will be less responsive