It’s a familiar cycle. You wake up, maybe groggily scroll through social media, then—if you’re feeling disciplined—you open your Bible app and skim through a passage. Or maybe you whisper a quick prayer before falling asleep at night, hoping it counts as “spending time with God.” For a lot of Christians, this is what faith looks like: an obligation, a checklist, a task to be completed so we can move on with our day.
But what if that approach is completely missing the point?
Tara-Leigh Cobble, creator of The Bible Recap, knows what it’s like to treat faith as a transaction.
“I grew up in a space where… we’re reading the Bible to find our application point. What is my takeaway? What’s my to-do list? How can I be a good Christian? How can I make God happy? Maybe so that God will give me what I want,” she says. “I viewed it as very transactional.”
That’s a dangerously easy mindset to fall into. American culture, after all, runs on transactions. Pay your dues, get the reward. Work hard, earn success. Swipe right, find love. So it’s no surprise that many people approach God the same way—thinking that if they pray enough, read enough, or behave well enough, then they’ll get what they want.
The problem? That’s not how relationships work. And if faith is supposed to be a relationship rather than a religious vending machine, then it might be time to rethink how we engage with God.
It’s not just the overachievers who fall into this trap. Many Christians, whether consciously or not, treat their faith like a performance review. Did I pray enough? Read enough? Serve enough? The impulse to measure our spiritual success is understandable. We’re conditioned to believe that effort leads to outcome.
Cobble had a mentor who challenged that thinking. “He told me to stop looking for myself when I read the Bible and to start looking for God.” That small shift changed everything. “It transforms your relationship with God. It takes you from transactional to relational.”
That shift is profound, but it’s also deeply counterintuitive. It forces us to confront an unsettling truth: we might not know how to have a relationship with God that isn’t about checking off boxes.
If transactional faith is the problem, then modern culture only exacerbates it. We live in an era of curated devotionals, hyper-optimized routines, and one-minute Instagram sermons. Everything is designed to be quick, digestible, and—above all—efficient. But efficiency and intimacy rarely go hand in hand.
“Every day we are taking in things that shape our thoughts and that shape our understanding,” Cobble points out. “We’re being discipled by all the things around us. And many of those things aren’t telling us the truth.”
She’s not wrong. Our minds are constantly flooded with content—TikTok trends, Twitter debates, curated influencer faith hacks—that shape our beliefs more than we realize. And yet, many of us expect to sustain a deep relationship with God by squeezing in five-minute devotionals between meetings. If we treated our friendships that way, they wouldn’t last long.
So what’s the alternative? If faith isn’t a business transaction, then what is it? Cobble suggests rethinking our entire approach. Instead of reading Scripture to figure out what we should do, what if we read it to learn who God is? Instead of praying to get answers, what if we prayed just to be with Him? What if faith wasn’t about doing, but about knowing?
That idea might sound abstract, but it has real implications. It means faith isn’t about earning favor or securing blessings. It’s not about making God happy so He’ll give us what we want. It’s about developing a relationship with Him for no other reason than because He is worth knowing.
Cobble likens it to a real-world relationship.
“If your husband only interacted with you for an hour a week, would that feel like intimacy? Would that feel like a rich relationship?” she asks. “No! And yet, that’s exactly how many people treat God—checking in on Sunday, maybe sending up a prayer in crisis, but not making Him a daily priority.”
For Cobble, faith deepens when it stops being about obligation and starts being about presence.
“Scripture is the Word of God,” she says. “This is Him revealing Himself to mankind. And it’s like being in a conversation with someone you love about who they are, getting to know Him.”
This kind of faith isn’t easy. It means relinquishing control, letting go of expectations, and being okay with uncertainty. It requires patience, a virtue that many of us, raised in a culture of instant gratification, struggle to cultivate. Waiting on God, seeking Him for who He is rather than what He can do for us, is an act of trust that doesn’t come naturally. It’s a muscle that has to be exercised daily.
But when we lean into this type of relationship, something profound happens. We begin to see God not as a cosmic vending machine but as a presence that shapes our entire lives.
“We end every day of The Bible Recap with what we call the ‘God shot,’” Cobble explains. “Our snapshot of God and His character. You don’t leave with a list of dos and don’ts. You leave with a deeper understanding of who He is.”
She believes that when people truly grasp God’s character, their faith transforms naturally.
“You don’t leave the Bible recap thinking, ‘Today’s assignment is to be nice to people in traffic,’” she says. “Instead, you leave thinking, ‘God is incredibly patient and loving to sinners—including me.’ And that truth sustains you.”
This shift also changes the way we engage with others. When we stop viewing faith as transactional, we stop viewing people that way too. We stop treating relationships like networking opportunities and start seeing them as valuable in and of themselves. We become more generous, less self-focused, and more aware of the presence of God in our everyday moments. We realize that intimacy with God isn’t about religious performance but about being present with Him in the ordinary rhythms of life.
Maybe that looks like slowing down, setting aside time not just for structured Bible reading, but for meditative reflection. Maybe it means talking to God without a set agenda, allowing space for silence. Maybe it means engaging in acts of faith—not as obligations, but as natural expressions of love.
Whatever it looks like, it will require unlearning a lot of what we’ve been taught about what “successful” faith should be. It means embracing mystery, waiting without immediate answers, and pursuing God without a guarantee of a return on investment.
That’s uncomfortable. But that’s also what real relationships are made of.
So maybe it’s time to stop treating faith as a transaction. Maybe it’s time to start treating it like a relationship—uncertain, messy, and deeply, deeply worth it.
