When God says "No"

Last week I wrote about the need for trust in God. I spoke about how we should confidently ask God for what we want, trusting that He will grant our prayers. Of course, I skirted around the issue of God saying "no," the issue of not always getting what we want. For us prideful men, this is the main stumbling block to trusting in God. How do we trust God when we ask Him for something and we don't receive it? Of course, this often happens, and it's often a sticking point for those outside of Christianity. They see followers of Christ asking for this and that, and it seems that fate often treats Christians the same way as other people.

So, how do we deal with this dilemma? Well, first Jesus's promise of "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" (Mt. 7:7) is not an unconditional promise in the sense that He always gives us exactly what we ask for. If it were, Jesus would be bound to give us things that would harm us. What if we prayed for a nuclear bomb so that we could blow up a city? Or, what if we prayed that someone we hate undergo torture? Evil things are not what Christ promises to us. He promises us good things. He goes on to say, "what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" Mt. 7:9-11

However, sometimes we ask for truly good things, and the answer is still no. Similarly, children often ask for things that are good in themselves, but not necessarily good for them. For instance, when Liz and I sit at the dinner table, Alan sometimes sits on our laps. When he does this, he is very close to our food, and so he does what he does when he sees anything - he reaches for it and tries to put it in his mouth. However, right now he can't really handle Chicken Parmigiana; he's too young. He can do crackers, rice cereal, bananas but not unprocessed meat. He only has 5 teeth; it's just not going to work. When he grows, when he gets more teeth, we'll give him Chick Parmigiana, but not now.

Of course, this is the position we often find ourselves in with regards to God's will. Like my son Alan, we believe we are far more capable of receiving good things than we actually are. We reach for things we are not yet ready for. And, like Alan, when we are told no we often become upset that we didn't get what we want. We believe we know what's good for us, and yet we cannot see that we only have 5 teeth. To trust in God, though, depends on realizing how little we are. We must recognize that we have only 5 teeth, and if God says we are not ready for something, then we are not ready for it. He loves us; He's guiding us, and when we are told "no" it is because He knows how to "give good things to those who ask him."

But what about asking God for things in confidence? How can we confidently ask Him for something and yet recognize that what we're asking for may not be good for us? This strikes at the heart of the dilemma and is the single hardest thing about prayer. Recognizing our finitude leads us to trust in God, and yet it can also cause us to distrust our own vision.

The only way to do this is to trust in God so completely that we become like little children who ask confidently and yet trust their parents implicitly. "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Mt 18: 3. To do this requires great humility. We have to let go of the idea that we are in control. We have to let things happen to us, instead of trying to constantly make things happen the way we see fit. To put simply, we have to go with the flow the way a child does. The more we do this, the more God will draw us closer to Himself and show us His will. And the more we know His will, the more we can watch it be accomplished in the world. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is heaven."