Your Attitude Stinks and other reasons God’s answer is NO.

Few question are more difficult for me to wrestle with than the answer “no” to prayers.  When God answers prayers for someone else, especially if it is in a dramatic fashion we can feel a little envy.  This is especially true if the answers we get are not the “yes” we so hoped for when we prayed.  It seems, and maybe it is true, that we get a “no” answer more often than a “yes” answer.  Sometimes what we call a “yes” answer may not be Divine intervention, but rather something we forced or coerced or have worked out.

As I have beat around the question of unanswered prayers I have come up with a list of why we get a “no” answer.  I know that this list is incomplete, may lack theological nuance, and is insufficiently deep, and will, no doubt, cause some readers to doubt my faith. That is okay, I have plenty of doubts all on my own, so a few more will cause me no harm.  Here are my baker’s dozen of why we are getting a “no” answer from God.

God’s determined no

There are some requests that will always receive a ‘no’ answer from God.  Prayers that are offered for selfish and sinful motives will never get a “yes” answer.  Extreme example: God never says yes to the prayer, “God, help me find a person with whom I can have an extramarital affair.”

God’s preferred no

Sometimes there is a “no” because there is something better for us that God wants to give us, but can’t if He were to give us the “yes” to a request.  Extreme example: We may pray, “God, let me serve you in a great church.”  But God says, “No, I prefer you to serve Me in a humble church.”

God’s perspective no

We pray with a very small perspective.  We have only been around for a few years, have seen very little and know only the smallest fraction.  But God is Omni-…  Extreme example: Whereas we might pray, “God, destroy all the Islamic terrorists that are doing such harm.”  God might say, “No, out of that darkness I will raise up a whole generation of witnesses.”

The no of Grace

We pray for relief when that relief might cause us to drift from God rather than draw near to Him.  Extreme example: Someone once prayed that God would remove a certain messenger of Satan, a terrible thorn in his flesh.  But God seemed to think, and what He thinks is always right, “My Grace is what you need not the removal of that thorn.”

The no of “It is none of your business”

I don’t know about everyone else, but I sometimes pray for God to fix people.  This is usually after they have not responded to my lectures the way I think they ought.  Maybe what God is doing in their life is not my concern.  Extreme example:  We pray, “God, he/she is such a mean-spirited person, please bless them with a heart that is nicer to me and everyone else.” But if God spoke He could say, “If you knew their pain you would be as impressed as I am by their progress and how they are turning toward Me, which by the way is none of your business.”

The no of, “You have a terrible attitude”

I have had a teenager make a request of me that I have rejected simply because of the way the request was made.  Is it possible that we come to God in our prayers like a sulking teen? Extreme example: We come to God and pray, “Lord, I have worked so hard and served so long and yet I am still stuck here.  When are you going to help me out of the mess?”  To which there could be a Divine, “I’ll help you when your attitude doesn’t stink to high heaven!”

The no of freewill

Speaking of teens and other bothersome people we sometimes ask God to set them on the right path.  Even when our hearts and motives are right there is the very real possibility that the person doesn’t want the right path.  Extreme example: We in a most holy prayer say, “Lord, bring my friend to faith and repentance.”  To which God might say, “Keep praying but for the moment they don’t want to believe and repent and I love them too much to make them.”

To be Continued next week and will include the "No" of stupidity.