Walking With Christ

I keep going back to this one. I keep having to remind myself of this. Anyone else?

John 16:24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.(ESV)
Matthew 6:10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.(ESV)
Matthew 7:7-8 (7)Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (8)For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.(ESV)

God has only three answers when we ask for something. Yes, no, and not yet. Let’s discuss each of these for just a minute.

Yes.
It doesn’t matter what we have asked for, if the answer is yes, it will happen. We may not be able to understand the how, but we will see the result. It also may not come in quite the way we expected. If you ask for a better job because you’ve decided that the one you are in is a dead end, don’t be surprised if you get fired or laid off suddenly and have to move to another city or state for a season before finding the job you asked for. Daniel fasted for twenty-one days before he got his answer. The answer was yes and the messenger was sent right after the first prayer, but the enemy sought to delay the response long enough for Daniel to give up. The answer was yes. Daniel just had to wait to hear it for himself. The key here is that what Daniel asked for was within the will of God. If the answer is no or yes but we think it’s taking too long and we try to force the issue like Abram and Sarai did, then we risk the unintended consequences of our haste.

No.
This doesn’t mean that what we have asked for can’t happen. It means that the God who created us, loves us enough to die for us, and wants the absolute best for us, has said that this thing is not good for us. Just like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, we may ask for healing, an opening into a new relationship, a new role, a new house, or any number of other things. Later, if we take the time to examine the likely course of events following that request we often discover the pitfall we would have blundered into had the request been granted. A perfect example of this from personal experience happened years ago. I was looking for a new job. I found one and was one of two finalists for the position. It was so close to happening that my wife and I had even started looking for houses. We found the one we wanted that was near where I would be working. It was a really nice house. The job fell through. I have no idea what happened. I think the company got shut down. In any case, just a short while later, the house we were looking at was destroyed in the Joplin tornado of 2007. I have plenty of other examples that prove Garth Brooks correct when he says that “some of life’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”.

Not yet.
This is the hardest one. It rarely comes with a timestamp attached that tells us how long we will have to wait. If you’re in pain and asking for healing being told to be patient and you will be healed is agonizing. It somehow makes the pain worse. If there was a clock we could watch and wait as it ticked down to us getting the response we wanted then the waiting would be much easier. It would also stop us from moving forward with life of anything else until we received the healing we wanted. We would find excuses to put things off until after we were healed. It would be easier to do then. It would be more fun then. So much of our lives would be wasted just waiting for that clock to wind down without realizing the full cost of what we lost in the waiting. I spent a little over five years in nearly constant pain. That changes your personality just a bit. It causes you to examine things a lot closer to determine if the result was worth the pain. There were a lot of days that it didn’t seem worth it. I had a promise that I would be healed. That was one of the few things I could remember from before the wreck. The first few months flew by and the pain wasn’t all consuming. As time dragged on and the pain grew worse, the promise seemed farther and farther away. If I had known that I would have been healed on a specific day at a specific time then I would have simply sat and waited. At what cost? The world never slowed down. I stopped but the world moved on like nothing had happened. It had to.
I would have missed five years in the lives of my children. I would have missed so much of their lives that the damage to the relationship would be irreparable. My relationship with my wife is so much stronger than before because of the depth of pain we have shared. The bond we have includes extremes in joy, sadness, wonder, disappointment, laughter, and pain. Without the trust we built up through the trials of the past few years, neither one of us could have healed the generational traumas we both carried for so long. This period of time changed me in a lot of ways. If I had simply been staring at the clock while waiting for the timer to go off then I would have missed so many of the seeds being planted that have lead to the fruit I enjoy so much today. I would not have been able to grow during the waiting.

Father,
Thank You for Your glory and Your grace. Thank You for being so giving towards us who are sinners who have been redeemed through the blood of Your son, Jesus Christ on the cross. Thank You for Your hand of protection that we enjoy so much when You say no to one of our requests. We praise You for the unanswered prayers that helped us to become the people we are today. Even more, we thank You for the patience to wait on Your perfect timing because we recognize that a blessing that comes too soon or too late often becomes a curse. We know that You truly do want what is best for us, and as it says in Matthew, we ask that Your kingdom come and Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. We know, Father, that Your will is perfect and that You work all things for the good. We celebrate this as we rejoice in praising You. We lift up our voices as we list up our hands to worship You. Let us sing Your praises even in the darkest valley because we know that even though we walk through the valley of death that You are with us and You are for us. We know that You have lead us the only way that we could come and You have truly made our paths straight. Give us the grace to accept that no really is the best answer, and give us the strength and patience to endure while we wait through the uncertainty of not yet.
Now, Father, we ask that You bless us and keep us. Make Your face to shine upon us and be gracious to us. Lift up Your face upon us and give us Your peace.

In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.