Skip to main content

He Said, “No”





It was eight o’clock; two hours left of work.   I was working the closing shift.  It was a retailer’s nightmare. I had about a bazillion things to do and not nearly enough time in which to get the tasks completed.  It felt like Deja vu.  I had been in this situation many times and it had NEVER ended well.  We had lines of customers all wanting service, and equipment needing to be cleaned.  Add to this, the fact that there was only two of us to get everything done.  The stress level was rising and I just knew we were going to finish late.  I have to confess, I was beginning to stomp my feet inside.  I didn’t WANT to stay late to finish cleaning.  So, as I was snatching a few minutes to wash a few dishes between customers, I said, “God, help!  I really don’t want to stay any later than I have to.”  As nine o’clock approached, I realized that, amid all the chaos, we had somehow managed to get caught up and we were pretty close to on schedule.  Our stress began to ease a little and we began to joke and talk realizing that we were “likely” to finish on time and NOT late as we had feared.  Later, as we put the finishing touches on our work, we looked at each other and said, “How did we do that?” I knew as I walked out on time praising God that he had heard and answered my prayer.  We all love those kind of prayers.  The ones where God chooses to answer our prayers with a resounding “YES”.  But what about the times when he says, “No.” Am I as quick to praise God for that answer? I have to admit that I don’t always like being told “no” not even by God.  I have had to ask forgiveness, many times, for my own response to God’s “no’s.” It occurred to me that when God says no, he may indeed be more interested in my response than anything else.  Perhaps God is asking, “Will you still love me if I don’t say yes?”  God wants us to love and praise him regardless of how he answer our prayers.  Sometimes God may testing me to see if I will love him even if he does not do what I want.  If I say I love God, but I get angry when he does not answer a prayer in the way I want, is that really love? God wants me to love him because he is God, not because of anything he does for me.  After all, the greatest thing he can do for me, he did two thousand years ago when he loved me so much that died a sinner’s death so I could have eternal life.  If God never gave me one other thing, it would still be way more than I deserve.  But he does lavish other blessings on me; he does answer my prayers.  So when he says “no”, I will praise him even then.


No Matter What

Anything I don't have You can give it to me
But it's okay if You don't, I'm not here for those things
The touch of Your love is enough on its own
No matter what I still love You and I'm gonna need You

Read more at http://www.songlyrics.com/kerrie-roberts/no-matter-what-lyrics/#c13qXGXqEgwuAFdv.9

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thank You God For Turning Our Ashes into Beauty

There are tragedy and sadness in everyone's life, No one is exempt. Yet, in the midst of the hurt and pain, God is there. He takes the things that hurt us and make us sad and turns them into things are beautiful. The death of my mother  was a tragedy to my dad. However, because of that tragedy, my dad began to see his need for God. In his brokenness, he found a God that could make him whole.  God turned his ashes into beauty. My dad, in turn, taught me to love God.   I am blessed to know God as my savior because of my dad. God also blessed me with a lovely step-mom Life is harsh at times, and many things are sad,  Yet, if we let him, he will take our ashes and make them into a work of art.   He delights in making the ash heaps of our life beautiful.   When we are broken, God is near, and where there is sorrow, he will turn it into dancing.   Thank you, God, F...
Post a Comment
Read more

Doctors and Taxes

Tonight, I’m doing something I absolutely hate.  My husband and I are working on a budget.  I imagine that most of you feel the same way. It’ kind of like taxes and doctors, we dislike them and breathe a sigh of relief when they are done. Truth be told; we really don’t enjoy working on a budget at all.  Yet it is one of the necessary components in knowing exactly how much you have and what you can spend. If indeed we are responsible to God for how we handle the resources that God has given us, then we need a clear picture. One piece of the puzzle that can bring the whole puzzle into focus is a budget.  It allows you to see and compare what you spend with what you have.  Sometimes as I’ve done a budget and looked at what I saw, I could see that the problem was little things that add up.  I realized that the problem was that I forgot the advice I had been given long ago, little things add up.  As we do a budget, we often see little things th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Perfect for Me

Tomorrow my sweetie and I will be celebrating twenty- nine years of marriage.  What an amazing journey!  I have to confess that when we were first married I had some preconceived ideas of what love and marriage would be like.   I thought love was having my spouse with me all the time, holding hands doing everything together, never having a disagreement.   I thought my darling sweetheart would never let me down or hurt me and everything would be perfect for the rest of our life.   Wow!  Can you believe how incredibly naïve I was?  After twenty-nine years what I realized is that no one could live up to the ideals that I had set because we live in an imperfect world and we are imperfect people.  I know, you’re thinking, “It took you twenty-nine years to realize this?” Nah I realized it after the first year.   I still smile how over the years God has changed my definition of love.  Don’t get me wrong there is n...
Post a Comment
Read more