Yes, Yes and Yes Again

Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." (Acts 3:6 NIV)

How often do we walk through life thinking that God has only granted us a small percentage of what we have asked for in prayer? We believe that God always answers prayer, but we also believe that his most prevelant answer to our prayers is, "no," "no," and "no" again. We ask for healing for a loved one... But they die. We ask for a job after weeks or months of unemployment, yet we are still looking. We ask for healing in a relationship, but that person refuses to apologize for the hurt they have caused us. Why does God keep saying "no?"

Like the beggar in the scripture above, perhaps the words we use in our prayers don't truly reflect our deepest desire in that circumstance. Perhaps we don't even realize what it is we truly want. The beggar was lame from birth. He didn't even consider that what he really wanted was physical healing. So he asked for a Bandaid... Money to provide for his physical needs for the day.

Only the Holy Spirit knows what we are really asking for when we pray, and it is He who God listens to as He translates our poorly spoken words into the needs that come from the deepest parts of our soul. It is to these needs that God keeps answering "yes," "yes," and "yes" again! But more often than not we don't recognize the "yes" and think our prayer answer was a "no." In not recognizing the gift of a "yes" we don't accept it and therefore we ourselves speak the "no" to the prayer to which God said "yes."

When we ask for healing for a loved one who dies, we miss that the Holy Spirit asked for wholeness for them. Our ego grieves and miss the fact that our loved one has been granted ultimate healing, even though we think God said "no."

Perhaps in asking for a job, the Holy Spirit has asked God to send opportunities to use our gifts and talents to do God's work. And the opportunities come but we miss them because maybe they don't pay enough or even at all. We think our prayer has gone unanswered, but if we had trusted God who knows that we have to earn a living, we may have found that the connections for paid employment may have come through using our gifts for another purpose.

Perhaps when we ask God to "change someone's heart" so our relationship can heal, the Holy Spirit, in His Wisdom, asks God to work on our own heart. This has to be one of the hardest "yes"-es to hear. And so we don't accept the gift of answered prayer and the relationship remains broken and we think God has said "no" again.

Our prayers are too quick and our expectations too low. If we would trust the Holy Spirit to translate our poor words into the deepest desires of our heart and to open our eyes to God's work in our lives, how happy we would be! We would see God's "yes"-es imprinted all over our lives!

Holy Spirit,
Continue to speak up for us in our poor attempts to pray. Open our eyes to God's "yes." Amen.

Joys: laughter... The kind that gives yor tummy muscles a really good workout; new friends; strengthening bonds with present friends