When God says: No.

There is a popular proverbial bit of encouragement that gets passed around the internet:

If the request is wrong, God says, “No.”
If the timing is wrong, God says, “Slow.”
If you are wrong,  God says, “Grow.”
But if the request is right, the timing is right, and you are right, God says, “Go!”

I know it has encouraged a lot of people in difficult situations, probably including some of you reading this, so don't take what I have to say as a demeaning of the intent of whoever wrote this.

However, I think any Christian senses or has experienced that reality often more complicated than this. What about when God says No and the request was for someone to survive a dangerous medical procedure? What about when the request is for someone to become a believer?* What about when the request is a child praying for his parents to stay together? Are those wrong requests? Is the timing wrong? Is the person wrong to ask for these things?

Atheists or others antagonistic towards the Christian faith will sometimes bring up questions like this, and we may find it difficult to give them a satisfactory answer.

(*- This very difficult question suggests to me that the ongoing discussion within the Church over God's sovereignty and man's ability to make choices, while obviously sometimes allowed to dominate time that should be spent focusing on those things that we do understand and should be putting into practice, is not merely "a peripheral topic that we should just ignore because it causes arguments and focus on other things," but in fact a dialogue over the very nature of God and His salvation plan. So since I think the answer to this particular tough question is tied into God's plan for salvation for humanity, I won't address it directly in this post today. But keep it in mind, because ultimately every Christian must have an answer to this question, be it as simple as "We don't know but God knows and I trust Him," which is as correct as any answer can be)

I recently encountered another "God saying No for reasons we don't understand" moment, and although mine doesn't come close to being as difficult as the examples I listed above, I think they all have something in common which is crucial for us to understand as followers of Christ.

I'd like to approach the issue from both the rational perspective and the emotional perspective (though of course it's impossible to entirely separate them), since I think often both of them are in play when we don't understand God's "refusals."

A. Rationally

 

1. God Knows More Than Us.
 
This past week, I encountered the first serious roadblock to my journey towards missionary work in Taiwan, being denied a religious visa by somewhat antagonistic and unprofessional visa office personnel at the particular consulate office I am required to use in my Taiwan visa applications due to my permanent address being in the Southeast. After attempting to claim first that I was unqualified due to not meeting the visa requirements to the letter (something they'd never been so strict about before, but fair enough), then that I didn't meet their nonstandard definitions of the requirements (getting into sketchy territory here), they resorted to making up unlisted requirements to have grounds to claim that I was unqualified. This is new territory for Taiwanese visa applications, and TEAM in Taiwan will be looking at whether or not its feasible for future missionary candidates to use the religious visa to do ministry in Taiwan, even though it seems this office has a reputation for being particularly difficult.

I had a lot of people praying for me. At least dozens, if not over a hundred. And the more people who said they'd pray for me, the more the visa office made it clear they were going to refuse me the visa. It's as if the more people prayed for them to be willing to grant me the visa, the more God in response hardened their hearts instead.

And I believe that He did just that. I have seen God change my plans too many times to believe He puts much value in my plans. And rightfully so. I am eternally grateful (literally) that God sees fit to ignore my plans and substitute His own. He is omniscient; I am, at best, somewhat more rational than the average person. (and there are days when I'm not so sure about that either)

So although on an emotional level it's disappointing that my Taiwan departure has been delayed by antagonistic paper pushers, after 5 years of working to get back there, on a rational level I know there's a reason for the delay that I might even be able to see myself, in retrospect.

It is not irrational for God to say No when I was praying for Yes. It is irrational for me to not trust that He knows better than me. If He didn't, He wouldn't be God. Our perspective is limited, even when we're not being especially self-centered or short-sighted. We cannot possibly know what is best for ourselves more than God can. It is only reasonable to trust Him with the decision-making.

2. In a Fallen World, 'Bad things' happen by Default

I won't spend too much time on this, but anyone who believes the story of the fall in Genesis must recognize that God created a beautiful world and pronounced it good, and then the first two humans He made decided they knew better than Him, and fundamentally wrecked it for the rest of us. That fallen world continues to fall, and the consequences of human sin are part of life in that world. People make foolish decisions, or evil decisions, and it causes pain and suffering to others. For God to let humans suffer in a broken world which He made and they broke is fair and just; for God to show mercy and sometimes specially intervene to reverse the consequences to our benefit is grace. Obviously we like the second one more, but grace and justice are equally attributes of a perfect God, reflected perfectly in all His actions. (Not in opposition to each other, as they are so often wrongly portrayed. God is both infinitely just and infinitely gracious. If it seems that these two attributes are on a collision course with each other, that's because they are; and where they collide is a Cross. And right in the middle of this collision we find Christ crucified, the perfect resolution of grace and justice which brings unity to these attributes which are supposedly in conflict. Perhaps this is why the Scripture speaks of Christ being the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. But let us return to the topic at hand.)

B. Emotionally

Fair enough, you might say, but what about on an emotional level? Doesn't God know we have feelings? Doesn't He love us more than to just rigidly enforce His will over us with no thought to how crushed or disappointed we might be? (Ok, you may or may not say it, but I think we all feel this way at times)
There are once again two sides to the answer:

1. God is Strong Enough to Always do what is Best for You.

An earthly father (or mother), eventually tires. If a child begs over and over, especially getting into the teenage years, sometimes parents give in. If the parents are not 100% sure granting the request would be harmful, and the child wants it badly enough, at some point they may relent, especially if the child ups the ante by putting the child-parent relationship at stake. "Say yes or I'll hate you forever," this kind of thing. Humans are weak, this kind of strategy works on us.

But God is not weak, God is infinitely strong. Emotional blackmail has no effect on the Creator who knows you better than you know yourself. Parents cannot foresee every outcome, and may eventually tire and relent, hoping that a good, or at least not harmful, possible outcome will occur. God foresees every outcome* and can thus answer prayers based on 100% knowledge. And no matter how many times you ask Him for something which would ultimately be harmful to you and others connected to the situation and the future ramifications of that situation, He will say No. He does not tire of doing what is best for you, whether you see it that way it or not.

So we may not be able to think of a single way God's saying No could be a good thing, but it's not up to us to think until we figure it out. The question is whether we trust that He knows what He's doing, or accuse Him of either ignorance or maliciousness.

(*- Many Christians believe it goes farther than that, and that God has in fact already ordained the outcome. I am very careful about how I articulate my position with regards to sovereignty and election, because I believe the questions are often phrased in a nonsensical way that forgets God does not look at things from a human, time-bound perspective, but that's the subject of a planned future post.)

2. The Greatest Thing God can give us is a Deeper, Fuller experience of Himself.

Get that into your head and heart, if you can. I am trying to drive it into mine.
For any human, this would be untrue (and a blasphemous claim), but for God it is necessarily true.

Denying someone a lesser good to give them a greater good is right, and in fact knowingly refusing them the better good to give them a lesser good would generally be considered unloving if not outright wrong.
For example, if given a choice between the two statements "I love your new car!" and "Your house is on fire!" it's not hard to guess which one you'd pick. However, if I drive past you going the opposite direction in busy traffic and have only time to shout one brief sentence out the window as I pass, would it be evidence that I care about you more or less, if I chose to deprive you of hearing "I love your new car" in order to inform you that "your house is on fire"? It is my concern for your well-being that would prompt my saying no to your hearing the car compliment in order to say yes to your hearing the less pleasant message, and I can't imagine many people who would resent my decision. Yet so often when God gives us the unpleasant but more loving answer, we act as if we momentarily doubt He really wants the best for us.

Earthly blessings, happiness, comfort, self-actualization, meaningful experiences and memories, all these are what we naturally want and chase after. But our walk with God after regeneration is partly a process of learning that all these things we have lived for are merely derivative in comparison with the experience of God Himself, from whom all these blessings flow and who is greater than all of them put together, and in whom is the ultimate fulfillment of those desires anyway.

Some people get angry or uncomfortable this way of saying it, but it's an unavoidable fact that if God says No because He wants to reveal more of Himself to you through whatever difficult consequences result from His refusal to grant your request, it is right and loving of Him to do so, even from our human perspective.

If God said No to every attempt I made to get to Taiwan to do ministry, yet every time I drew closer to Him and understood Him better due to it, my only correct response could be to praise Him for His love and for giving me the greatest gift He could give. (I can't promise I would respond in such a glorifying way, but it would be the right response)

Thankfully if we have the Spirit, it will often be the case that God reveals Himself to us through the times He says Yes, because we will be asking for things that are in keeping with His will. But sometimes our wrong requests are simply based on ignorance. They are not bad or sinful requests, it's just that we can't see clearly enough or far enough to understand why God can't say Yes. This is when it comes back to the answer you already know: We just have to trust the Infinitely Trustworthy One.

I trust God will lead me to Taiwan as He has led me all the way up to this point, sometimes with amazing works on His part to open doors and make things happen. I also trust that, due to His leading and calling along the way, His plan for me to draw closer to Him involves me proclaiming His name in Taiwan, that He may be more greatly glorified in that dark place.

But whether He miraculously has me in Taiwan 3 weeks from today, or whether I somehow never go there again, He will in every action and outcome offer me the opportunity to draw closer to Himself, which is the greatest gift and blessing with which He could answer any prayer of mine. That sounds like a good "spiritual" answer to the question of God saying No because it is; we live in a spiritual world, and on this point they got it right in Sunday School: "Jesus" really is always the right answer.