What Do You Do When God Says, "no"

Stand and lift up your bible and repeat after me.

This is my Bible.

I am what it says I am.

I can do what it says I can do.

I am going to learn how to be what it says I can be.

Today I will learn more of the word of God.

The indestructible, never ending, living word Of God.

I will never be the same.

I will never be the same.

In Jesus Name

When God Says, “No”

In your bible turn to James chapter 4 and when you've found it say, “Amen”.

Prayer is the Christian's greatest privilege and it is so often our greatest failure. Now there's no substitute for prayer. You cannot email, text or Facebook it.

You can substitute many things in life, but there's no substitute for prayer--not energy, not enthusiasm, not intellect, not intent. We all need to learn how to pray better.

James talks to us today about some prayer problems.

Let’s turn if you will to chapter 4: " Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

Now let me just stop right here before we read the rest of this and say that there are two major problems that James mentions in these few verses that we're going to read, the first four verses.

Two major problems concerning prayer. More than that, but two major ones and I want you to see if you can spot them while I read. " Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

Now, what are the two great problems that James mentions in that passage of scripture? First of all, there is the problem of unasked prayer. Sometimes we just don't pray. "You do not have." Why? "Because you do not ask." God wants to load you with benefits, God wants to bless you, God has invited you, "Call upon me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things," James says you don't have because you don't ask. There is the problem of unoffered prayer.

But there's another problem here and that's the problem of unanswered prayer. It is that people ask, but he says, "You ask and do not receive." So, which is the greater problem? Well, either one of them causes our prayers not to be answered. You see, God responds to our prayers in about four basic ways, and all of this is by way of introduction. Sometimes the answer to prayer may be direct, God just says, “Yes.”

We ask God for something and God just says, “All right, you got it, here it is,” and God gives us exactly, precisely, immediately what we ask.

I love to pray that way, I love just to say, “Lord, I need so and so” and he says, “All right, David, here it is.

And I think we've all seen that kind of an answer to prayer, I mean beyond coincidence, we say, “Yes, this is my God, He said, okay..”

So, first of all the answer may be direct and God says yes.

Sometimes the answer may be different and God says better.

And then He says, “No.”

Now if God doesn't give you what you ask, he may give you something far better than you ask, and so the answer may not be direct, it may be different. You ask for one thing and God gives you something else. For the Bible says, "We know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us."

And so sometimes the Holy Spirit says, David is asking this, Father, but this is what he needs and give him not what he asks, but give him something better than he asks. "And He is able to do exceedingly above all that we can ask or think," that's what the Bible says.

And so we need to thank God sometimes that the answer is direct, sometimes the answer is different, and then sometimes the answer is delayed, isn't that true?

I mean, the Bible says, "Therefore will the Lord wait that he may be gracious unto you." The Bible says, "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you," that's in Matthew 7