Trusting When God Says “No”

                The last two years have been a battle of 2x4s whacking my faith, my confidence, my joy. It seemed like the blows would never stop: experiencing poverty and my powerlessness, guilt of privilege, the deaths of : patriarchs, friends, cousins, precious children. When would it stop? Every prayer answered with a resounding no.  FINE, my soul screamed. HAVE IT YOUR WAY—take away my family, friends, my hearing, my ignorance of the disparity of life—I give up. My heart hardened as it interpreted every “no” as if God was the defiant one—not me. I threw myself into a crazy school year—attending church but mentally retreating every Sunday. I couldn’t take it. Why should I follow a “loving” God who seems to stomp and stifle my dreams and the people around me? While I have to pick up the pieces of shattered dreams and fractured hopes—now what.

                No one likes no.

we don’t like to have the bubble of control, power, comfort, and peace popped by reality. From two to ninety –two no one likes no. The irony, is that without boundaries there is chaos. Boundaries lead to more freedom, not less. What I was unable to see the last two years was that each 2x4 I thought was destroying my faith was actually thrown to build. I can now see that the pain was purposeful, foundational even, to where I am now. I have been equipped even when I was defiantly enduring—the house was being built on the rock.

 

                You see, all those “no’s” were actually invitations—to trust God’s timing, his plans and purposes, his way of healing. The no’s were inviting me to run TO God, not away. Even now, oh precious hindsight and the Holy Spirit remind me that I was warned about this journey. My second night in Nairobi, I journaled that,

 

“it will be a desert, I will wander, ‘it will be a beautiful season of growth and dependence; my individual “Fourty Years” to personally and eternally remind me of God’s  love, provision, and Grace”

 

At the time, my naïve self thought—well, duh, two months in Africa…But I failed to realize the desert was actually when I returned home, and would last much longer. It was the desert of my heart—dry with pride, fear, a desire to control.

 

All the “no’s” were leading me to say yes.

In brokenness I was able to finally say yes—that God is sovereign, trustworthy, in control, and good! Even the most painful no’s—rejection, physical loss, death, loneliness; are yeses. Yes, you can trust me when you are alone, physically disabled, in need. I AM. I am with you in the fire and the flood (Isaiah 40). God has sustained and guided me through the desert, I can trust him in the journey—even when he says no.