When the Answer is No...

When the Answer is No...

“For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened (Matthew 7:8).”

I heard a sermon preached about answered prayer. The minister said that God answered all prayers. However, sometimes the answer will be “yes,” other times, the answer will be “wait,” and other times, the answer will be “no.” Up until the time that I was 20 years old, God only answered me by “yes” and “wait.” His answers to most of my prayers were “yes,” and if he said, “wait,” I did not have to wait long. People were often envious of my relationship with God. One of my pastors told me, “You are just a spoiled child of God. Your mother spoils you, and God spoils you by answering every prayer and giving you the desires of your heart.”

Well, one day in prayer, God emphatically told me, “no!” I was praying for my mother, who had a stroke and a major heart attack and was in the intensive care unit in the hospital. I called for people from all over the country to pray and fast around the clock for my mother’s full recovery. I believed God would perform another miracle like when he rescued me from a fire at the age of seven.

God told me that he was not going to perform a miracle and heal my mother. He told me to stop praying and tell the intercessors to stop praying and fasting because my mother was going to die. I cried like a baby and asked God, “why?” He told me that he was not only the God of Doral, but he was also the God of my mother, Renee. He told me that he had two prayers in heaven. One was mine asking for her healing, and the other was my mother’s asking to go home to be with Him. He told me that he was saying “yes” to her prayer, which would mean “no” to my prayer. I instructed the arrangements.

Using the Prayer Tool of Witnessing and Sharing Your Testimony with Others as symbolized by the Measuring Tape, document and share with at least one other person an experience where you prayers did not yield the results that you expected and the lessons you learned from it.