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God’s “No” is Never Without a Reason
“He [Moses] chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time” (Hebrews 11:25).
Amy Carmichael, raised in a strict Scottish Presbyterian home by Christian parents, learned early in life that God does answer prayer. One of her earliest memories, recounted this outstanding woman, was praying as a child, “Oh, Lord, please, make my eyes blue tonight!” She went to sleep expecting God to honor that simple prayer, and to her disappointment, awakened in the morning with eyes just as brown as when she knelt and prayed.
Sometimes God loves you too much to say, “Yes!” Question: Is “No!” an answer? Indeed, it is. A parent can say no to his child without loving him, but no parent can really love his child without learning to say no, and often, too–perhaps even more frequently than saying yes. Why? Because the parent sees far beyond the immediate fixation of a child.
Students of the Bible learn that in the Greek text of the New Testament there are two words quite uniformly translated as “no” in English, but their meaning is different. As a beautifully descriptive language, the Greek also conveys the expected response of the individual. For example, a parent might say, “You’re not going to be late coming home tonight, are you?” He expects a positive yes answer, but he asks using a negative. On the other hand, he would use a different word (also translated “no”) as he would say, “You will remember to bring home your books, will you not?” Both words are negative, translated as “no” or “not.”
We tend to think of no as a negative response, and, indeed, the way you say it is a mirror reflection of your attitude; yet there is power in a positive no. Seldom do we think of the negatives in the ten commandments. Don’t kill. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t lie with your neighbor’s wife. Saying no to what you know is wrong frees you to do right. No is an emphatic commitment to going a different direction, to doing something different, to making another choice. You can’t choose good until you say no to that which is evil.
You can turn a negative no into a positive yes. But there is a price attached. Sometimes the price includes loneliness and rejection, but the negative is eventually superseded by something better.
God is not a cosmic killjoy who sits in the heavens choosing how to make you miserable. When he says no to what you ask for, or His word says no to what you want to do, it’s because He has a better plan, and you have to turn your back on what would feel good and you think would be pleasurable, before you find that for which you have been seeking but didn’t know it.
The writer of Hebrews illustrates our guideline for living, writing about Moses. The text says that Moses refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh—that’s negative, choosing rather “to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25). The negative denial of what he knew was wrong brought loneliness and rejection but led to the riches of God which he would never have known had he not learned the power of a positive no.
Later in life, as a missionary in India, Amy Carmichael thanked God that He ignored her simple request to let brown eyes and dark hair change color, because with dark eyes and hair, Amy was better able to blend into the culture where blue eyes and blond hair would have identified her as a foreigner. Lord, teach us the value and strength that comes by learning to say no.
Resource reading: Hebrews 11:24-28.

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