Sometimes the Answer is "No"

It is a tenet of my faith that God answers prayers.  This is something I believe with all of my heart, a belief bolstered by the many times that God has answered my own prayers, in ways that were - to me - put the reality of those answers beyond question.

However - and this is hard for many Christians to accept, as I've seen for myself - sometimes the answer to that prayer is "no."  When you're asking for something that is outside of God's will and plan for your life, God doesn't ignore that prayer, but He might just answer by saying "no." 

 God doesn't ignore that prayer, but He might just answer by saying "no"

In other blogs I've written here, I have talked about how God said "no" to Jonah (I'm not confused here - this is not about how Jonah said "no" to God). After Jonah realized that he really did need to follow God's command, he went to Nineveh where he preached doom.  To his surprise and disappointment, the people and the king of Nineveh did hear Jonah, and believed in what he was preaching, and repented.  Real sack-cloth and ashes time, honest and meaningful repentance.  God heard their groans of anguish, saw the true repentance in their hearts, and spared Nineveh the doom Jonah had foretold.

Jonah, whose people (the Israelites) considered Nineveh their sworn enemy, had looked forward to God's judgment. When it didn't come, he prayed to God to follow up on that promise, to smite the Ninevites.  God heard Jonah's prayer, but the answer he gave Jonah was a resounding "no."  Even though Jonah had (admittedly, reluctantly) done as God had commanded, and even though Jonah was indeed a prophet of God, God heard his prayer, but told him "no."

God heard Jonah's prayer, but God told him "no"

Which brings me to a very personal side of this issue, personal for me.  In 2007, eight years after our son had died in a one-car accident in September, 1999, my wife Karol was going through unimaginably deep suffering because of that loss.  Many years earlier, she'd lost a son who was born with profound, unsurvivable birth defects.  Following his inevitable death, she had never been able to properly grieve, and that loss festered in her soul.  Then nearly 20 years later, our son died in that awful crash.  Once again, she had been unable to properly grieve, and that loss, too, festered.  Even worse, the two boys' birthdays - and the anniversaries of their deaths - came very close together in calendar terms.

Each year from July through September, Karol went through an anguish that had to be seen to be believed.  This year, for reasons not clear, the suffering seemed to be worse.  Despairing of what I could do for her, I turned to God, and prayer.  Using the Psalms as my focal point - especially the ones in which David cried out to a God he felt had forsaken him - I prayed as I had never done before.  My prayers were daily events, often lasting hours, and filled with all the power of the emotions I was feeling.  And I asked others to pray for her as well - online prayer groups, our local church, friends - and those efforts were not in vain. People did pray for Karol.

People did pray for Karol

Still, her crisis seemed to deepen.  I knew God was listening - He had always listened to my prayers, and had often answered them in ways nothing short of miraculous - yet things only got worse for her.

Finally, I thought there was a change. She seemed more at peace, and things seemed to be returning to normal. We made plans to do things we enjoyed - something we hadn't done in weeks, perhaps months.  She even asked me to go to the store (at her request, and by my own choice, I had literally not left the house for a week - both of us were unwilling for me to leave her alone), so - feeling things had turned a corner, I went to the store to restock on groceries. 

Yet something didn't feel right

Yet something didn't feel right - I felt deeply that something was wrong, but I didn't know what.  I tried to call her, but she didn't answer, and for some reason, my blood ran cold.  I raced home, only to find the bedroom door locked.  It took me five minutes to disassemble the lock, and when I came in, I found Karol dead on the floor.

I called the police, who treated me like a murderer (no surprise there, and not really part of this story). More importantly, I called our priest.  She interrupted her vacation to rush to our home - to say last rites over Karol - and later she told me that she'd felt no evil there, that Karol was now finally at peace, a peace she had been unable to find in this life.

Karol was now finally at peace, a peace she had been unable to find in this life

I had prayed to God to help Karol find peace - in this life - but His answer was "no." 

That was hard for me to accept, and I "took' a vacation from God" as I came to terms with it.  I didn't stop believing in God, and I wasn't angry at God or filled with blame for Him.  Still, I needed to step back and come to terms with this, and God was gracious in letting me know that this was just fine with Him.

In mulling over what happened, I came to believe that His ultimate answer to my prayer was "yes, but on My terms" - Karol found peace she was so desperate to find - not in this life, though, but in the next life.

My Statement of Personal Faith in God, Jesus and the Spirit

This is my statement of faith.

I believe that faith is a journey, not a destination.  I believe we were put here by God to experience His love, and to grow in faith.  I believe that suffering is an important tool in that faith journey, as it calls us back to God when nothing else will.  I believe that God is there to help us, but he expects us to help ourselves.  He expects us to act on our faith, even as salvation is not based on works or deeds, but on faith alone.  But I believe that inner faith without external manifestations of that faith is a slender reed, and a hollow one.

I believe in God and He shapes my life, provides me guidance (when I listen) and sees me through troubled times.  I believe in Jesus as the one true son of God, the author of my salvation.  I believe in the Holy Spirit of God, and have (at critical points in my life) felt touched by the Spirit of God.  The Trinity remains a mystery to me (as, I suppose, it was meant to), but I believe in God the Father, I believe in Jesus the Son and pathway to salvation, and I believe in the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the Bible as the primary source of God's message to humanity (and to me).  I reject those who claim that the Bible was solely the work of man, as that denies the reality of divine intervention.  The experiences in my life have proved to me the divine nature of the Bible.  I find spiritual value in both the Old and New Testaments, but in cases of a conflict, I believe that the New Testament (and Jesus) were created to refine and replace the Old Testament.

I believe in baptism as a vital step in a person's faith journey.  However, I believe that infant baptism is symbolic of the intent of the infant's parents, family and godparents to raise the child in faith, but it doesn't "confirm" adult salvation.  That adult salvation requires informed and committed faith, demonstrated by baptism, to "count" as baptism.

I believe Jesus meant what he said about the Eucharist, and those faiths that don't include communion with every church service are (at best) misinformed.  I believe that Satan exists and is active in this world, and that he is a major part of every person's faith journey.  As I believe that Satan exists to tempt Man, I believe that Hell is the destination of those who hear the Gospel and refuse to accept it. 

I believe in the life everlasting for those who believe in God and in the saving power of Jesus.

However, I have no real idea of what Heaven is like, or how Hell works.  Those answers have not been shown to me. 

I do not know how infant baptism works, but I believe that God accepts into his loving arms all infants and children who die while still too young to profess faith.  I also do not profess to know what happens to those who die having never been introduced to God and Jesus - as they saying goes, "that's way above my pay grade."

I believe that God created the universe, and that He created mankind, but I do not rule out the possibility that he used Evolution as a tool for doing so - God is infinite, and those who try to constrain him set themselves up to judge God - always a bad idea. I am not saying that God used evolution - I am saying that in His infinite wisdom, he used whatever tools he chose (and that evolution might - or might not - have been one of them).

I believe that, just as Jesus used parables, God might have been using parables in His teachings about Adam and Eve in the Garden, or about Noah and the Flood, or about Jonah and Leviathan.  The literal truth vs. the parabolic truth of these is not important to my faith.  What they tell me about what God wants of me is vitally important, just as the lessons of Jesus' parables are far more important than the name and zip code of the Prodigal Son.

This is not all of my faith, but it reflects a significant part of my faith as God has shown my faith to me at this point in my life.