And God Said No.

What do you do when God says no?

In September 2007, I posted on a passage in Jeremiah 29 where God promises "I know the plans I have for you." I spoke a little bit about what it means to trust God that he has good plans for us... plans to prosper us and not to harm us... even when it takes 70 years for God to give us what we think is good...

Ironically, now I find myself in a similar situation, not pondering "wait," but wrestling with God's "no" to my beautifully structured and well-thought-out plans... and as I wrestle with God's "no," I think perhaps I understand Jeremiah's Israelites a little bit better.

You see, while God's answer was "wait," and a promise of better things, it was also a "no" to the plans that the Israelites had for themselves, including Hananiah's promises that they would be out of captivity soon, the temple items would be returned, the yoke of their oppressors would be broken, etc (things which initially sounded really good!). And God said, "No. My way is better. My timing is better." And I'm willing to bet that the Israelites did not necessarily respond particularly well.

My responses to my "no" have varied from anger to frustration, to denial, to apathy, to excitement, to grief.

And as I share my frustrations with others, often times, they remind me that "God knows" that "God has a plan" that "God has something better in store." And I believe that those things are true. 100%. I believe in a good God. I believe that he has plans to prosper me and not to harm me. And I believe that His "no" is because He has something better in store for me.

But that does not change the fact that right now, that "no" really hurts.

I think sometimes we are too fast to want to emphasize that everything will be okay. We want to smooth things over. We want to take verse 11 of chapter 29 out of context of chapter 28 and verses 1-10 of chapter 29 in Jeremiah. But, until we understand the context of the passage, the reason for grief for the Israelites, we cannot truly grasp the ridiculous hope in verse 11 "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.'"

In other words, it's okay to grieve when God says no to something that seems good. In fact, I would even go as far as to say, it is necessary to grieve....

... you have dreamed of going to medical school since you were twelve, and now, 23 applications down, and 23 rejections later, grin and bear it?

... your biggest dream has been to have children, and now the doctor is telling you that will never be able to, just get over it?

... you've been dreaming of release from captivity for 11 years, and God says "No, actually, you need to stay here for another 59 years."

When God says "no" to something that seems good, it is right, healthy and good to grieve. That does not mean that we do not trust that God has something better. In fact, grieving is part of letting go of what we wanted, and taking hold of what God has instead.

Grief is a natural process of letting go.

And we do step forward in faith, knowing, trusting, that God has something better. To say yes, I do believe that God has plans to prosper me and not to harm me. I do believe that He has something better in store for me than my wildest dreams. But sometimes, in order to take that step forward in faith, we need to be able to let go fully of what we were dreaming of.

And that process of letting go, is called grieving. It is not antithetical to faith. Rather, when practiced well, it is simply part of choosing to let go and step forward in faith that God knows better than we do.