Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him. [Matthew 7:7-11 (NLT)]
Thrilled at the result of her biopsy, Mary joyfully announced, “God is good and God always answers prayers!” Indeed, He is and does but we must remember that God does not always answer prayers the way we want Him to. I recently wrote that God is not a miser and our prayers should not be puny half-hearted ones. Nevertheless, regardless of the size of our petitions, we must remember that it is God’s will, not ours, that will be done. In spite of fervent prayers, some biopsies will say “malignant,” some prodigals will never return, some marriages will fail, and some people will not recover.
People often claim that Jesus’s words in Matthew 7 are a promise that God will give us anything we ask. But, seen in context, this verse is about seeking and finding God rather than having all of our wishes fulfilled. If we ask for things like His wisdom, discernment, patience, love, compassion, peace, and understanding, He will give them to us. That promise, however, does not mean God will answer all of our prayers with a “Yes!”
Just as loving parents wouldn’t give their children something bad when they ask for something good, Jesus tells us neither will God. But, what if, in his naiveté, the child unwittingly asks for something that isn’t what’s best? When my son was a teenager, he pled for a shiny new sports car; we answered with a second-hand Ford Tempo. Older and wiser, we knew a sixteen-year old boy didn’t belong behind the wheel of a Corvette. Now that he has a sixteen-year-old boy of his own, our son understands. A loving parent, like God, knows how to say “No!”
God is God and we are not. It is His will that reigns and our prayers are answered according to His plan rather than our wants. Both Elijah and Jonah asked God to take their lives, but He refused. God denied King Zedekiah’s prayer for help in defeating Nebuchadnezzar. When Jesus prayed in the garden, Paul prayed to be rid of the thorn in his flesh and David wanted to build the temple, God said “No” to them. When the disciples wanted Jesus to go back and heal in Capernaum, when a man asked Him to intervene in a family dispute, and when James and John wanted places of honor in heaven, our Lord answered them all with, “No!”
God always answers prayers but frequently not the way we expect or desire. Just because we don’t get what we want, however, doesn’t mean we get nothing. Although God’s answers often are mysterious and even heart-breaking, they always are purposeful. God’s “No!” is His “Yes!” for a far greater end, be it protection, teaching, spiritual growth, or guidance. Let us be thankful that God keeps us from what we thought we wanted and blesses us with what we didn’t know we needed!
When God says no, we are sometimes tempted to wonder if He loves us. In reality, it’s because He loves us, He sometimes says no. [Lysa TerKeurst]
What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Romans 8:31-32 (NLT)] 
By 1658 in England, it had become illegal to conduct a religious service differing from the Church of England’s official liturgy or for “one not in Episcopal orders” to address a congregation. A Puritan, John Bunyan, was arrested for preaching the gospel without a license. After three months in the Bedford jail, he was offered his freedom if he’d agree not to preach publicly. He refused saying, “If I was out of prison today, I would preach the gospel again tomorrow by the help of God.” Bunyan spent twelve years imprisoned. During that time, he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress. No country cub prison, the Bedford jail was overcrowded, unsanitary, unheated, and the plague of 1665 claimed forty prisoners as victims. Years later, Bunyan wrote: “Satan can make a jail to look like hell itself.” Although all looked hopeless for the man, he found strength in prayer and in his writing.
Sent by God to warn the people of Nineveh of God’s judgment, Jonah went in the opposite direction. After he survived three days in the belly of a fish, God gave Jonah another chance to deliver His message to the people of Nineveh. This time, Jonah delivered the news that God intended to destroy the city in forty days. When Nineveh’s king heard Jonah’s warning, he called for fasting, praying, and repenting their evil ways. People and animals were to cover themselves with sackcloth (a coarse fabric of goat’s hair) as a sign of grief, submission, and contrition. Seeing their repentance, God was merciful and gave them another chance.
Legend had it that an angel of the Lord occasionally would come into the pool at Bethesda, stir up the water, and that the first person to enter the pool would then be healed. Jesus, however, simply said to the crippled man lying there: “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!” and the man did just that. Since it was the Sabbath, the man later was stopped by the Jewish leaders and condemned for carrying his mat and working on the day of rest. According to the law, either he should have stayed and watched his mat or left it behind and walked away. When he explained that the man who’d healed him told him otherwise, they wanted him to identify his healer. Their curiosity, however, had nothing to do with knowing who had performed this amazing miracle; they wanted to know who’d broken the law!
