What Does No Mean

Steve’s sister lives in Aurora, Colorado. She has a teenage son who asked to go see the Batman movie last night at midnight with his friends at the theater where the mass murder happened. His mother said no.

            I’m sure the scene in his house went like this: “You never let me do anything fun. I never get to do anything with my friends!” And there was some ranting and raving.

            The boy’s friends ended up not going to the movie either. The result, no one was hurt from Steve’s families.

            What does the word no mean to that young boy and his friends today? I wonder.

            I had a client a few weeks ago that came in and swore that God was playing games with his life. He thought that he had a curse on him. Nothing was going right in his life. He had gotten a grant from a large company to study abroad for a year and suddenly the money was rescinded. In my mind, that is God saying, “No. Not this time. You’re needed somewhere else.”

            But most people don’t hear “no” as a good thing. They hear it as the young teenage boy heard it the night before the murders. We rarely get a chance to see why God chose for us NOT to go somewhere or do something. These people in Colorado got to have a great lesson. Most of us don’t. We have to learn by faith.

            That same client came in yesterday and everything had changed. Not only did he get a better offer, but he is now getting to do his passion, exactly what he had been dreaming about for years.

            God doesn’t say no because you are a yoyo needing to be bounced from job to job and place to place without direction. No, God has a plan. If you would listen and be still, you might hear it.

            When something doesn’t go the way I had planned it, I get still mighty quickly. I don’t want to miss what it is that God is trying to say. In fact, when something goes wrong in my day—say I get into an accident or I am in a traffic jam—my antennas go way up. Why? Because I know that I have the kind of spiritual counselor that works in my favor. I know that angels are all around me fielding the ball for me, playing defense, doing whatever they need to do to help me win, not lose. God is on your side.

            No means, I love you.

No means, I got your back.

No means, I know what’s best for you.

No means, simply—not now.