There is an old joke about a man sitting on his roof during a flood. He prays and asks the LORD to save him. As the rain continues falling and the water rises, he is offered rescue by way of a rowboat, life raft, and helicopter. He turns down all three offers while maintaining that God would save him.

Eventually, the man perishes in the flood. He finds himself standing before God and asks, “Why didn’t you save me?” God responds by reminding that he had sent a rowboat, life raft, and helicopter, yet the man turned them down.

My ability to retell the joke in written form isn’t likely to make you laugh. But that’s fine. That’s not the point. The point I am looking to stress is the fact that we often pray but then fail to see the answers. The answers are out there. We miss them because we don’t know what to look for.

Yes, No, or Maybe

It is often said that God answers every prayer with either ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘maybe’. I recently heard a lady giving her own testimony in which she replaced the ‘maybe’ answer with ‘not right now’. Regardless, this idea of God answering every prayer is pretty well understood in Christianity.

What we don’t seem to get is how to figure out what God is saying. It’s not hard when God does what we ask him to do. That’s a definitive yes. For example, Abraham’s servant knew that God had answered his prayer when Rebekah came to the well to draw water. God did exactly what the servant asked him to do.

But what happens when God answers ‘no’? It is a normal human tendency to wonder whether or not we’re hearing from God correctly. After all, we can’t imagine ‘no’ being the answer. Likewise for ‘maybe’.

Here’s another way to look at it: when God does not answer our prayers by giving us exactly what we’ve requested, we begin to question whether he’s answered at all. We don’t see the ‘yes’ because what we have asked for hasn’t come to pass. But perhaps we aren’t seeing the ‘no’ or’ maybe’ because we aren’t looking for it.

Lead by His Eye

Psalm 32:9 reminds us that God wants to guide us with his eye. He wants to lead us and instruct us with subtle actions rather than forceful presentations. In the very next verse, he tells us to not be like a stubborn horse or mule whose “mouth must be held in with bit and bridle.”

What is he saying? That he does not want to force us to go one way or another. God does not want us to have to learn his will through the school of hard knocks. He doesn’t want to have to drag us kicking and screaming to where he wants us to go. Rather, he wants us to respond to the direction of his eyes. If he glances to the right, we see it and move to the right. The same deal if he glances to the left.

The illustration suggests that we are looking at him so intently that we know exactly what he wants just by watching his face. We can apply the same principle to prayer. The idea is that we are so intensely focused on him and his will that we see his answers, whether those answers are ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘maybe’.

A Little Bit Closer

This post has been partially motivated by my own prayer life. I have been asking God about something specific and, perhaps incorrectly, assuming that he has not answered my prayer. I’ve just assumed his answer was either ‘maybe’ or ‘not right now’. But it dawned on me the other day that perhaps he has answered more definitively and I have just missed it.

This morning I prayed and asked the LORD to show me more clearly. If I have failed to see the answer, I want to know so that I can ask forgiveness; so that I can improve my spiritual vision, as it were. Perhaps the answer is right in front of me and I have not recognized it. Or perhaps I’ve been looking in the wrong places.

It comes down to this: I need to be a little bit closer to the LORD. I think we all do. The closer we get, the easier it is to be guided by his eye. And the more we are guided by his eye, the easier it is to recognize every answer to prayer.

Posted on: March 11, 2024