When the answer is no.

One of the greatest conundrums of the Christian faith is wanting to do something for God, or wanting something (or someone) in your life, and God says "No." We think of God, sometimes, in light of our favorite attributes. He is Love. He is good. He wants to give us good things. And all of these things are ture, but like any good father He sometimes tells us no to things. He has reasons for that. One of them is that He is God and we are not. And either He is in charge or He's not. (Let me help you discern this simple truth, so you might avoid some hard and unnecessarily painful things by accepting this simple truth up front: He IS very much in charge and you're not!) In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul wanted to go lots of places. He wanted to go to Spain. He wanted to go to Asia, and the Holy Spirit told him no. Paul documents thes things in his Epistles to the New Testament churches. The no is a necessary part of being a Christian. I'm having that kind of a week myself. There is something out there that might me offered to me, something I'd, under normal circumstances, probably want. It's a good thing. It's not the best thing for me though, because through God's Providence, He's kind of showing me what would happen if I said yes to the good thing instead of staying the course for the thing He has for me. It's enough of a thing, that God forewarned me about it. I've had a lot of time this week to prepare to say no shoud the opportunity actually arise. I've said it a number of times: The enemy of best isn't bad, necessarily. The enemy of best is often, good. In whatever case, though, sometimes God's answer is no. And sometimes, we just need to take No for an answer.