Daily Bible Verse for Today 19th December 2022
Daily Bible Verse for Today 19th December 2022, Monday Bible Reading – When God Says “No” (Psalm 84:11)
By: Anne Peterson
Today’s Bible Verse – For the Lord God is a sun and shield, the Lord gives grace and glory; no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. – Psalm 84:11
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God meets our needs. We know this because He calls himself Jehovah Jireh, which means The Lord Will Provide. Paul tells us in Scripture God will supply all our needs (Philippians 4:19). But can we talk about something we all find difficult? It’s those times when God says no to us. I’ve had times like that in my life, and I’m sure you have as well.
I had been staying with my brother and his wife, helping them with their brand new son, a beautiful baby boy. I held him, rocked him and loved him at first sight, their first child. After about six days I headed back home to my family, about an hour away. The phone rang.
“Anne, pray! Joseph is all blue. I called 911.”
I paced back and forth, saying over and over, “Not the baby, Lord.”
One hour later I got another call, “He’s gone. They said it was crib death.”
I wrestled with this one for a long time. They never had another child.
Maybe you’ve had God tell you no, even when you pleaded with Him. I confess, I was angry for a long time. But God understood my struggle. It wasn’t the first person we lost, nor would it be the last. In time, I realized I needed to trust God based on who He was, not how many of my prayers He answered. I am a finite being, but God is infinite. His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). This was a hard concept for me to grasp, but eventually I realized that God and I are different, and we don’t think alike.
God knows the future, we don’t. He knows the plans He has for us and those plans are to prosper us, not to harm us (Jeremiah 29:11). The definition of harm is physical injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted.”
When God says no, He’s not trying to harm us. Does it hurt? Yes. But sickness and death are results of living in this fallen world. One day there will be no more sickness, no more death. But that is when we get to heaven. When God tells us no, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t love us. As parents, we’ve had to tell our children, no, haven’t we? And our intent was not to hurt them, but instead we’ve done it out of love. God is our Heavenly Father. Our walk with God requires faith, just like when we received Christ (Colossians 2:6).
Psalm 84:11 says, “no good thing will He withhold.” How can we understand this when we know the things we’ve been asking for are good? We must remember that we don’t know what God’s purposes are for our individual lives, only God knows.
