“I prayed about it . . . and God said no.”
Have you ever heard anyone say this?
I have.
Plenty of times.
So many times actually, that it sort of stuck with me.
It made me wonder if “God said no” was just a way to tidy up the inner conflict a person must feel when they pray for something and things don’t seem to turn out the way they thought they should.
“God said no.”
Man’s wise words.
Or are they?
I don’t believe so, and I’m going to tell you why.
God Doesn’t Say No to Your Prayers
“That your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” —1 Corinthians 2:5
The Wisdom of Man
First off, I’m not at all interested in the wisdom of man, and I hope you’re not either.
For me, the Word of God is always the final authority, so I started to study out the topic of “unanswered prayer” or “God saying no.”
Not for a month. Not for a year.
I’ve studied out the concept of God saying no on and off for almost 25 years.
I’m going to lay out what I’ve discovered, but please don’t take my word for it.
I’m just a person.
Read what I’ve discovered and then search the Scriptures for yourself.
The Word of God is truth and every teaching should be backed up by Scripture.
When we add to what God’s Word says, we will always end up on side roads that lead to nowhere.
This includes personal experience theories.
What’s a personal experience theory?
Personal Experience Theories
We will look at personal experience theories and all their traps in another article, but for now, I can explain them as incorrect conclusion drawn from personal experiences that are deeply tied to emotions.
Example: A 25 year old person prays and believes for healing from a diagnosis of cancer. Maybe they do the best they can to believe and maybe they pray every day. After two years their condition becomes much worse. Finally, they pass away from the cancer and during the eulogy the pastor mentions that God took this person home.
Sounds pretty normal; maybe even slightly familiar.
Many of us have been in situations where there are fragile emotions involved. Someone has passed away. People are hurting. Isn’t it ok to say that this believer received the ultimate healing? Isn’t it ok to say sometimes God knows better and He simply says no to our prayers?
For me; no.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to cause trouble at someone’s funeral, but if it’s my own family, I’m not going to bring confusion by offering a sympathetic, “God needed another angel” or a “sometimes God says no.”
Doing this may seem like the right way to handle a delicate situation, but in the long run it only lends itself to further confusion the next time we pray for something.
What do we pray for? How do we pray?
Do we just say, “God, if it’s your will, please heal this person?”
I mean, who would dare pray, “I believe according to Your Word that healing belongs to me and I speak to every cancer cell and tell it to manifest healing in Jesus name!”
What about Uncle Jake who believed and prayed for healing from cancer?
It didn’t work for him, right?
That’s the trouble with personal experience theories.
Instead of understanding that maybe Uncle Jake’s life was stolen from him or maybe he wasn’t really sure how or what to believe for, we would rather put it all on God.
God took him.
Uncle Jake prayed but God said no.
Emotionally charged situations have a way of clouding our thinking.
So, that’s what a personal experience theory is, and if you want to truly see the promises of God come to pass in your own life and learn how to walk free from sickness, lack, depression, anxiety, confusion, addiction and everything else Jesus paid for on the cross, you’re going to have to divorce yourself from Uncle Jake.
You’re going to have to allow your mind to be renewed by ONLY the Word of God.
Once we come to terms with the fact that we often don’t receive what is rightfully ours because of our own lack of understanding, we are in a good position to learn that God actually doesn’t say no to our prayers.
As long as our prayers are based on His promises, He actually can’t.
Yes, that’s right, I said it.
Our sovereign God actually can’t say no to our prayers because He chose to be bound by His Word.
God created a covenant with us (with His Word) and He cannot break it.
“He upholds the universe by the word of his power.” —Hebrews 1:3
The Promises of God Are Yes and Amen
So, let’s talk about the promises of God.
His promises toward us are absolutes. If you know me personally, you are well aware that I always revert back to the promises.
I talk about “finding a promise for every problem and declaring it over your life.”
Why do I do this? Because the Word of God tells us that the promises of God are ALWAYS yes and amen.
Breaking it down even further, this means; if you have a situation, need or crisis in your life and you are praying according to God’s promises,
God doesn’t say no.
God doesn’t say no I won’t heal you.
God doesn’t say no I won’t deliver you.
God doesn’t say no I won’t protect you.
God doesn’t say no I won’t provide for you.
God is always in agreement with His promises.
They are not wishy-washy. They are not “sometimes yes and sometimes no.”
They are always yes.
This is why we can pray with confidence when we take hold of His promise.
“For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you was not Yes and No, but in Him was (only) Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.”
—2 Corinthians 1:19-20 NKJV
What Identifies a Promise of God?
Once we understand that God’s promises are always Yes through Jesus, we have a baseline of thought. With that one bit of understanding, we have some light shed on our prayer life.
Are we praying according to the promises?
In order to answer that we have to know what a promise is.
The Greek word for promise in 2 Corinthians 1:20 is epaggelma, which is defined as a very specific kind of promise. It is a promise that is made spontaneously or voluntarily (according to Strong’s Greek Concordance) as opposed to a promise that is made in response to a petition.
Ahhhh. Another clue.
When we pray according to the promise, it means we are coming into agreement with something that has already been established and already available to us.
When we pray, we are not trying to petition God to change His mind. That isn’t possible.
His Word and His promises are forever settled through the finished work of Jesus on the cross.
Here’s some Scripture to back that up:
“I will not violate My covenant or alter the Word that went forth from My lips.” — Psalm 89:34 NKJV
“God cannot break His Word; and because His Word cannot change, the promise is likewise unchangeable. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline.” —Hebrews 6:18-19a The Message Bible
“Forever, Oh Lord, Your Word is settled in heaven.” —Psalm 119:89 NKJV
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” —James 1:17 NKJV
So, if we know the promises are forever settled and are unchanging, and we know the promises are already established and available to us, what exactly are “the promises?”
Is there a list somewhere?
I want to know what these promises are, because if I’m certain what’s available to me, then I can have confidence and faith when I pray. . . right?
I mean, just knowing that I’m not waiting for God to say yes or no is enough to get me excited, so let’s look at the promises and find out what they are according to Scripture.
Promises Available to the Believer
According to the ATS Bible Dictionary, the promises of God are His declarations to us in the Scriptures. Because Jesus is the fulfillment of every promise, we have assurance that when we find a promise that pertains to our situation, we have a right to claim that promise as our own.
This is the act of faith.
We will get into the topic of faith in other articles, but faith is defined in the Word as “the substance of things hoped for.” —Hebrews 11:1
By the way, the word “hope” in the Bible doesn’t mean the kind of hope we think about in our modern English language. Our word “hope” is often connected to a watered down wish without any real substance;
“I hope I’m chosen for the job.”
“I hope I feel better.”
“I hope I don’t get this flu that’s going around.”
Ok, that’s great, but your hope is based on what? If it’s not based on your knowledge of the promise that’s already available to you, then you’re not pulling on anything of substance. You’re just wishing.
Bible kind of hope is different.
The Greek word for hope is elpizo and it actually means “an active expectation of fulfillment.”
As believers in Jesus and His finished work on the cross, we can hook our hope to a promise that we find in the Word and that promise is the same as having a legal document.
But isn’t it kind of bold to expect God to fulfill something for us?
Shouldn’t we have a little bit more humility?
Actually, no.
To be truly humble is to take God at His Word regardless of what a situation looks like or what other people would think the reasonable outcome would be. To be humble is to take God’s Word as truth and stand against the battle in our mind or the external pressure that tells us we are thinking crazy by believing something we cannot yet see.
Hebrews 4:15 tells us to “come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy in time of need.”
Brief recap:
God has made promises to us in His Word.
Every single thing that might disqualify us from the promise has been fulfilled through Jesus.
If we are believers in Jesus, we have access to everything salvation has made available to us.
Salvation itself is a promise. The word salvation is the Greek word sozo and it literally means to buy back, to redeem, to make whole, and to have nothing missing, nothing lacking and nothing broken in your life!
That’s the good news of the Gospel!
Need healing? Jesus paid for it.
Need deliverance? Jesus paid for it.
Need financial help? Jesus paid for it.
Need clarity, wisdom, peace, security or joy? Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Paid. Paid. Paid.
The Good News of the Gospel is the covenant Jesus has with us.
So, if you knew that everything you would ever need was already bought and paid for, how would that affect the way you pray?
I’m glad you asked, because here is where it gets good, and this is the part where people usually walk away saying, “Well, I guess God said no.”
Not true!
You just didn’t know quite how to access it.
The promises are always Yes and Amen, remember?
If It’s Already Yours – How Do You Access It?
What do you need in your life right now?
What is the crisis or lack that’s keeping you up at night?
Do you need healing? Finances? Freedom from addiction? Freedom from fear?
The truth is, you don’t need the Lord to DO anything for you. He’s ALREADY DONE His part. Whatever you need already belongs to you.
You might be thinking, “but I have a written diagnosis to prove I don’t have healing,” or maybe it’s a foreclosure statement reminding you of your lack of provision. Regardless of the facts; regardless of the evidence, the truth is that God has already provided whatever you need.
2 Peter 1:3 NKJV tells us this:
“His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,”
Wait; what did that say?
. . . through the knowledge of Him.
. . . through the knowledge of Him.
We have been given all things pertaining to life through the knowledge of Him.
So, the first thing we are lacking is not finances or health; it’s actually knowledge.
Knowledge of what?
Knowledge of what belongs to us, or knowledge of the promise.
Many Christians believe that God CAN do anything, but just hasn’t done it for them. They live in a constant state of trying to get God to do something. They are begging God to move on their behalf. They are essentially trying to coax God to see them and hear their prayer. But remember way back at the beginning of this article we learned that His Word (and His promises) were already settled in heaven.
Jesus paid the price.
After His work on the cross, Jesus said, “It is finished.” —John 19:30
Everything that is ever going to be done has already been done.
Jesus’ blood was enough.
It is the payment for all we will ever need.
The Bible tells us this is true:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who HAS blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” —Ephesians 1:3 NKJV
This says He “has blessed us with all spiritual blessings,” meaning it’s already done.
This is a past tense statement.
You already have all spiritual blessings.
So, asking God or waiting on Him to bless you is counterproductive, yet many of us start from that position.
If they’re sick, instead of starting from “Thank You God that Your Word tells me that I was healed” (1 Pet. 2:24) they’ll take the doctor’s report or the pain in their bodies and say, “I’m sick. God, will You heal me?”
They start moving toward victory instead of coming from victory!
This is the difference maker when it comes to accessing God’s promises.
First, you have to know what they are.
Second, you have to pray in a way that is in line with this truth!
There is an interesting Scriptural connection to this type of prayer that I haven’t seen many people talk about.
In the book of Hebrews, the Bible discusses “trampling the Son of God underfoot and counting what He did on the cross as a common thing.”
That in itself sounds horrible, and I never really understood what it meant.
I mean, how could I, as a believer in Christ, take the precious blood of Jesus and mentally discard it in such a way that it would be looked at as “trampling it underfoot?”
If we read that whole section of Scripture and connect it to what we are discussing here, I think you will get the picture:
“Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died. Of how much worse do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” —Hebrews 10:28-29 NKJV
Woah. That sounds terrible.
But when you think about the way you might be praying, it makes sense.
God sent Jesus to pay for all of our healing, all of our deliverance, all of our sickness, all of our lack, and to restore us into right relationship with God.
Jesus was crucified and died in our place so we can live, just by believing He did what He said He did.
The Bible tells us these things are ours and a heavy price was paid.
So, when we pray and say, “God please heal me” we are essentially ignoring everything Jesus died to give us and we are asking God to “do something else.”
That’s not possible.
And that’s where we often get the idea that God said no…but He didn’t.
God doesn’t say no because it’s a done deal.
Healing has been provided.
Abundance has been provided.
Deliverance has been provided.
Joy, freedom, mental clarity, wisdom, and peace have been provided.
It is our job to acknowledge what’s been made available to us and receive these things for ourselves.
That verse of Hebrews goes on to say,
“So do not throw away your confidence. It holds a great reward. You need to persevere so that after you have done the will of God (the will of God is to believe), you will receive what He has promised. . . My righteous one will live by faith; and if he shrinks back, I will take no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” —Hebrews 10:35-39
Although I never understood this Scripture fully, I believe it has a place here.
Not only are we ABLE to pray and receive the promises by laying hold of them through faith, but we are REQUIRED to.
The just (that’s us) shall live by faith.
Praying From Victory Instead of Begging God
So, to round all this up, we should be able to clearly see through the Scriptures that everything we need has been made available through the finished work of Jesus on the cross.
We no longer have to come to God and ask Him for something that already belongs to us.
Therefore, God doesn’t say no to our prayers.
We know this because before we pray for something, we are going to look for our legal right to it in the Word. We are going to take our situation and apply a promise to it.
As we are praying the promise, we have assurance that our answer is always Yes and Amen, because that’s all Jesus is! He is Yes and Amen!
When you are praying for healing for your body, for example, find your Scriptures that tell you that Jesus has already paid for all sickness and all diseases. Sickness is your enemy and it is part of the curse. It’s not here to teach you something. It’s an unwelcome intruder.
Now, based on the Scriptures you have found, pray like this:
“I thank You God that You said in Your Word that You are the God that heals me.
Your name is Jehovah Rapha, which means, my healer. You said in Your Word that You sent Your Son Jesus to pay the price for all sickness and diseases and by His stripes we have been healed. I thank You and I believe that I receive this healing in my body right now. I speak to the sickness (pain, cancer, or other diagnosis) trying to invade my body and I tell it to go, in Jesus’ name. I speak to every cell and tell each one to line up with the Word of God and manifest healing. I am actively expecting and believing by faith that I am seeing the results of Your Word because Your Word cannot return void. Your promises cannot be broken. You cannot lie.
Thank You for this healing. I believe it. I receive it, in Jesus name, amen!”
Isn’t that a much better and more confident way to pray?
You are praying from victory! You are praying from the position that healing is already yours, and it is!
When we pray, “Oh please God heal me” we are essentially praying with no hope. God is not going to do something that He has already done. Jesus is not going back to the cross to pay the price for your healing again. It is finished! It is already yours!
When you find the promise that is connected to your situation and you choose to receive what is already yours by faith, God has already said yes!
“For the Scripture says, Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” —Romans 10:11
