How Can I Tell If God’s Answer To My Prayer Is “No” Or “Not Yet”?
- We may understand God’s answer to our prayer through circumstances.
- God communicates to the believer by His Spirit.
- We can understand God’s answer to our prayer by asking Him for discernment to sense His response, whether it’s “no” or “not yet.”
When you have a prayer that is yet unanswered, how do you discern whether God’s answer is no or not yet? My bias is to think not yet, when the answer perhaps could indeed be No. Can you help me out?
I would say there are two ways to measure that. One would be through practical circumstances. I don’t know what your situation is, but let’s say that you’re praying for someone’s salvation for a long time, and then that person dies. At that point, circumstantially, your prayer has been resolved. So it can be understood through circumstances.
A more common means would be to understand this by the discernment of the Spirit. The Bible talks about this idea. I think we can ask God, “God, are You saying no to me?” Paul prayed and asked that God would remove his thorn in the flesh. Having done so, he understood from the Lord that the answer to his prayer was “no.” Does it say specifically how he knew that? Not in detail, just that God communicated it to him.
God communicates to the believer by His Spirit. I’m a bit hesitant to say that God speaks to the believer, although I’m not totally against the language. When you start talking like that, people may think they should expect an audible voice. When God communicates to the believer, it may not be in an audible voice. It may be through a Spirit-guided intuition or thought. Some others will take this too far and claim that the Holy Spirit does not communicate to the believer at all, because we have His written word. However, I don’t see any warrant for that in Scripture. We may understand God’s answer to our prayer through circumstances. But I think that understanding would more commonly come through asking God, and God responding by giving you a sense of discernment one way or another, whether the answer is “no” or “not yet.”