Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Monday Meditations. To start the week off right,

the phrase we're going to be meditating on is when God says no. And I know that is a very hard

thing to swallow and grasp because everything happens in his time, not ours, even though

sometimes we really, really want it on our time.

It's God's timing.

And I can't help but think of the Bible verse in Mark chapter 10 verses 35 where it says,

And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him,

Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. And honestly, they wanted what

many of us still want, a shortcut to victory, a crown without a cross, and answers without

waiting, and authority without obedience. But that is just not how it works. James and John, full of youthful zeal and

blind ambition, approached Christ with a demand. Not a prayer, a demand. We want you to do for us

whatever we ask of you."

And if you think about it, that's a stunning sentence.

Audacious, very immature, but also all too familiar.

They were walking with the Lord towards Jerusalem and he had just spoken the words of suffering

and betrayal, mocking, scourging, spitting, death. Yet they obviously had

not heard him. Or maybe they did but chose not to listen because they had their own dreams,

their own visions of glory, and in their own mind, Jesus wasn't fulfilling them quickly enough.

But how often are we like these brothers, where we cloak our demands in pious language and we say,

Thy will be done? But internally we whisper in our hearts, only if it looks like mine.

And when God does not do what we want, we are so tempted to interrupt it as

silence or rejection or even injustice. But perhaps, perhaps, it is a form of mercy. Perhaps it is

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