God-Incidence: When God Says No

I'm a big believer in prayer.  No matter how you look at it, there are really only three answers to prayer:  yes, no, or wait.

At various times, I have had all three of those answers.  Today, I want to talk about a time when God said no.

First, let me give you a little background to my story.  Auto insurance providers do not love my family.  Let's just say we've had more than our share of fender benders ... okay, totaled cars.  At one time, we had three children plus my hubby and I on our policy.  Believe me, we were paying the big bucks!

One day, during the time after our flood, we had stayed late working on the house.  Afterwards, my hubby was on his way to my aunt's home where we were living at the time, when he hit a deer.

We all prayed that the insurance company would not total out his van because we needed it so badly with all the remodeling we were doing.  Sure enough, the insurance company did NOT total the van.

Fast forward a few months later.  I was coming home from a board meeting one night when a deer came out of nowhere and connected with the bumper of my van.  I was just sick!  I love my van!  I mean, I really love it.  I do not want to try to find some comparable van.  I want this one.

I asked all my friends and family to please pray that God would keep the insurance company from totaling it.  I put it on the prayer list at church.  I prayed daily, no, more like hourly that God would grant my request.

And yet, God said no.  My van was considered a total loss by the insurance company. I thought, "This is no fair, we prayed for Jim's van to be not totaled and it wasn't.  Why is mine totaled?"

The man who does our body work was sure he could fix it, so we ended up buying our own van back from the insurance company. (Does that make sense to anybody?) We took the money that the insurance company settled with us and had the van fixed.  When all was said and done, we had almost $1,000 profit!

God knew something we didn't know!  Later on, we needed some work done on both our vehicles and the profit from fixing the van paid for it.

This is just another thing that proves what I already know:  don't worry, God's got it all under control.

"For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him" 2 Chronicles 16:9

It's like He is looking for someone to bless. 

I'm jumping up and down, saying, "Pick me!  Pick Me!"


Would you like to read more stories of God showing up in someone's life?  Then go to Jennifer's blog, Getting Down With Jesus to read "God Bumps and  God-Incidences."