How often do you spend time praying and thinking about the “yes” you give to other people? Sometimes we give a yes before we have prayed about it and taken the time to actually prepare for our yes. I have always been a people pleaser. Part of it is my personality and part of it is related to my upbringing. But overall, I probably give far too many yeses when I should really give a kind no…. or a gentle not today. Because I often do not take the time to pray about my yes, I actually lose energy and sometimes motivation once I am involved in my yes commitment. I know some of you ladies relate. Recently God has been challenging me to really think about the yeses I give in life. Relationally, and spiritually, our yes is probably our most valuable possession. We either say yes or no to friendship or relationship. We live with the consequences if our yes does not match up to God’s will. We say yes or no to God and a relationship with him. We also eternally live with the consequences if we choose a no instead of a yes. Almost always our yes takes us away from other really good opportunities. We may have to say no to many other things because we said yes initially to something else. That is why it is so critical to take the time to pray for God’s wisdom and to see his truth in scripture. We need time to prepare. When Jesus was 30 years old, he began his public ministry. Almost immediately, he was tested in the wilderness. It was through this testing, that he was preparing for his biggest yes, his eventual sacrifice to restore our relationship with him. Many times during his ministry he separated himself from the people to connect back to his heavenly Father. To rest and to seek counsel. I need to do more of this. While saying yes can open the opportunity for blessing in our lives, it can open the door for destruction if it’s used in the wrong situation. In fact, in certain situations our best “yes”, can actually be a, “no”. So my questions ladies is why is it so difficult to shut down the things that are asking for our attention when they have no right to, and how can we learn to say “no” at the right moments and in the right situations.” I feel that it is through prayer and God’s word, that we will know when to give a no so we can utilize our yes in the most impactful way for God. My prayer is you learn to use no to make a difference in your life and in our world.
