"Not yet" doesn't mean "no"

I go into my room this afternoon to make my bed because I need to get it ready for Sydaleigh to come in and do her quiet time in here for the next hour.

Sydaleigh follows me in and starts asking me if she can play with some of my special barbies I keep in my closet. As she is asking me this I go to the side of the bed to pull up the covers and see puke covering my quilt, my duvet, soaked though to the comforter, and on some laundry that I hadn't put away yet.

I let out a sigh and say, "great" under my breath to which Sydaleigh heard.

"what is it Mommy?" she asks.

"Oh, Chief threw up on the bed, I need to take everything off and clean it."

She comes around to examine the mess and then goes back to her original request, asking to play with my barbies.

I tell her "yes, but you'll have to wait till I'm done."

After two minutes, maybe less, of not getting what she asks for, she asks again, "Mommy, can I play with your barbies?"

"Sydaleigh, what did I say?"

"you said 'yes'."

"That's right, but I also said you need to wait a minute. I need to do this first."

As I uttered that last sentence, literally, as I was hearing those words come out of my mouth, I was simultaneously thinking, 

"Hmmm, isn't that just what the Lord does too."


We go to God in prayer and ask Him for something we really want or need. And, if we don't get it right away, we assume God said "no" to our requests.

I had every intention of giving Sydaleigh those barbies to play with. Every intention. But because I didn't give them to her right away she assumed I was saying "no". It's the same with God. We assume He's saying "no", and a lot of times we assume wrong.

A lot of times He's saying, "not yet. I need to clean this up over here first. I need to strip this area of your life, or this life, and then I need to clean it up real good before I can give you what you want. But I have every intention of giving it to you. Just not yet."

I needed that today. I needed this gentle reminder that my requests don't fall on deaf ears. That God delights in answering my prayers. That my time is not His time. That when God answers "not yet" that doesn't mean "no". It just simply means "not yet".