fourteenth year. Day after day
that summer, I knelt at a crude
altar at The Salvation Army's
Camp Mihaska in Missouri, pray-
ing for her healing, begging God
not to let my mother die.
tember 29th that year.
God answered ... with a no. And
no matter how many testimonies
of answers to prayer we may
hear, no matter how many books
we read or how many preachers
we hear extolling the power of
prayer, it's the times when the
answer has been "no" that stick
in our minds--and in our throats.
prayers of even the greatest
saints were answered with a "no."
Moses was a man of faith, a man
of prayer. It was Moses who led
the children of Israel out of
bondage in Egypt to the very
threshold of Caanan, the land of
promise. Yet this man of God had
a prayer that was unanswered.
hbon, Moses assured Joshua that
God would give the people similar
victories over all the kingdoms
of the promised land. And then
he described the request he had
made of God: "Let me go over
and see the good land beyond
the Jordan--that fine hill country
and Lebanon. But because of you
the Lord was angry with me and
would not listen to me. `That is
enough,' the Lord said. `Do not
speak to me anymore about this
matter'" (Deut. 3:25-26).
--himself--had disobeyed God.
Moses paid the price for striking
the rock to obtain water for the
Hebrews, instead of speaking to
it, as the Lord had commanded
him. He missed the chance to
manifest the power of God in a
new way, as well as to show the
Hebrews that he trusted God
completely (Num. 20: 9-13). That
disobedience blocked the answer
to Moses' prayer. Many times,
when the answer is no, it is be-
cause the heart is not right.
from your God; your sins have
hidden His face from you, so that