Say Yes And Love It!

Learning To Say No Without Feeling Guilty

The Power Of Saying No

The Book Of No...250 Ways To Say It And Mean It And Stop People Pleasing Forever

These are just a sampling of the self help books that have been written in order to help people kick the bad habit of saying YES to everything. 

Now I have never read any of these books, but as I was considering the subject of this blog I just wanted to see what kind of titles are out there.  Each one seems to be written to teach people how to say NO so they can have more time to do what they want for themselves.

When I Googled to see what kind of titles I could find on SAYING YES I found more of the same just worded differently.  Such as

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No, to Take Control of Your Life

And that's the bottom line isn't it?  We want to be in control of our own lives and be free to do whatever we want.

Let's just make this easier on all of us shall we?  There is no need to read books on the subject.  If you and I can find out what is really important, set those priorities, and commit to let not get us off track it will be easy to know when to say YES and when to say NO.

The problem is most of us are not really honest about what our priorities are.

When I say us I mean Christians.

We say we believe in Jesus but we find so many other things that are more important than...

GOD?

So we say NO to everything He says is important.

We say NO to serving, NO to prayer, NO to giving, NO to obeying, NO to following...no, no, no, no

NO!!!

It seems to me we don't need to read books on how to say NO.  Our selfish nature has been doing that ever since we learned to speak.

When are we going to spend money on books that teach us to

DENY OURSELVES

and say YES to those things that benefit everyone else but us?

If our top priority was to seek and love God and to serve and love people then we would be saying NO to everything that took priority over that.

When Jesus called the twelve to come follow Him they said YES and dropped everything to do it.

When He invited the rich young ruler to sell all and be His follower the young man turned from Jesus with a sorrowful NO because He loved His worldly possessions more than God.

But what about enjoying what the world has to offer?  Is it a sin to have fun, enjoy a little luxury now and then?

Absolutely not...

That is not until the call comes to set it aside, leave it altogether, or give it away, and we look Jesus square in the face and say...

NO.

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  MK 8:34 ESV