Our Heavenly Father has demonstrated that He is able to answer all our prayers with a yes, immediately, abundantly, even overwhelmingly. He showed us that clearly when He gave the Israelites too many quail to eat, to even digest, in response to their insistence upon having meat. In that event He clearly showed us that He can blast us with yesses. He can bury us with yesses--but what He is trying to do is to train us to trust His restraints.
The Lord is hard at work, sweating, tinkering, engineering a very delicate story here, of which we know not all of the variables. If we are ungrateful, we could be like bulls in His china closet. If we're grumpy and impatient, we could be loudly stomping our foot, while He is in the very act of fine-tuning the radio dial for a frequency perfect for us. We simply cannot now see all the angels that pass before Him, amassed in His courtroom, that He is proving things to, for all time, via His dealings with His saints on earth (Job 4:15). Rest assured that He is routinely working with far more complexity than we are.
In the Psalms He hints that we could have our yes every time, if we insist upon a lesser story. "He sent the answer to their request but sent leanness to their soul" (Psalm 106:15). He, in effect, told several kings, Why did you blow it? I gave you everything and "if that were not enough I would have even given you more" (2 Samuel 12:8). King Hezekiah pleaded with Him for more years of life--an that was when he became the father of Ahab, one of the very worst kings of Israel (2 Chronicles 32:24). The yes is not always the issue. Sometimes--maybe often--the story is over here, not over there where we thought it was.
So: far from us being frustrated with God, He, at times, could be very frustrated with us, waiting for the hour when we, at last, acquire a posture of praise. Remember that He is "sure benevolence" with every fiber of his being. "He who did not spare his own son but freely gave him up for us all, how will He not also freely give us all things" (Romans 8:32). If He gave the greater gift, it is implied that He gave all the lesser gifts. He is now permanently, always, in pre-set "yes-mode." As the Word tells us, "All the promises of God are Yes in Christ" (Yeshua) (2 Corinthians 1:20). Therefore, if something different is happening, we can be pretty sure that He is willingly muzzled "for the time being" on purpose. Make no mistake, we are in the hands of a divinity of "all love/wisdom.” His restrains mean more riches. Being able to trust Him is the equivalent of soaring on eagles’ wings.
