When God Says "No".
I overheard an atheist/agnostic use what he deemed to be a very logical argument against the existence of a loving God. His logic went like this. If God is a loving God, and He answers prayer, sometimes miraculously healing people of incurable diseases, then He must hate amputees; because I have never met nor heard of God restoring an amputee's lost limb. But, since God is supposed to love everyone, then the cases of miraculous healing must simply be spontaneous healing by the bodies own repair/defense systems or simply very improbable coincidences.

Nice, neat, tidy little argument; except it just does not really work.

God not only loves us as individuals, He also loves us as a member of mankind and a part of His overall creation. A loving parent does not always do what a loved offspring asks them to do.
First, what an offspring asks for may be beneficial only to the child, but not to the family or to mankind as a whole. If the consequences of dangerous activity - drunken driving, reckless play with sharp objects, power tools, etc could be alleviated simply by fervent, repentent prayer, then many more people would engage in reckless activities. Pain and suffering serve a very useful purpose in life - they tell when something is wrong.

Of course God does not want us to suffer, and His decisions and His directions when followed will alleviate a great deal of suffering and sickness. Refraining from illicit sex will result in virtually no unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, etc. Combine that with refraining from illicit drugs, and there would be no AIDS epidemic, and far less cirme.

The reality is that much of the suffering that occurs in the world is brought on by behavior that is contraindicated by God's word, or by counter examples, or just plain minimal wisdom, and we see that it is far wiser to allow some of this suffering to take place to assure that people who want to do God's will will not be tempted to risk the consequences of disobedience.

You may opine that it is not fair that an individual innocently suffer for the sake of someone else's misdeed or misjudgment; and you are right. That is not fair. But that is just exactly what God did himself, taking on the form of humankind, living a flawless life, and then being tortured and dying for each of our misdeeds -so that we need not suffer for eternity.

When God says "no", He is not being unkind, nor is He imposing an unbearable burden. He always provides a means to bear that burden with joy if we seek it out. Sometimes, it may be years before we see the wisdom or the joy in His answers; and if we turn away from Him, we may never see that wisdom. But He is faithful, and in His word He promises that if we seek, we will find, and if we knock at His door, it will be opened to us.

The right sad thing is that there is joy available in prolonged suffering, even when God says "No".