“I’ll need to pray about that” and other ways to say “No” in Christianese

Tony Reinke spurgeon

I love when someone asks us to help out at church and instead of saying, “no” we say, “Let me pray about it.” Really? I asked you to help me clean up tomorrow night after the youth group and you feel like that’s something you need to run passed the Savior of the world? He’s going to give you the thumbs up or thumbs down on whether or not you can help me stack chairs for seven minutes?

Sure, there are lots of situations that call for a “pause while I pray” response. But I think that 37% of the time when we say “let me pray about it” we are just saying that so we can delay the rejection and can later email the person a big no instead of doing it in person.

HT:SCL

9 thoughts on ““I’ll need to pray about that” and other ways to say “No” in Christianese”

  1. We were JUST talking about this in Sunday School this past Sunday. It’s so true! And how often is it a blatant lie? Are we really even going to bother to pray about it?

    And we must give an account of every idle word…

  3. I have a favorite cartoon,

    1-Oh no! There’s Bob, I told him I’d be praying for him…

    “Dear God, bless Bob. Amen”

    2…Hey Bob, I’ve been prayin’ for you!

  4. So…would it be okay to say, “Hey, you know what, let me think about that”?

    I think it would.

    Some people have a difficult time–especially me–saying “no.” And end up overwhelmed.

    Naturally, not every decision needs 4 weeks of prayer. But I agree with you…if we know were going to say “no,” have the courage to say it then.

  5. It’s true, I confess…

    Actually, my Pastor asked me to do something for him a couple weeks ago, and I plain and simply said no, causing him to do a double-take. The NO answer gets better reactions than the “I will pray about it”.

  6. I think we have two problems. One is saying that we need to pray about something rather than just being able to say no or yes. The second problem is saying that we will pray for someone as a casual conversation closer. One of the things I do when I say I am going to pray for someone is to pray for them right then. That keeps me from saying “I’ll pray for you” as a catch phrase.

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