One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in my adult life is how to say no to something good in order to say yes to something better.

It’s a concept psychologists have often tested on kids. You put a three-year-old in a room with a marshmallow, then explain to them that you’re going to leave the room for a moment and that they’re not to eat the marshmallow while you’re gone. If the marshmallow is still there when you return, the child will get to eat two marshmallows instead of just one.

I don’t know what the exact statistic is, but I would guess that few of those first marshmallows survived. It’s too tempting for the kids to say yes to something good when it’s right in front of their eyes like that, sweet and sugary and tantalizingly close.

But if they held out just a little longer, they’d get something even better.

So what does the marshmallow experiment look like for adults? Where in our lives might we be sacrificing better for good?

It’s easy to take this conversation down the sin route. We could come up with a thousand examples of situations where “good” and “better” are clearly laid out in front of us, including Adam and Eve’s original choice of what looked good (eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) rather than what was better (obeying their loving Creator and trusting that He had their good at heart).

Sometimes, though, it’s harder to differentiate between one marshmallow and two.

You’re asked to volunteer in the nursery at church on Thursday nights. It’s the one night a week you don’t already have a commitment, and your body could really use the rest. Plus, you haven’t been able to spend much quality time with your family lately, and those paint brushes that bring you so much joy when you use them are collecting dust on the shelf.

But a good Christian would say yes, right?

Until recently, that’s what I would have thought. If someone needed something from me, I couldn’t say no unless I had a “valid” reason to, and the only valid reason in my mind was a previous commitment. The good choice in this particular situation would be to deny my desire to stay home, and help out my church family. Otherwise I was being selfish.

Right?

On one hand, God does call His children to deny themselves and serve those around them with a cheerful heart. We have no better example of this than in Jesus.

But Jesus also knew when to say no. He could have remained in a single town and healed every person there, but He knew His true purpose was to preach good news to people far beyond one town’s borders (Mark 1:32–39). He listened to the Spirit’s leading, which sometimes meant forsaking the good yes for the better one.

Maybe God is calling you to say yes to that volunteer opportunity, to sacrifice your Thursday nights to give the weary moms in your neighborhood a couple hours of reprieve from childcare.

Or maybe He’s nudging you to say no to that opportunity — in spite of every people-pleasing bone in your body fighting against it — because there’s a second marshmallow you can’t see yet: a better yes.

Maybe it’s a yes to spending those evenings with your husband and kids, or to carving out time for that one friend in your life you’ve been meaning to catch up with. Maybe it’s a yes to picking up those paint brushes again and creating pieces of art for your loved ones or even just for yourself, an opportunity to mirror the creative image of your own Maker.

Maybe it’s simply a yes to spending that night curled up on the couch or in bed, reading a good book or watching your favorite show or catching up on your Bible reading plan, allowing your mind and body a chance to recover from the busyness of the days behind so you can be ready for the days ahead.

I don’t know what your better yes is. I often don’t know my own. I’ve had to learn to pause when someone asks something of me, to say “I don’t know yet” or “let me think about it” rather than yes right away, to check in with my spirit as well as the Spirit to determine if this is actually something God is leading me to do.

It could even be that He has someone else in mind for the job, and is patiently waiting for me to lay down my pride and step aside so He can ask them next.

Maybe my good is their better.

ABOUT THE BLOGGER:

Kati Lynn Davis grew up in Chester County. After a brief stay on the other side of Pennsylvania to earn a writing degree from the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to the area and got a job working for a local library. When she isn’t writing, Kati enjoys reading, drawing, watching movies (especially animated ones!), drinking bubble tea, hanging out with her family cat, and going for very slow runs. Kati is pretty sure she’s an Enneagram 4 but is constantly having an identity crisis over it, so thankfully she’s learning to root her sense of self in Jesus.