When I was a kid, I loved playing with a switch. ( Don’t tell my mom; she still doesn’t know) I’d flip it between on and off, again and again. I was fascinated by the space in between. I wanted to find the exact spot where one side ended and the other began. Sometimes, if you eased it just right, the lights would flicker before they went out completely.

I think we do the same thing with God. We read the moments in scripture and study his answers like a switch. Yes or no. Open door or closed door. Answered prayer or silence. We even look for the flicker, the sign that maybe he’s leaning one way or the other. But it’s not the same. It’s not even close.

Look at these two moments in Scripture to see that God keeps stepping outside the box options we hand him.

“Neither”

Joshua is on the edge of Jericho, probably running battle plans in his head, when he sees a man with a drawn sword. He asks the most natural question a soldier could ask: “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?”

The answer is “No.”

Not “yes, I’m with you,” and not “I’m with them.” Just “No, but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.”

The question presupposed God is someone to be recruited, a resource for their campaign. The commander corrects the premise. He’s not joining Joshua’s side; Joshua is joining his. Notice what Joshua does next. He doesn’t negotiate or ask for strategy. He falls on his face and takes off his sandals. He comes to the understanding that the real question was never “Are you with us?” It was “Are we with you?”

“My Grace Is Sufficient”

Now fast-forward to Paul. He has a thorn, something irritating, persistent, that he calls a messenger of Satan to torment him. He prays about it three times, and his prayer is basically a switch for God: take it away.

God doesn’t say yes. But he doesn’t simply say no, either. He redirects: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

A skeptic might say that’s just a “no” with nicer wording. I’d put it differently.

God said no to the request and yes to the need underneath it. Paul was asking for relief. God was offering presence. Paul wanted the pain removed, and God wanted him to know where power actually lives.

By the end of the passage, Paul has stopped treating the thorn as a problem to solve and started treating it as the place where Christ shows up. “When I am weak, then I am strong” isn’t a slogan. It’s what a man says after discovering a third option he never knew existed.

The Frame Is Too Small

In Joshua, the question was too small.

In Paul, the options were too small.

In both, God doesn’t pick a door we offered. He opens a different one.

I think that’s worth sitting with, because most of us pray and plan like switch-flippers. We ask God to bless our side, or we conclude that unanswered prayer means he said no, or that a closed door means he’s absent. We see one possibility or two. God sees many.

None of this means God is vague or evasive. It means he’s bigger than our categories. When you find yourself stuck between two options, both unsatisfying, ask a different question: What is God doing that I haven’t thought to ask for?

Maybe the answer to your “Are you for us or against us?” is “Neither. I’m in charge. Take off your sandals.”

Maybe the answer to your “Take it away” is “No. But I’m staying.”

And maybe that turns out to be the better answer.

Scripture: Joshua 5:13–15; 2 Corinthians 12:7–10