Pure Motives, Loving Community and Prayer

James 4:1-3

As it stands, taken by itself the line “you do not have, because you do not ask God” is one of the most encouraging thoughts for prayer in all of Scripture. The only thing standing between us and receiving what we need is our failure to ask. It’s taken right out of the Sermon on the Mount. Matt 7:7-8. And as far as it goes, it’s good advice; so ask that you may receive.

There’s more to it than just asking in prayer. Our motives in asking are important. “When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” James 4:3. The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer – “hollowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done” – are to bathe our requests in the holy water of God’s kingdom and will. Without them, our desires can easily be the kind of desires condemned by James; hedonistic and self-centered. In fact, the Greek word for “desires” in verse 1 (as well as for “pleasures” in verse 3) is the very word behind our English word hedonism. (What we usually pray to the Father is not that His will be done, but that He approves our will).

There is something else we must not miss about proper asking. We must pray in a loving community. A church of individuals driven by selfish desires will be a church whose members are at war with each other (verse 1-2). Right relationships in the church are one of the fundamentals of answered prayer. Jesus prayed that we would be one as he and his Father are one. John 17:20-23. How can we expect our prayers to be heard by the Father if we are, in our relationships with one another, working against the prayer his Son prayed for us? There is a one-to-one relationship between our motives in prayer and answered prayer, and between our relationships with one another and answered prayer.

My Prayer: “Thee will I love with all my power in all my works and thee alone, thee will I love still sacred fire fills my whole soul with pure desire”