Sermon Illustrations

You’ve been up at 2 AM, scrolling, adding things to a cart you don’t need with money you don’t have for a version of yourself that doesn’t exist. And the next morning you wake up and think, “What was that?”

That was your desires running the show while your judgment was asleep. And that’s not just a shopping problem. That’s a worship problem. Because the same impulse that fills a cart at 2 AM is the same impulse that fills a prayer with “give me, give me, give me.”

It’s so easy to treat Amazon and God the same way: place the order, expect the delivery, get irritated when it doesn’t arrive on time.

James speaks directly to this in chapter 4. He says some people weren’t praying at all, they were just fighting to get what they wanted. And others were praying, but asking wrongly, only to spend it on their own desires. Some of us have been frustrated that God didn’t answer a prayer, and what we didn’t realize is that God was refusing to hand more ammunition to the thing at war in our hearts. That’s not neglect. That’s love. Thank God He didn’t give me what I wanted, if what I wanted was fighting for the throne in my heart.

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