Introduction:
Have you ever thought about how much of what we ask God for in our prayers is very self-centered?
For example, I heard about a college student who always concluded her prayers with this simple petition: “God, I’m not asking for myself, but please send my mother a son-in-law.”
Or then there was the heavy snowstorm that closed the schools in one town. When the children returned to school a few days later, one teacher asked her students whether they had used the time away from school constructively. One little girl said, “I sure did, teacher. I just prayed for more snow.”
And I have to confess to having done that a time or two myself. But listen to what James said to us -- to you and to me, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your own pleasures.” (James 4:3)
I don’t remember ever having preached on this specific verse before. And in preparing this lesson, I wonder if the reason is because what James says makes me a little uncomfortable. You see, I want to confess something to you this morning, that I struggle often with the sin of worldliness. I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth. Now before you leave with a totally wrong impression and the rumor begins circulating that Alan confessed to a secret life of carousing, drunkenness, and immorality, let me both deny that emphatically and give you a correct definition of the word "worldly." The New Collegiate Dictionary says that “worldly” means, “of, relating to, or devoted to this world and its pursuits rather than to religion or spiritual affairs.”
And so, with genuine regret, I confess that I all too often am too devoted to this world and its pursuits. And all too often, I make important decisions with too much of this world and too little of that world in mind, with too much dictated to me by my surrounding culture and too little defined by my Christian commitment. Let me ask you, do you think you ever have that problem?
One of the worst things about having a worldly attitude is the effect it has on our prayer lives. Now there are a number of things that can hinder our prayers. Unresolved sin, for example, can affect our prayers. David said in Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.” Jesus said a refusal to forgive other people who have sinned against us can hinder our prayers. Peter says in I Peter 3:7 if you husbands aren’t treating your wives properly, it can hinder your prayers. In Luke 11, Jesus tells a parable on the importance of persistence in prayer. There may be some prayers that aren’t answered because we’re not persistent enough. But this morning, I want to focus on the reason that James gives to us in James 4:3.
I. Contradictory World-Views
The Book of James is one my favorite New Testament books because just about every line in it is practical advice I need to hear over and over. The importance of not just hearing God’s Word -- the need to do it, the importance of taking care of those who are in need, the importance of controlling the tongue, the importance of not being prejudiced -- so many practical instructions.
And the problem with James is not that it’s difficult to understand — as is the case with such books as Revelation, Hebrews, or Romans. No, the problem with James is that I understand it all too well; I know exactly what he’s telling me to do; I just have trouble putting it into practice. And one of the most significant parts of James is found at the end of the third chapter. Beginning in verse 13, James writes:
“Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” (James 3:13-17)
James says there are two very different kinds of wisdom — I think it’s just as accurate to say that there are two very different world-views — that offer themselves to us every day. One is held up and admired by a world that is in opposition to God. It defines success in terms of money and power, it defines beauty in terms of sex appeal, and it promotes selfishness and the willingness to do anything that is necessary to get what it wants.
The other wisdom, the other world-view, comes from heaven. It’s more interested in purity than pleasure, it puts peace above ambition, and it is willing to forfeit its rights and turn the other cheek rather than push for having its own way.
When I confessed my vulnerability to worldliness, it was this biblical definition I had in mind. I am human enough to be tempted to judge our success as a church by numbers -- by attendance figures and contribution figures. I sometimes forget that we are "successful" when we are growing in our single-minded determination to obey and honor our Lord Jesus Christ. I’m sinful enough to be tempted to want you to like my sermons better than those of any other preacher. I sometimes fail to have the more spiritual attitude which is pleased that someone else can do something better than I can.
I suspect it’s something we all struggle with in our lives at school, at work, and in our families. Is it more important to be "cool" or to be holy, to be popular or to be righteous? Is it more important to make money or to do what’s right, to get ahead or to treat people fairly and with respect? Is it more important to make the right friends or to be the right kind of friend, to give your children everything they want or to give them what they really need? These are choices that a lot of people in the world regard as foolish to even consider. But anyone who takes God seriously in our society knows that they represent very basic choices between competing world-views, the difference between having the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God.
Those of us who are Christians are subjected daily to the standards of the world. The prevailing norms in music and entertainment, the ethics in the workplace (or lack thereof) and the family “values” held dear by so many in our society simply run counter to the interests of the kingdom of God. Thus it follows that the only way for Christians to live a life pleasing to God is in deliberate opposition to the world-view that James labeled as "earthly, sensual, [and] demonic." And if that language sounds a bit too harsh to my ears, it’s because that I have been influenced by the world, and far too often I have compromised heavenly values for the sake of worldly gain.
II. Deliverance Through Prayer
The best way for us to stay focused on heavenly wisdom is prayer. James has already said as much back in the opening lines of his letter: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5). Which type of wisdom do you suppose God will give in response to prayer? The answer is obvious -- it’s heavenly wisdom.
The fact remains, though, that many of us aren’t as prayerful as we should be. And sometimes we blame it on God! We say we don’t pray because our prayers don’t do anything. God doesn’t hear us and give us the things we’ve asked for. And if our prayers aren’t getting us anywhere, there’s no point to praying.
In fact, some of James’ readers may well have said, "James, you’re telling me to pray but I already pray. I pray every day, and God doesn’t answer me. I have been praying for a new tunic for a month now, and I still don’t have one. The guy down the street has a new tunic, and I want one too, so I have been praying for one, but God hasn’t given it to me."
My guess is that you have had a similar complaint of God at some point in your own life. Think about it for a minute. Have you ever prayed for something really hard and never gotten it? You prayed and you prayed and prayed, but God just didn’t provide it for you. And as a result, maybe you complained to God about it, maybe you complained to others about how God wasn’t answering your prayer. Or maybe, just maybe you didn’t say anything; you just quit praying. Be honest now -- have you ever done that?
Is it possible that when we do pray, we’re praying for the wrong things or with a wrong spirit? Could it even be the case that we are sometimes worldly in our prayers — praying for things that would make us comfortable and improve our lot here in this world, in this lifetime rather than praying with a heaven-view for the things that we know God wants? Billy Graham once wrote: “Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask.” And so, based on what James has to say, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been praying for the right things.
Let’s look at this whole passage here in James 4:
"Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, ‘The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously’? But He gives more grace.” (James 4:1-6a)
I want you to listen carefully to these verses as I read them again from a newer translation called “The Message”. Normally, I don’t care for the paraphrases, but I do think this one brings out some interesting thoughts from the text:
“Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it. You wouldn’t think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not? Because you know you’d be asking for what you have no right to. You’re spoiled children, each wanting your own way. You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And do you suppose God doesn’t care? The proverb has it that ‘he’s a fiercely jealous lover.’ And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you’ll find.” (James 4:1-6a, The Message).
You see, the Bible makes it clear that God will always give his children what they request within his will — or something far better than we even thought to request.
God makes so much available to us. In Ephesians 3:16, Paul is praying for the Ephesians and prays, “that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory”. God answers our prayers and blesses us according to his riches. Let me give an example to show you what Paul is saying. If you were go up to Bill Gates and tell him you needed some help and he took a $10 bill out of his pocket and handed it to you, that would be nice, but it wouldn’t be “according to his riches”. But if he took out his checkbook and wrote you a check for $50,000, even though that’s only a small amount compared to what he has, it would be a gift “according to his riches.” -- the kind of gift that not just anyone can give.
That’s what Paul is trying to get the Ephesians to understand. God has so much with which to bless us, so much that he wants to give to us. Paul speaks in Ephesians 3:20 about the fact that God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.” That’s mind-boggling, but it’s intended to give us an idea of how much God is able to do and how much God is willing to do for us.
Yet we sometimes live in spiritual poverty. We’re like a man who has been invited into the vaults of Fort Knox and given permission to carry out as much bullion from our nation’s gold reserves as he needs. He can fill his hands, his pockets, a suitcase. He has been invited inside and given carte blanche to everything in the vault. Suppose, though, he walks out empty-handed or he picks up only a gum wrapper and a cigarette butt that somebody dropped on the vault floor. He goes out with nothing. Whose fault it is? Obviously, it’s his fault. He had riches at his disposal but didn’t take advantage of it.
In the same way, it is nobody’s fault but mine if I live in spiritual poverty. If I choose to use (actually waste) my prayers asking for a successful career, huge amounts of money, fabulous notoriety, and good health, I’m asking for gum wrappers and cigarette butts when I could be asking for and getting valuable things. I realize that even to say such a thing shocks and offends us, because we think so much like the world. Because those are the things we regard as the valuable things, aren’t they?
III. The Trauma of Unanswered Prayers
And so I realize that very often in my prayers, I don’t ask for the kinds of things I should be asking for. As James puts it, I “ask miss.” God wants us much for me to ask for the things of greatest value, he’s standing there ready to give them to me if only I’ll ask. But so often I don’t. Instead I spend my time in prayer asking for things of far less value.
Like the little fellow who had been sent to his room because he had been bad. A short time later he came out and said to his mother, "I’ve been thinking about what I did and I said a prayer."
She said, "That’s great. If you ask God to make you good, He will help you."
The little boy said, “Oh, I didn’t ask him to help me be good. I asked Him to help you put up with me."
James says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your own pleasures.” You want that nice pair of sneakers, and that’s all that matters. “God, please get me those tennis shoes. No not those, those aren’t cool. That was the rage last year. No, I want those over there.” It’s probably not tennis shoes you’ve been praying for, so just take out the word “sneakers” and replace it with whatever applies in your own prayer life.
When I’m honest, I realize there are times that I could care less what God’s will is when I pray. I just want what’s going to give me the greatest amount of comfort and pleasure, or the least amount of pain and frustration.
So we pray, "God, give me this promotion, or give me this raise” without ever stopping to think what God’s will might be in the matter. Maybe instead of a raise, he wants you to re-prioritize and to learn a lesson in contentment by getting by with less than what you think you need?
Or maybe even we pray, “Lord, take away this illness. Take away this pain. I want to enjoy life again. I want to feel good. I want everything to go just right.” But maybe, just maybe, God is concerned that you use this situation to seek greater faith, to realize your need for his strength, or to develop the qualities necessary to help someone else out in their hour of need.
If we’re not careful, we can come to think that God is some magic wand that we can force into action whenever the situations of life become uncomfortable or whenever we would like more of something. But it doesn’t work that way. God is not your Santa Claus or your genie in a bottle. Life isn’t always about being comfortable and full. It is about seeking and desiring God’s will.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that we should never pray for any of those problems we face in this world. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray for those who are sick, or go to God when we have needs. But what I am saying is that we’re not careful, we can remain so focussed on getting a physical solution to our problems and that’s all we pray for, and we end up missing out on so much more than God has available.
A good example is found in Acts 4 where the early church faced persecution because they preached the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Jewish leaders were especially upset and threatened Peter and John with physical harm, telling them not to preach in the name of Jesus any more. Then those two men gathered with the disciples for prayer. And I have to be honest. If I had been there, I probably would have prayed for the persecution to stop, for God to just come down and zap those guys to teach them a lesson. “Please, Father, make life easier for us!” But listen to what they actually prayed for:
“Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus.” (Acts 5:28-29).
It’s not a prayer to “make life easier for us.” It’s a prayer to use what is happening to bring them spiritually closer to where God wants them.
Someone has said, “Prayer is not an easy way of getting what we want, but the only way of becoming what God wants us to be.”
And so it may well be that the primary hindrance to prayer -- at least in my own life -- is the result of having a worldly attitude. I need to constantly remind myself that prayer is not a means of manipulating God to do what I want him to do. Prayer is not my free pass that exempts me from problems. Prayer is not the means to my end of selfish ambition — even if that selfish ambition is masked with nice religious language.
And so I need to use prayer to seek God’s will. I carry my requests to God, and I do it with the confidence that he truly cares about me and my physical needs. But I am aware that he cares even more about the spiritual needs that I have. And I need to learn to pray with a heaven-view that sees the things of greatest importance.
Conclusion:
Many a young mother and father have had to break a young child’s habit of sleeping in their room or in their bed. They try to make it as painless as possible. They pick a night when things have been pleasant and end it with a favorite bedtime story. Then they take him to his own bed in his own room, say his prayers with him, and give him a goodnight kiss. With everything safe and secure, they turn out the light and go to their own room.
The little boy cries, and the crying turns to pitiful sobbing. He calls for his Mommy. And the mother and father are standing just outside the room shedding their own tears and fearing that their baby thinks they no longer hear him or love him. Their hearts are aching for him, and the easy thing for them to do would be to rush in and take him back to the big bed in their room.
But as much as Daddy would like to stop his child’s tears, he knows he must not do so that night — and perhaps for several agonizing nights yet to come. He restrains himself for his baby’s sake. He must learn to sleep in his own bed. He must begin to grow up emotionally. He must take one of the early steps to becoming an adult himself someday.
In like manner, we may rest assured that God hears all our prayers. He is sympathetic and compassionate. His own heart aches beyond our ability to fathom. Yet there are times when he may appear to withdraw himself from us so that we might begin to grow up spiritually — by altering our world-view and beginning to see that the things that tend to concern us most are dictated by an earthly wisdom that must be shed for heaven’s sake.
God’s failure to answer all your questions, your desires, and your prayers is not his slamming the door of heaven in your face. Because while you may not have all the desires of your heart, you do still have him. So pray with the assurance that even when it seems that God has failed to respond to your prayers, it only seems that way. For even when you don’t have the answers that you seek, you still have him. And that will always be more than enough.
INVITATION
Lord’s Supper Devotional
In the sermon this morning, we’re going to be talking about prayer. In I John 5:14-15, John gives us this assurance: “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”
When we pray according to God’s will, we are assured that we will be heard — and answered.
Jesus is our perfect example on this point. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus knew that in just a few hours he would be captured and physically tortured to the point of being nailed to a cross. Along with all the physical pain that he knew he would have to experience, there was also the spiritual pain of bearing our sins.
As Jesus prayed in those quiet moments in the garden, we can only imagine the struggle that he faced. There was a part of him that said, “I don’t want to go through with this.” And so he prayed so earnestly that his tears fell to the ground as if they were blood, "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done." (Luke 22:42)
As Philip Yancey put it: "When Jesus prayed to the one who could save him from death, he did not get that salvation; he got instead the salvation of the world." Because Jesus was more interested in his Father’s will than he was even in his own life, we have an opportunity to be forgiven of our sins.
