Ask according to His will

 15 Dec 25

Today's devotional: taken from YouVersion, Life Application Study Bible Devotion


Ask according to His will

James mentions the most common problems in prayer: not asking, asking for the wrong things, asking for the wrong reasons. Do you talk to God at all? When you do, what do you talk about? Do you ask only to satisfy your desires? Do you seek God's approval for what you already plan to do? Your prayers will become powerful when you allow God to change your desires so that they perfectly correspond to his will for you.


“You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

‭‭James‬ ‭4‬:‭2‬-‭3‬ ‭NIV‬‬

———————

Reflections

I think at some point, especially being new Christians, we kind of treat the Lord as an ATM. Like we look to Him like how we look to the worldly deities and thinks he is just one of them. However, true fact is that He isn’t and He is above them all and He is definitely also not our genie in the bottle.


What does He meant by asking with wrong motives? I think we tend to think that we ask of all the right causes. Like for the better of something or society, etc etc. We see nothing wrong with that. Technically, not wrong. However, there is still a very important component that is missing from that equation. That is surrender to His will.


Many times, we ourselves have a presumptive outcome that we expect to happen. Then when it didn’t happen the way we wanted, we get angry with the Lord. We say He did not answer our prayers but did He not? In fact He did! In a way that is beyond our understanding or comprehension that is. 


Nobody knows His ways and His thoughts and the bible already told us that His ways and thoughts are higher than ours. So rather than complaining about Him and saying that He doesn’t answer or doesn’t allow things to happen in the way we wanted, perhaps we ought to pause and ask ourselves why He answered this way. I believe we likely know the answer after some deliberations.


The Lord is teaching us on a daily basis to rely on Him. To trust Him. To surrender to His will. So when we pray, we pray what we wish can happen and yet also not my will but Thy will be done.


I was reading about a writing about Jesus healing the 10 lepers. Only 1 turned back and thank Him but where are the other 9? The author said it is not about them being ungrateful. All 10 asked Jesus for the blessing and all of them got it. So the 9 that didn’t turn back, got their blessing and moved on. A blessing is what they are only seeking. The one that turned back did not only saw the blessing, he wanted to seek the healer. The 9 were looking for a religion, whereas the one who turned back is looking for a relationship with God. This is such a meaningful read. What about us? What are we truly seeking?

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