By Allen White
When
you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may
spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:3
Imagine going to a car
show. Your eyes fall on a new car model that you’ve never seen. Your heart
races. Your palms begin to sweat. It’s the car of your dreams.
The lines are clean. The
interior has a ridiculous number of cup holders. The engine is powerful, yet
efficient. The price is a little out of your range, but you’ve got to have this
car.
As you leave the car show,
you begin to see your dream car everywhere. Why have you never noticed it
before? Everywhere you drive. Everywhere you park. There it is. The car seems
to be beaconing to you.
You sit down to figure out
your finances. It doesn’t seem that you could afford the payment even if you
leased the car. You think about selling your house. You think about downsizing
to one car – one dream car. Then, you imagine your kids in the dream car – what
a nightmare.
You pray and ask God to
provide a raise at work, help you win the lottery, or find a long lost uncle
you never knew you had. But, nothing happens. You continue to cruise the town
in your 12-year-old car and try to avoid looking at your dream car when it
passes by.
One day you pick up the
newspaper. Your dream car is on the front page. You think “Is God just trying
to torture me?” The headline reads “New Car Model Recalled for Catastrophic
Defect: Many Deaths from Poor Design.” You breathe a sigh of relief. Thank God
that you didn’t get that death trap. Did God answer your prayer?
One test of unanswered
prayer is to check our motives. That’s not to say that every unanswered prayer
comes from wrong motives. When my son continued to get sicker in the hospital
even though we prayed fervently, we weren’t praying with wrong motives. But,
some prayers fit exactly what this verse is talking about.
If God knew that answering
our prayer would be harmful to us, why would He say “Yes”? Just like our
children asking for too many sweets, God knows what’s good for us and what will
make us sick.
Now, sometimes we’re not
sure why God hasn’t answered our prayer. If our motives seem okay, then why
haven’t we heard an answer? Remember that God answers in one of three ways:
Yes, No and Wait.
What answer are you waiting
for? Why are you asking? Sometimes your motives can block an answer to prayer.
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