What’s your Why?
James 4:1-3
4 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 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. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Read It All
I think a lot of times we like to quote only a piece of verse 2. “You do not have because you do not ask”, but we forget the most important part. The verse that comes after it is even more important.
A lot of times when we come to God with a request it has nothing to do with something for His glory or for the benefit of others. We ask with wrong motives. We want things that will benefit us, that will make us feel better in some way.
Now I know you are probably thinking I am wrong because you do pray for others, and I get that but let me give a personal experience.
I Was Wrong
For years I prayed for my husband to change. He was an addict, now delivered, saved and set free by God. So of course you would think how could praying for him to overcome his addiction be selfish on my part. It actually was at first though.
God showed me that while I was praying for the right things my motives behind what I was praying were not pure. They were selfish.
How you might ask. Well, I was praying for him to be delivered and saved not because I wanted him to have a personal relationship with God, and not because I didn’t want him to go to hell.
Nope, I wanted him saved and delivered because I wanted my family to be normal. I didn’t want people to look at me and judge me for the things he was doing, and I didn’t want my children to live with the shame of having and addict for a parent or the pain of having an absent one.
By worldly standards those may seem like legit reasons to pray for someone to be delivered from an addiction, but to God my heart was not in right standing praying that way.
He was changing me and doing a work in me I couldn’t yet see.
What About You?
If you have been praying and it doesn’t seem like anything is changing, I challenge you to pray and ask God if your motives are right. Maybe they truly are and it’s just taking a little longer. We know God doesn’t do anything halfway. But maybe, just maybe He has something different for you and that door won’t open until your heart is in the right place.
Matthew 6:33, Matthew 7:7-8, Proverbs 21:2
**Lord thank You for opening my eyes when I am blinded by my own feelings and selfish thoughts. If there be anything in my heart, in my motives Lord that don’t line up with You I pray and ask that You reveal them to me so that I can submit it all to You and move forward. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.**
Watch today’s video here >>>https://youtu.be/bog70l4nlBQ
Read more daily devotions here >>>https://katiemeszaros.com/