The Quandary

Does it always happen this way for you?

  (Presented by www.faithmouse.com )

You do not have, because you do not ask.  

You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly 

to spend it on your passions. 

James 4:2b-3

This is a difficult passage for me when it appears very, very clear.  

"You do not have because you do not ask."  I have chosen since I was a young child to believe that God's Word is true, and there is reliable evidence that it is just that--TRUE.  Therefore, because His Word is true, I have made it a point to ask God.  I've asked Him for many things--the salvation of my children, godly mates for my children, other very big things and many small ones.  Now I am asking Him to help me, as I have entered the world of the "senior citizens," to finish strong for Him.  Some of those prayers have been answered gloriously.  But some have not.

"You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions."  In my heart, I never think that what I ask for has been wrongly asked, that I desire worldly pleasure from my asking.  And when I say never, I do mean never.  Now I didn't say that I don't ask wrongly, just that I don't think I do.  Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?" 

Herein lies my problem.  I cannot understand my own heart.  Only God can, and sometimes that really discourages me.  I want to ask and know that I will receive what I ask for, yet I don't even know my wicked heart.  It seems to put me in a quandary.  Where do I go from here?

I join the Psalmist, who said, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:  and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalm 139:23-24)  I must take inventory of my heart and then trust His leadership, even in answer to prayer.

I love what Matthew Henry said concerning this, and it gives me great hope in my feeble attempts at prayer:  "But, if we thus seek the things of this world, it is just in God to deny them; whereas, if we seek any thing that we may serve God with it, we may expect he will either give us what we seek or give us hearts to be content without it, and give opportunities of serving and glorifying him some other way."

Continuing to pray, asking God to guide my heart as I do,

Gloria