November 20, 2024 -Humbly Ask & Receive

EZEKIEL 40:28-41:26

JAMES 4:1-17

PSALM 118:19-29

PROVERBS 28:3-5

One Year Bible Audio & Daily Reading (oneyearbibleonline.com)

James 4:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 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. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

When there are battles in the church, fights and quarrels, we can trust that they come from the wrong motives. Both sides can want what is best but still respond in a quarrelsome way because it is personal to us. Before confronting someone or discussing something that could cause division we need to check our motives and go humbly before God and first ask Him to intervene before we try to accomplish something on our own with a motive to please God and serve Him. We need to ask Him to reveal to us our movies and to change our heart. Because the enemy will use our desires against us.

James 4:6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud

   but shows favor to the humble.”

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

When we come before Him in humble submissive prayer we are then able to pray according to God's will and He will answer. We will no longer be praying based on our own desires and the enemy will not only loose the battle for our motives but he will flee from us. A double-minded person will struggle with surrender to God because they are listening to the lies of the enemy and holding onto their desires. Whatever it is that we are holding onto that is causing conflict in ourselves about a person or situation in the church we need to wash our hands of it in the blood of Jesus and allow Him to purify our heart.

James 4:13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Often times our struggles are about what we think needs to happen and when we think it needs to happen, but it is not our place to decide. We need to live in the truthy that "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

Proverbs 28:5 Evildoers do not understand what is right,

    but those who seek the Lord understand it fully.

There are times that our conflict is because we in right motives and are pursuing the will of God but there are those who oppose the will of God who are "evildoers". Our response to them should still be gracious and non-combative. If we are seeking the Lord and are walking according to His will He can still accomplish it. All we need to do is pray and ask. But not just ask. Ask with the right motives and we will receive.