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Daily Devotions

James

James 
Day 
Day 50

"Because you ask amiss..."

Text: James 4:3

A DEEPER ANALYSIS

Conflicts will not go away easily. Hence, James went on to offer a deeper analysis of the problem.

“You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss,
that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know
that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world
makes himself an enemy of God.”
James 4:3-4

1. “You ask and do not receive”

a) Some had tried to turn to God in prayer.
b) Their requests are brought to the Lord.
c) But they did not receive the things they asked for.

2. “Because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures”

a) Asking amiss
i) This was the root problem.
ii) They were asking for that which was outside God’s will.
b) “That you may spend it on your pleasures”
i) Supposing there was a request made to the Lord for His provision.
ii) But when God does provide, the provision from Him is squandered.
iii) The Lord’s provision is spent on personal pleasures.

3. Friendship with the world

a) This is “worldliness” of the worst kind.
b) This kind of relationship with the world is described as “adultery”.
c) This kind of problem was addressed by many of the Old Testament prophets.

4. “Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world”

a) The individual is consorting with the world.
b) He enters into an adulterous friendship with the world.
c) He soon becomes a very worldly person; there is hardly any godliness left to be seen in his life.

5. “Makes himself an enemy of God”

This is “the bottom line”. The person who chooses the world will find that he has lost his friendship with God. Worse, he has made God an enemy! God and the world cannot be reconciled!