52 Prayers from the Bible

Praying with Right Motives

¹ What is the source of the wars and the fights among you? Don't they come from the cravings that are at war within you? ² You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask. ³ You ask and don't receive because you ask wrongly, so that you may spend it on your desires for pleasure. ⁴ Adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world's friend becomes God's enemy. ⁵ Or do you think it's without reason the Scripture says that the Spirit He has caused to live in us yearns jealously? ⁶ But He gives greater grace. Therefore He says: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. (James 4:1-6)

1. What does this passage have to do with prayer?
2. Why were they not receiving what they asked for?
3. What was the core issue in the rebuke here?
4. What is the main point of the passage?
5. How can this scripture inform our prayers today?

Scripture courtesy of BibleGateway.com. All Scripture text is from the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville Tennessee. All rights reserved. "52 Prayers from the Bible" is Copyright © 2009 by Kevin Binkley and Emmanuel Baptist Church of Rochester, Minnesota.