Asking and Receiving
Do we experience the joy of answered prayer? If not, the one thing which is certain is that this our fault and not God’s. In today’s reading, James offers us two possible reasons why we are strangers to that joy. First, often we simply do not ask. We try everything else before we go to God. Although we profess to believe that God has unlimited resources available which He is waiting to bestow on us, we fail to pray—and so we do not receive. O that our hearts and wills were gripped by the firm conviction that God really does hear and answer prayer! If we truly believe that: (i) prayer links our helplessness with God’s almightiness; (ii) prayer can do anything which God can do, and He can do anything; (iii) prayer causes more havoc among the unseen forces of darkness than does any other weapon we possess; (iv) prayer changes, not only us when we pray, but actual events and situations; and (v) prayer is the answer to every problem which exists … then we will ‘ask’. Second, when we d...