James 4:1-3

What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. 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. RSV

Verses 3-4 NLT: And yet the reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it. And even when you do ask, you don’t get it because your whole motive is wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.

We just recently returned from a week’s trip to visit our Army son who had, a few months ago, returned from a tour in Iraq. We asked a friend (a very new Christian) to housesit our five poodles for us. As we were returning home from the airport, he called us to tell us that our oldest (and smallest) poodle was missing. (Very likely, she was taken by one of the hunting owls in our area.)

To understand fully, this little poodle was very special, extremely smart with a unique personality. Also, she had been with us for a number of years and through many difficult circumstances with us. In other words, we loved her very much.

Now we heard that she is “gone.” We were devastated.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned over the past three days. We need to understand why we pray for the things we pray for; we need to learn to see life through God’s perspectives to understand why there are times when our prayers aren’t answered.

This passage in James talks about why we often pray and God doesn’t answer. Unfortunately, in American churches, we are often taught that God will fix our problems, make our life easier, bring us happiness. Nothing is further from the truth. God doesn’t make life wonderful; He makes life doable.

We live in a sinful world. Paul tells us: “For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering.” (Romans 8:22-23 NLT).

We “groan to be released from pain and suffering.” Paul acknowledged that this life was, simply put, awful! Our hope isn’t in that God will remove us from suffering in this life, but that we have heaven awaiting for us:

“By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,” (1 Peter 1:3b-4).

The fact is, our focus is often wrong. We turn to God when we are faced with pain and suffering, with our prayers being that He will remove the pain and suffering. What we don’t understand is that our prayers should be focused on the salvation of those around us: “not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved” (1 Corinthians 10:33b RSV).

When we initially heard about our dear poodle, our prayers were—as James described—about our own desires, our own pleasure. This dog gave us a great deal of happiness with her winning ways. We failed to understand that our prayers needed to be about how this loss would affect the man who had housesit for us and his own relationship with the Lord. How we would respond to him was far more important than the loss we were feeling.
Everything in this life is temporary; nothing is going to last. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Revelation 21:1a RSV). Everything here, in this life, is going to be gone someday (when the Lord Jesus makes all things new) and our focus needs to be not on hanging onto the things here that make life easier, but rather upon the eternal souls around us who are facing an eternity in hell.

Why don’t our prayers get answered? Because we interpret God loving us as His fixing all the stuff that hurts us. The fact is, we live in a sinful world where suffering happens. God isn’t going to mitigate that for us . . . now, but rather has provided a Hope for us in heaven. When we focus upon trying to avoid pain now—rather than upon the Hope of the future—we are focusing upon our own desires, our own passions, our own lusts. And our prayers won’t be answered. It isn’t because God loves us any less, but because we love ourselves more. If we want our prayers to be answered, we need to start praying differently.