James 4:1-3—What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t
they come from your desires that battle within you? 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. When you ask, you do not
receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on
your pleasures.
Words are powerful.
When we speak something out loud, we place energy into the universe with
the power of our intention. Our mindset,
hearts, and desires, then, are more significant than we can even
understand. Our culture here in the
United States teaches self-reliance and encourages people not to trust each
other. It brutally condemns failures and
only respects those who can alone pull themselves up by their own
bootstraps. Success in this country is
measured in terms of wealth and accumulation of power. All of these values are contrary to God’s
ways, though. He wants us to be reliant
on Him and to know our impotence to do anything without His divine
intervention. He wants us to be in
relationship with each other and to love one another without passing judgment
on each other. But the reality is we
come to God each day with a worldly mindset that is hard to escape. The prayers we lift up emanate from bodies
that live in this world, and it is difficult to escape our humanity. That is why it is so important to listen to
God and pray for him to shift our spirits so that we may see what He sees. We must continually seek to be more like Him
and allow Him to come alive in us.
Today as you pray and meditate on His Word, consider your
habits of prayer. Set aside any personal
wants, and take a moment to listen to Michael W. Smith’s “Open the Eyes of My Heart.”
Make this song your prayer today. Ask
God to speak to you and reveal His perfect Will for your life. Rejoice in His Name and lift up praise to
Him.
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