Jas 4:2-3 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. (3) When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
The sad fact is that there are wars and fights among Christians. To suggest that this paragraph does not apply to believers is unrealistic, and it robs the passage of all its value for us. What causes all this fighting? It arises from the strong desires within us which are constantly struggling to be satisfied. There is the lust to accumulate material possessions. There is the drive for prestige. There is the craving for pleasure, for the gratification of bodily appetites. These powerful forces are at work within us. We are never satisfied. We always want more. And yet it seems we are constantly frustrated in our desire to get what we want. The unfulfilled longing becomes so powerful that we trample on those who seem to obstruct our progress. James says, “You murder.” He uses the word largely in a figurative sense. We don’t literally kill, but the anger, jealousy, and cruelty which we generate are murder in embryo.
Prayer is the right approach to this problem. “Don’t argue. Don’t fight. Pray.” James says, “You do not have because you do not ask.” Instead of taking these things to the Lord in prayer, we try to get what we want by our own efforts. If we want something which we do not have, we should ask God for it. If we do ask, and the prayer is unanswered, what then? It simply means that our motives were not pure. We did not want these possessions for the glory of God or for the good of our fellow men. We wanted them for our own selfish enjoyment. We wanted them to satisfy our natural appetites. God does not promise to answer such prayers.
