1 Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?
Jam 4:1-5
Q & A：
- Looking back to your unanswered prayers, discuss if you were asking wrongly for your own pleasure, gratification or self-centered desires. Discuss if God is against us enjoying good things and prosperity in life, taking into consideration that it is our God, who gives us the power to gain wealth and our Father in heaven will give us (the children of God) good things when we ask Him. (Jam 4:1-5; John 15:7-8; Deut 8:18; Matt 7:11)
- As a Christian, have you been committing spiritual adultery by flirting with the world, desiring for pleasure that war within us, or being tempted by the lust of the eyes or the flesh including the love of money? Discuss what could be hindering our prayers from being answered, by referring to individualism, strife in the family, priority in life, and asking what are contrary to God’s word and values. (Jam 4:1,4; 1 Pet 3:7; 1 John 2:15-16; 1 Tim 6:10)
- Discuss what the key to having our answered prayers is, and how you can put in practice to abide in Christ and allow His Word to abide in you, while living in this world but not of this world. While it is good to have our own agenda in life, explain why it is important to seek God’s will to know that it is a God’s idea through consecration rather than expecting and demanding God to bless our plans. (John 15:7; 1 John 5:14-15)