Hindrances

 Friendship with the world hinders us from receiving what God has reserved exclusively for His own. If we place our desire to befriend the world over our willingness to obey God, then by virtue of our actions, we declare that we are not His. It’s easy to double speak, infer, omit, and otherwise bloviate, but when the rubber meets the road, and you get down to it, that’s the reality of the situation. If everyone claiming to belong to Him were truly His, they would have everything God promised to His own.

We must determine where we want to live out our days. Do we belong to the world, or do we belong to God? Do we desire to spend our lives in His service or in the service of the flesh? You can’t have it both ways; you can’t hopscotch from one to the other when it suits you, and those to whom James was writing had found this out the hard way. They were asking, and they were not receiving, and they were ignorant of why. Perhaps some placed the blame at God’s feet, thinking His hand too short, but James, with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer, dispelled them of any such thoughts.

It wasn’t God that was the problem; it never is.

James 4:3-4, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 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.”

Here, we run into the first problem with the notion of manifesting. Even though it’s become popular among Christians, that doesn’t mean it’s any more biblical than enneagrams or astrology. Whether you call it manifesting or by the more urban ‘name it and claim it,’ you still have to contend with the reality that God determines whether what you ask for is valid and whether or not it will grow your spiritual man.

What we’ve managed to do over the past few decades is convince ourselves that nothing we ask for can possibly be amiss; it’s just God who doesn’t understand that we really need that jet. Imagine all the good you’d be able to do with a plane.

James says that we ask and do not receive because what we ask for is not to further the Kingdom of God, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the poor, or preach the gospel, but for our pleasures. Sometimes, God says no for our own good. That’s another thing we can’t fathom or come to terms with.

Anyone with children understands that it’s because you love them that you have to say no to them with the regularity of an atomic clock or a prune-rich diet. What they want usually isn’t what’s best for them, and if you give in, relent, and otherwise turn a blind eye, you’ll find that your kid just went through a six-pound bag of candy in three hours flat.

Even when you say no and explain why, they’ll still try to sneak a handful here or there if you aren’t watchful and vigilant. It’s as though there are fully grown adults walking about with the minds of children because we see this happening far too often for it to be accidental. People ask of God, and God says no, so they go and pursue the things God said no to anyway. Then, for some unexplainable reason, they turn around and blame God for their situation even though God said no to begin with. Make it make sense!

In case anyone was wondering why they had asked and not received, James clarifies the situation to the point that there can be no confusion. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss. It’s not that God is unable, it’s not that God can’t; He chooses not to, as is His prerogative as Creator, Master, Lord, and King.

This mindset that God somehow owes us something must be purged from our midst because it can only lead to bitterness and recrimination. God owes me nothing! God owes you nothing! Everything is grace and mercy, and the sooner we let that reach the deeper recesses of our hearts, the sooner we will approach Him in a reverent and contrite manner.

We all feel some type of way about entitled people, but somehow talk ourselves into believing that God does not see entitled people in a similar fashion. His ways may not be our ways, and His thoughts may not be our thoughts, but when it comes to people who feel they are owed something simply for existing, I think the thoughts and feelings harmonize well enough.

We want God’s everything without the requisite reciprocity, and when we don’t get it because our loyalties are divided, we find a way of blaming God and demeaning His character for not doing as we demanded.

It can’t go unnoticed that the tone of James’s writing changes drastically beginning with the fourth chapter, wherein the usually mild-mannered, soft-spoken bondservant of Christ seems to have had enough of the duplicity and entitlement and people pretending to be followers of Jesus just to get something from Him. He comes out swinging and doesn’t stop, calling people who saw themselves as highly spiritual followers of the way adulterers and adulteresses.

We'll never know if they took offense at his letter, but I would be shocked and overall surprised if they hadn’t. After all, these people saw themselves as the spiritual elites of their generation who kept asking and never receiving because everything they asked for was anchored in flesh and meant to appease the desires thereof.

When you ask God for something that may ultimately lead to your destruction, don’t be surprised if He says no. If you persist in asking once He says no, ask yourself why, and if, perchance, you might not just need to repent of your desire to be friends with the world.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.