Why Prayer is Lost

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.

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.  Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?  But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
  but shows favor to the humble.”                             --James 4:1-6

          Prayer is a power.  Nothing is more really so.  Gravitation, electricity, wind, are no more really and truly powers in the physical realm, than is prayer in the spiritual.

          And yet James is calling attention to a prayer that is not a power—an asking from which we never hear, and brings no answer.  (James 4:1-6)

          Of this we are certain as we are that prayer avails—that there is a prayer that does not secure its end.

          It will not do to conclude that all prayer not yet answered is lost; still we do well to consider the matter which James is here emphasizing, for it evidently is of practical moment in the church-life of to-day.

          Prayer is lost because of its motive.  The reason for much of prayer is the reason for its failure.  Successful prayer is a great searcher of motives.

          Years ago—thirty or more—I heard the Rev. George Muller deliver in Boston an address concerning his work in Bristol, Eng.  He brought out a point—this point of motive—and in a way I never have forgotten.

          To my mind this man Muller is one of the most remarkable men of the past one hundred years.  Knowing him by what he did, he may be so classed.

          He spoke of the inception of his great work.  He saw the crying need of the poor orphans of his city and his heart was moved to aid them, and aid them in a general and generous way.

          “Oh,” he said, “that God would be the patron of a great institution.”  He saw rich English Lords founding homes and establishments for the poor and getting the credit for it and a great name, and he said, “Would that God would do this for the orphans and Himself get a great name.”

--by Rev. Charles J Fowler, 1912