Praying Rightly: Ask According to God’s Will

Devotional

Day 1: Prayer’s Soil: Roots in the Stream of Scripture

When prayers feel dry or disconnected, the problem often lies in what nourishes our inner life. Psalm 1 compares those who delight in God’s word to trees planted by streams—their roots drink deeply from life-giving water. To pray with vitality requires saturating our minds with Scripture, letting its rhythms reshape our desires. Just as Carson City’s trees cluster near water, our souls thrive when anchored in God’s promises. Praying the Bible realigns us with God’s heart, turning self-focused pleas into kingdom-shaped intercession. [19:47]

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.
(Psalm 1:1–3, ESV)

Reflection: What practical step could you take this week to let Scripture shape your prayers more than your immediate worries or wants?

Day 2: When Requests Carry Hidden Price Tags

Prayers often fail because we treat God as a cosmic vending machine. James 4:3 exposes how even “good” requests can mask self-serving agendas—like the man who donated choir robes to manipulate his church. God sees past the wrapping paper to the heart’s motive: Are we seeking His glory or our comfort? True prayer begins when we confess our mixed intentions and let grace purify our ask. [53:48]

You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
(James 4:3, ESV)

Reflection: What recent request to God might have contained a hidden “price tag” of your own preferences? How could you rephrase it to prioritize His purposes?

Day 3: Adultery of the Aching Heart

Spiritual adultery isn’t about scandalous sins but divided loyalty. James 4:4 warns that church conflicts erupt when we crave human approval, control, or comfort more than Christ. Like spouses texting an ex during marital strife, we seek fulfillment in lesser loves. Every quarrel over paint colors or preferences whispers: something has replaced God as our first love. Repentance begins by naming what we’ve courted instead of Him. [52:50]

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
(James 4:4, ESV)

Reflection: What subtle “friendship with the world” (need for status, comfort, or control) might be draining your spiritual vitality this season?

Day 4: The Prayer That Reshapes Limbs and Landscapes

Jesus’ healing of the blind man (John 9) wasn’t just a miracle—it was a lived-out Lord’s Prayer. “Thy kingdom come” looks like blind eyes seeing, stiff joints loosening, and weary souls running. Yet “Thy will be done” also means embracing Gethsemane’s surrender when healing delays. Praying this tension—bold faith and humble submission—trains us to trust God’s timeline more than our immediate relief. [16:38]

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
(Matthew 6:10, ESV)

Reflection: Where do you need to pray both “heal this now” and “make me faithful if it lingers” in your current struggles?

Day 5: Patience—The Unwanted Fruit

Aging bodies and unresolved trials test our capacity to wait. Yet James 1:2–4 reveals hardships as God’s pruning shears, cutting away impatience to cultivate endurance. Like the pastor struggling to sit cross-legged at the Japanese restaurant, we groan for resurrection agility. But today’s stiffness trains us to rely on Christ’s strength, not our fading vigor. Maturity comes when we stop praying for quick fixes and start seeking deep roots. [22:59]

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
(James 1:2–4, ESV)

Reflection: What current “stiffness” (relational, physical, or spiritual) might God be using to grow patience rather than remove discomfort?

Sermon Summary

James does not let conflict stay on the surface. James says that when a church is full of conflicts and disputes, something has gone terribly wrong, and the trouble begins in the heart. Spiritual adultery happens when anything takes the first place that God alone ought to occupy. Cravings go to war inside, and then those cravings come out through the body as anger, blame, coveting, and even murder in the heart.

Prayer stands right in the middle of that problem. James says, “You do not have because you do not ask,” and then James says, “You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly.” Prayer can be absent because people do not stop to ask God for help, and prayer can be distorted because desires are disordered. The problem is not that desire itself is bad. The problem is that desire is no longer a trustworthy guide to what is good.

God gives all the more grace even when prayers are mixed. The passage does not call for false holiness, as if goodness only counts when nothing good comes back. The passage calls for honesty about motives. Good deeds, church decisions, family conflicts, and private prayers can all be tangled up with wanting control, comfort, credit, or escape.

James calls the church away from friendship with “this broken down old world” and toward friendship with God. Submission to God means learning to want what God wants. Trials become part of that reordering because Jesus has risen from the dead, and hardship can make a person more like Jesus. Poverty and wealth also get reordered because the poor know God is their only resource, while the wealthy can be fooled into thinking nothing is needed.

The Lord’s Prayer gives the pattern for rightly ordered prayer. “Our Father” gives confidence, because God loves his children and gives the Spirit who teaches them to cry, Abba Father. “Thy kingdom come” fills prayer with expectation for the world where the blind see, the lame run, and broken bodies rise. “Thy will be done” places that longing beside Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed for the cup to pass and still surrendered to the Father.

Scripture trains desire. Psalm 1 says the blessed life delights in the law of the Lord and becomes like a tree planted by streams of water. That tree yields fruit, keeps its leaves, and prospers with a kind of prospering that markets, wars, failure, and frustration cannot take away. God does not offer an easy button. God makes people strong enough to thrive whatever the circumstances.

##

Key Takeaways

1. Cravings start wars inside James names conflict before it becomes respectable. Disputes do not begin with paint colors, preferences, or someone else’s obvious failure, but with cravings that have taken up arms inside the heart. Spiritual maturity requires more than winning the argument, because the deeper question is what desire has become so important that another person can be treated like an enemy. [58:50]
2. Desires need reordering, not denial The claim that “our desires are no longer trustworthy guides to what is good” refuses both self-hatred and self-trust. Desire is not treated as filth, but as something broken enough to mislead and precious enough to be healed. Prayer becomes dangerous in the best sense when it stops baptizing every want and starts asking God to put loves back in their proper order. [66:34]
3. Prayer must actually ask God James makes the first failure painfully simple: “You do not have because you do not ask.” Anxiety, blame, and church conflict often grow where asking God never became a shared habit. Prayer becomes less tone deaf when believers ask together, because shared prayer exposes the fantasy that only the person caught on camera needs mercy. [62:23]
4. The Lord’s Prayer orders longing “Thy kingdom come” teaches holy imagination, where the blind see, the lame run, and creation is made whole. “Thy will be done” teaches Gethsemane surrender, where even the hardest cup is placed before the Father without pretending it is easy. Christian prayer holds both together, longing for healing while trusting God to make Christlike endurance in the waiting. [76:17]
5. Scripture plants durable souls Psalm 1 pictures the life shaped by God’s word as a tree planted by streams of water. The point is not a pain-free life, because drought still comes and bodies still die. The promise is a deeper kind of health, usefulness, and prospering that cannot be taken away by markets, war, failure, or frustration.

## [80:07]

Youtube Chapters

[00:00] - Welcome
[51:27] - James 4 and a Tough Passage
[52:05] - Conflict as Spiritual Adultery
[53:48] - Asking Wrongly in Prayer
[58:50] - Cravings at War Within
[62:23] - You Do Not Have Because You Do Not Ask
[66:34] - Desires Are Not Trustworthy Guides
[69:21] - Submitting to God’s Desires
[72:08] - Praying the Scriptures
[72:46] - Our Father and Confidence
[73:05] - Thy Kingdom Come
[76:17] - Thy Will Be Done
[79:47] - Delighting in God’s Word
[82:27] - Patience and the Tree by Water
[83:40] - No Easy Button, Real Strength

Bible Study Guide

Bible Reading
James 4:1-3 (ESV)
"What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions."

Psalm 1:1-3 (ESV)
"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers."

Matthew 6:9-10 (ESV)
"Pray then like this: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.'"

Observation Questions

According to James 4:1-3, what does James identify as the root cause of conflicts and unmet desires?
How does Psalm 1:3 describe the person who delights in God’s Word? What imagery is used to illustrate their spiritual health?
In the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-10), what two requests are tied to God’s ultimate purposes for the world?

Interpretation Questions

Why does James compare misplaced desires to “spiritual adultery” (James 4:4-5)? How does this metaphor clarify the seriousness of disordered loves?
The sermon mentions that “desires need reordering, not denial” [01:06:34]. How does Psalm 1:1-3 provide a framework for reorienting our desires toward God?
James 4:2 says, “You do not have because you do not ask.” What might prevent believers from bringing their needs to God in prayer, even when they recognize their struggles?

Application Questions

Reflect on a recent conflict or frustration in your life. What underlying craving or desire might have been “at war” within you (James 4:1)? How could bringing this to God in prayer shift your perspective?
The Lord’s Prayer begins with “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” What specific area of your life or relationships feels most out of alignment with God’s kingdom? How could you pray for His will to reshape it?
The sermon warns against treating desires as “filth” or blindly trusting them [01:06:34]. How can you discern whether a desire is disordered or aligned with God’s heart? What practical step could help you surrender a misplaced desire this week?
Psalm 1 compares a life rooted in Scripture to a thriving tree. What habit could you adopt to “meditate day and night” on God’s Word? How might this strengthen you during trials or droughts?
James 4:3 warns about praying “to spend it on your pleasures.” When have you caught yourself praying for something primarily for personal comfort or control? How could you reframe that request to align with God’s purposes?
The sermon describes trials as opportunities to become “more like Jesus” [01:10:25]. How might embracing this perspective change the way you respond to a current hardship?

Sermon Clips

51s

“``So let me tell you, if you start to pray, really pray the way that God desires us to do so, I'm gonna give you a couple of I'm gonna give you a promise here. It will get harder before it gets easier. It will get harder before it gets easier. And I know that sounds like not the promise you probably wanna hear this morning. But you remember that Staples easy button? Press it and it solves all your problems? I don't see that anywhere in scripture. I don't. God's purpose is not to make our circumstances easy so that we can succeed, but to make us strong enough so that whatever our circumstances, we can thrive.”

50s

“What if we prayed those two things next to each other just like Jesus taught us? God, I pray for a world, for a life with no cancer. I pray for a life with no broken relationship. I pray for a life where your kingdom has really come. But Lord, until that day that Jesus comes back and even beyond that day, I pray that your will would be done. And just like James says, you would teach me to count everything even my trials, knowing that if life should get hard, I'm just becoming more like Jesus. wouldn't that be a prayer?”

72s

“Our desires, they get disordered. They're they're not always trustworthy. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly in order to spend what you get on your pleasures, on the things that you think will bring you the most pleasure immediately. So what do we do instead? Well, James goes on and he he tells us, Don't be friends with this broken down old world. And that's what James mean when he says, means when he says world. He doesn't just mean the created world like it's just all bad all the time. He says this old broken down way of the world of desiring and wanting the wrong things, of seeking after power and pleasure instead of love and humbly serving each other. He says, don't be friends with the world, that's adultery. Instead, become a friend of God. Submit yourselves, in verse seven, therefore to God.”

69s

“When we are planted by the water of God's word, it means that hardship will come, drought will come, but because we are in the right place, we will continue to be healthy and whole. Now, I don't mean physically healthy because we all know someday, unless Jesus comes back first, we're gonna die. It's gonna happen. But rather in our heart and in our life, we will be healthy. And then finally, in all that they do, they prosper. You know what we need? We need a form of prospering that a fall in the market can't take away, that an economic collapse can't take away, that a war can't take away, that frustration and failure can't take away. That sort of prospering comes from loving and praying God's word.”

Ask a question about this sermon

First Presbyterian Church Carson City This sermon · AI assistant

What causes church conflicts and spiritual adultery?

Why do some prayers go unanswered?

How should Christians pray according to scripture?

Praying Rightly: Ask According to God’s Will

Devotional

Day 1: Prayer’s Soil: Roots in the Stream of Scripture

Day 2: When Requests Carry Hidden Price Tags

Day 3: Adultery of the Aching Heart

Day 4: The Prayer That Reshapes Limbs and Landscapes

Day 5: Patience—The Unwanted Fruit

Sermon Summary

Key Takeaways

Youtube Chapters

Bible Study Guide

Sermon Clips

Praying Rightly: Ask According to God’s Will

Share