Right From The Heart 1-Minute DevotionsPrimjer

Why Prayer Is Disappointing

Do you ever feel your prayers are not answered? God's Word gives us the key in James 4:3: "When you ask, you don't receive because you ask with the wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

The major reason prayer doesn't seem to work, is we tend to pray with selfish motives. God promises to meet our needs, but needs and wants can be two very different things. So much prayer is focused on how we can use God to get what we want. But the greatest example of prayer is found in Jesus. The night before His crucifixion, He asked his Father to spare Him the agony of the cross, but then added, "yet not My will, but Your will."

Prayer is a not a magic tool to get what we want. Prayer is communicating with God--talking and listening so we seek what God wants, asking Him for the strength to do it. Jesus did that, and what a difference it made.