Prayer Requires No Selfish Motives

1986

Number 8 prerequisite for answered prayer is destroying selfish motives for things. This one’s kind of interesting. In James 4:3, he said you don’t have anything worth having because your heart’s so empty that you don’t even ask God for anything. You’re self-reliant. You want to do everything yourself. “You have not because you ask not.” You forget to pray! What an empty way to go through life is to miss those blessings out of just not praying. “You have not because you ask not.” Then he goes on to say, “You DO ask, but you still can’t receive the blessing from God because you ask amiss to consume it on your own lusts.” In other words, you ask selfishly—it’s ME, ME, ME, ME, ME—and God will not answer that kind of prayer.

I want to give you a good example of that. How about a very admirable prayer of, “I want my parents or I want my mate to be saved.” That’s a good prayer, right? Well, if I pray that prayer because I’m tired of them giving me such a hard time, if I prayer that prayer because it’s an embarrassment to me that my children aren’t saved or my parents aren’t saved; or if i pray that prayer even just because if I don’t, they might go to hell—all those things are man-centered. It’s a little bit subtle, but those are man-centered prayers. It’s, “what can I get out of it?” And those are not God-honoring prayers, and therefore, they’re not going to be prayers that God’s going to be quick to answer. Now, if you pray that God will save their souls because it’s unbearable in your mind that God would be dishonored by this rebellious life… okay, it’s a God-centered prayer. “God, you’re being embarrassed. You’re being humiliated by this rebellious life. Please, grant them the gift of eternal life. Grant them a knowledge of the truth to come to repentance. Work in their lives, bring conviction.”

H: Just one question. It is a selfish prayer then, to pray that, to just spare them the agony of hell…?

M: That’s very subtle. That’s very subtle, and I don’t want to be dogmatic on that. But I do want to say this, that anything that’s man-centered has no basis for an answer in the scriptures. It needs to be a God-honoring prayer. If what we’re doing is we’re looking at this person’s life and saying, “Father, you don’t deserve to be embarrassed this way. You don’t deserve to have a rebel stick his face up in yours and say, ‘I’m going to do my own thing!’” You see, that’s the way Moses prayed. He said, “God, it’s not in your best interest to destroy these people because, after all, what will all of their enemies say about You?” On and on and on we see that we do all to the glory of God, not to the satisfaction of self. So it’s very subtle. And like I said, I don’t want to be dogmatic on it, but it’s something to think about.

H: But the very fact… I always think why are we here? To glorify God. How do you do that? Just to express how good He’s been to the world by giving his Son.

M: Right.

H: And why did He send his Son—to save us from our own sins in hell. So when you’re praying for someone to be spared that, it glorifies God to do it. That’s the very reason that God so loved the world.

M: Yes, but he still intends for our attention to be on Him, and not on bailing ourselves out. Okay? It all works together, for sure, but that’s why I said it’s a subtle point.

The same thing can be true about being like Jesus. I pray to, “be like Jesus.” Admirable prayer, right? Well, why do I do that? So that I can be powerful, and I can be wise, and I can be a pillar in the church; and I pray that because I’m tired of all these struggles. If ’s okay to be tired of all these struggles, but when we pray that prayer because WE’RE tired of something, then that’s a prayer that’s, again, very subtly, but it’s selfish. Now, if we pray, “God, you’ve given me so much! I’m so tired of letting you down. I’ve disappointed you. I’ve dishonored you. You don’t deserve to be dishonored in this way. Please, release me from this weakness because it doesn’t glorify your Name, and I’m so sorry that I’m dishonoring your Name this way.” See, one is man-centered, the other is God-centered. I want to at least throw that out to think about that. “You ask amiss to consume on your own selfishness…” those are prayers that God won’t answer. You can deal with that as you’d like to, but I just want to give you some thoughts to think about. My prayer life has been altered drastically as I came to grips with that one.

If you pray to honor God, you’ll see amazing results in your prayer. I promise you that much.