Be Still And Know

READ: James 4:2,3 NLT 'You don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.' Dream for a moment. If you could have anything in the world, what would you choose? I would be fascinated to know your answers – a beautiful large home; a yacht; a luxurious holiday; perfect health; world peace – I wonder what your answer was? Verse 2 suggests that we just need to ask God and we will get it. But verse 3 makes it clear that we need to ask with the right motive. God doesn’t necessarily give us exactly what we want. Imagine for a moment if we did get whatever our selfish desires demanded. We would be in control and everything would happen in exactly the way we wanted, and at precisely the time that we demanded it. For a brief moment it sounds like the perfect world. We would be in absolute control. The Bible has a technical word to describe such a place – it’s called hell. It’s the place where