Desire, Discipline, Delight part 4

One of the points that need to be made here (which we touched on a couple of years ago in our Sunday Morning Worship series “Faith that Works”) comes from James 4:2, 3 “You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive…”
 

In verse 2, it states that the reason we don’t have that thing we are seeking is because we haven’t asked for it. I wonder how Hannah would feel about that, because for years she had asked and did not receive. If it is as simple as asking for it and receiving it, then it is something within the Will of God. God says, “Just ask and you’ll get it.” 

But right after verse 2 says, “All you need to do to receive this thing is to ask for it,” verse 3 says, “When you ask you do not receive.” So it’s not just about asking, is it? It’s asking with the right motive. In fact, that is exactly what the last part of verse 3 tells us. James 4:3 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”
 

It seems that Hannah might have had wrong motives - until she put God’s Will before her own. Initially, Hannah wanted a child for herself (possibly in part to hush her rival), but God was looking for a leader of His people. 

This was a time in the history of Israel when leadership was hard to find. The giant lawgiver, Moses, is long gone. His successor, Joshua, is gone also. That whole generation and more have left the scene. The giants of the faith had given way to lesser leaders and now they are gone, too. For the most part, Israel is a leaderless people (this was before kings ruled Israel). 
 

It was a time when the people had no ideals. The nation was rapidly drifting down to a very low moral level. In Shiloh, formal worship of Yahweh, the one true God, was kept up. That’s where Hannah went to the temple each year to pray. But its own priests were tainted with the worst impurity. Eli was the priest - but not a good priest, in that he did nothing about his rebellious priest sons, Hophni and Phinehas. He was the senior priest and could have stopped their practices, but didn’t.
 

God wanted a leader for the nation. But there were no male leaders. Therefore, God had to get a woman to help Him before He could get a man. (This was true also with the birth of His son. He had to find a pure woman, a virgin, before the Son of God could come to earth.) Eventually, He finds Hannah. The initial problem with Hannah is that she does not get her prayers answered. Hannah obviously had in her the making of the woman God needed. He honors Hannah by choosing her. But she must be changed before she could be used.
 

People Ought Always Pray

There is one final point I want to make about this. In Luke 18:1, Jesus teaches a very important point about prayer. Luke 18:1 “Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and never give up.”
 

Sometimes, we have to do things out of obedience rather than desire. Even if you don’t have a great desire for something, by making yourself pray, desire can build. The word, ‘ought,’ in this verse, Luke 18:1, means: an act of the will. People, by an act of their will, should pray. When my alarm goes off in the early morning so I can pray. I don’t jump out of bed and say, “Praise God! I’m up. I was tired of sleeping anyway.” It’s an act of my will. And sometimes I fail, but the more you do it, the more you want to do it because you develop a hunger for it. 

Hunger for food is an active sensation of a physical need. It prompts the request for bread. If you feed your body each time it wants bread, it begins to want bread more and more often. However, there are times when a person will make themselves eat even though they are not hungry, because they know their body needs the nutrition. 

Continued tomorrow