God loves you too much to answer that prayer

🛐 Daily Prayer: "Whenever we ask wrongly, you would, in great wisdom and love, be pleased to refuse us."

Author

SpurgeonBooks
August 05, 2024

Pray with Spurgeon

Daily Newsletter from SpurgeonBooks

This week, our prayers and Scripture readings each day will focus on unanswered prayers. Next week, we’ll highlight a different theme. Invite a friend to pray with you by sending them this link.

DAILY PRAYER (BY SPURGEON)

This morning, we feel inclined to bless you for the many occasions in which you did not answered our prayer; for you have said that we asked wrongly and therefore we could not have; and we desire to register this prayer with you, that whenever we do ask wrongly, you would, in great wisdom and love, be pleased to refuse us.

Amen.

VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)

“You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” (James 4:3)

The lusts of the flesh come in, and put us upon the wrong track; or if we take the right road, yet, if the lusts are there, God will not bless us, because, in doing so, he would be helping us to gratify our lusts.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCE

How honesty with God (and others) can change your prayer life

This week, as we reflect on unanswered prayers, you may be reminded of many times in your life when it looked like God didn’t care about you. How should we respond to God when our faith is slipping and our world is falling apart? Most of us try to fake-it-till-we-make-it, slapping together vague religious language until the trials pass.

But that’s not how Scripture encourages us to pray.

Instead of faking a smile, we should be honest. We should lament. We should weep before God. We should urgently beg him to set us free, “How long oh Lord?”

A great, encouraging book to help you understand God’s invitation to honesty and lament in prayer is Just Be Honest: How to Worship through Tears and Pray without Pretending by Clint Watkins. This book is filled with practical counsel on how to approach God with honesty, lament, and faith. It also has sound biblical advice for how to talk to other Christians when you’re suffering.

This is a phenomenal book that I know will encourage you, so I hope you’ll grab a copy today.