James 1:5–6

James has just said that the goal is for us to be complete, lacking nothing. Then at once these words follow: "If any of you lacks wisdom …" How often our trials reveal that lack! A child howls when things go wrong and it gets hurt. It lacks understanding. It cannot imagine why this has happened, or what it is for. The grown man in the same situation sets himself to understand, and profits by the trouble. But wisdom is more than mere understanding. The wise man is one who can apply with discretion the things that he understands.

Even if we are willing and truly want to do the will of God, we may often lack the wisdom to act according to His will in our trials. If that is the case with any one of us, James says, "Let him ask God." Our resource is God. We might hold back from turning to people. Their advice might be wrong. They might give it unwillingly, scold us for not knowing, or repeat what we told them in private. With God we need have no such fears. He gives freely, without reproaching us for our folly and feebleness.

When a soul truly enters the path of trials, he soon finds his lack of wisdom. Faith always meets such trials in a world that has turned from God. But his comfort is that the One he deals with is alone wise, and ready to guide those who wait on Him. How much better that wisdom should stay in Him, so that we depend on His guidance! If it were ours to own, we would be in danger of trying to manage without Him.

If we lack wisdom, we are simply to ask God for it. We may be sure of a generous answer, with no word of reproach. We are not expected to hold in ourselves the wisdom that is in God and comes from above. We may ask God for whatever else we lack and expect a generous answer too. But whether we always get it without a word of reproach is another matter. Sometimes the disciples asked the Lord Jesus for things, and He did not give them without a gentle word of reproof… But in those cases what they needed was faith. As believers, we ought to have that already.

We have known men who gave gifts, but did it unwillingly and with such bad grace that the gift turned bitter. God's gifts are not like that. With them the way of giving is an even greater blessing than the gift itself, if that is possible. "God … gives generously to all without reproach" (v. 5). His manner of giving increases the blessedness of the gift, and reveals His own perfect graciousness.

"Let him ask God." When trial comes, the Christian's first resource, and the first instinct of the new nature, is prayer. God always hears the prayer of His saints. Strengthened from above, the Christian can go through the trial in a spirit of obedience. In Gethsemane Christ prayed before He was in the trial; then in obedience He took the cup from the Father's hand. If we neglect prayer and the difficulties come on us unawares, we enter into temptation and we fall. Peter slept when he should have prayed, drew the sword when he should have submitted, and denied Jesus when he should have confessed Him.

Solomon did not ask for wisdom out of vanity or for personal advantage. He realised what a tremendous responsibility the Lord had entrusted to him, young and inexperienced as he was. He wanted wisdom so that he could rule God's great people well. May we too seek wisdom from above to function well in our daily tasks, family needs, and in the responsibilities God entrusts to us among His people!

Faith is the breath of prayer; prayer is dead unless faith breathes in it. "But let him ask in faith" (James 1:6). "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith" (Matthew 21:22). Without faith it is speaking, not praying. Faith must take prayer by the hand, or there is no coming near to God. A faithless prayer is fruitless.

"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." God is what He is, and His word is the word of truth. So there is no room for doubt about this: "it will be given him." That is why the verse goes on, "But let him ask in faith, with no doubting." Why should he waver, when God is the unwavering God and His word the word of truth?

God loves us to send our prayers up to Him in a spirit of confidence in His goodness.

So the apostle insists here that the one who asks should "ask in faith, with no doubting." Is it hard to do that? We are told at once how it is hard — where the doubt comes from. "For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind." He lies open to the influence of the things around him — the things the eye looks at the moment God is not before it.

The wave is exposed to winds from every quarter. We must not let the difficulty of the circumstances or the strength of opposing evil shape our prayers. In simple faith we look to the One who is above every opposing influence of evil — the One who can walk on the waves and calm the storm. He alone can give us the wisdom to act according to His will.

James is not speaking of the exercises an honest soul may have while working out what the way of the Lord is. He is speaking of the instability that comes from a double mind: the strife of our own wills with God's will, the desire to have Him act according to our mind instead of desiring to act according to His mind.

If we ask wisdom, how can He deny us? But suppose we mean wisdom to carry out some plan of our own devising. Then, if we are in earnest, the wisdom He gives must be wisdom to drop that plan.

The word here is not the usual word for a wave; it means a single billow, and here it is the plaything of winds blowing this way and that. How could it be otherwise with the man who in his weakness does not lean on the Lord? Whatever may be given, there is no real receiving from the Lord on his part who does not trust Him. If in one way he speaks, in another he feels and acts, being of double soul. Instability marks all his course.

So we need unwavering confidence if we want our prayers answered. To doubt is to dishonour God, and it kills our own prayers.