What does it mean to "ask amiss" (James 4:3)?

You do not qualify your prayer by the will of God; you fail to subordinate your petition to the glory of the Lord. Your motive is not purely His good pleasure. You seek your own gratification or comfort. You would consume the answer, did you get it, on your pleasures. Therein lies the secret. You ask “evilly.”

How many crave the cessation of adversities, wars, and such like, in order that they may have their own way in self-indulgence and money-making and pleasure.

Verses 2 and 3 tell us the way this evil works. First, there is the desire for what we have not. Now this desire may carry a man to the point of killing in order to achieve his end, but at any rate it fills him with envy if he cannot accomplish his desire. And after all there is a very simple way in which we may receive what we desire, if indeed we are Christians. We may struggle and strive and move heaven and earth, and yet receive nothing. Yet the Saviour Himself has told us to ask and we shall receive. We have not, because we ask not.

Does someone say in a rather aggrieved tone, "But I have asked, time and again, yet I have never received." The explanation may be that you have asked "amiss" or "evilly", your object in asking being simply the gratification of your own desires. Had you received it, you would have just spent it upon your own pleasures. Hence God has withheld from you your desire.

How plainly this teaches us that God looks at the heart. He scrutinizes the motive that lies behind the asking. This is very searching, and it explains a lot of unanswered prayer. We may ask for thoroughly right things and be denied, because we ask from thoroughly wrong motives.

— James gives several moral hindrances to prayer. First, there is "double mindedness"; no real godly earnestness or definiteness of purpose. "Let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord (James 1:5-8). Second, asking amiss. "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your pleasures" (James 4:3). The word "pleasures," given in the margin of the Auth. Vers., is correct. It is not "lusts," but "pleasures" and that, not necessarily bad pleasures. What is contemplated is self-pleasing, the mere desire of the natural mind; God's glory or our own spiritual profit, not considered at all; and God's people (see succeeding verse) living in friendship with the world, which is, spiritually, adultery.

James gives several moral hindrances to prayer. First, there is "double-mindedness"; no real godly earnestness or definiteness of purpose. "For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord" (ch.1:5 - 8). Second, asking amiss. "You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures" (ch.4:3). The word "pleasures," given in the margin of the Authorized Version is correct. It is not "lusts," but "pleasures" - and that, not necessarily bad pleasures. What is contemplated is self - pleasing, the mere desire of the natural mind; God's glory or our own spiritual profit, not considered at all; and God's people (see succeeding verse) living in friendship with the world, which is, spiritually, adultery.

There was much strife and contention amongst them. Whence come wars and fightings? Certainly not from the wisdom which is above, which is first pure and then peaceable. But wars and fightings are the fruits of the old nature, the flesh. They come from the pleasures which war in the members. The gratification of the lusts of the natural man produces fightings and not the new nature, that which is from above; this includes all forms of lusts, not only those of the flesh, but the lust for power, the lust for preeminence and leadership, the lusts of the mind. "Ye lust and have not"; there is nothing that can satisfy the heart of man; any kind of lust will end in disappointment and remorse. "Ye kill and covet and cannot obtain." This is the way of the world in sin and away from God; it shows that James speaks to the unbelieving of the twelve tribes, and pictures their condition. "Ye fight and war. Ye have not because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it in your pleasures." The natural man is also religious and as such prays. But their prayers sprang from the old nature, the desires of the flesh; they received not because they asked amiss. They prayed for selfish things, incited by selfish motives, so that they might gratify their sinful natures. Even true believers often ask and receive not, because they ask amiss, out of selfish reasons, to minister to their own pleasures and gratification. If the Lord would answer such prayers He would minister to that which is evil.

Dependence on God was forgotten; will acted for itself; they did not ask of God, or if they asked, it was but with the desire to make God Himself the servant of their pleasures. God does not respond to such prayers. Sad state of man! God was forgotten, and still worse, the heart was the slave of pleasure, and under the yoke of its passions, far from peace and quietness: war within, and open sin without, afar from God in the world - this passing scene in which such desires find their sphere - or, at least, if God was known, He was forgotten by their rebellious hearts. Therefore the friendship of the world is enmity with God. Such a Christian, conformed to the world, forgets that he is purged from his old sins. He walks in forgetfulness of God, in the path of the unbeliever, and conscience retreats driven back by lust. When he asks of God he does not receive, because he asks, as a worldling might, to spend it on his pleasures.

But where Christ is not before the eye of faith working by love, how mournful the issue! "Ye lust and have not; ye kill, and are jealous, and cannot obtain; ye fight and war; ye have not, because ye ask not; ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend [it] in your pleasures." Here the evil is traced to that unhallowed desire that is called "lust," whatever may be its object, and whether corrupt or violent. It is wholly in contrast with subjection to God and His word. It is therefore antagonistic to the affection and mind of the Holy Spirit, as is said in Gal. 5:17, "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these things are opposed one to the other, that ye should not do the things that ye would."

Here therefore we have, traced in unerring lines, the inevitable failure of such a course. There are desires which come to nothing; there is violence to an extreme, and envy or jealousy to the full, yet still dissatisfaction; there is contention ever growing worse; there is no asking, and no answer of peace. If there be asking apparently, there is the reserve of selfishness; it is evilly done to squander on their pleasures.

James gives us the other reason too. We ask and receive not, because we ask amiss that we may consume it upon our own lusts; selfishness. Do you notice the secret of all prayer? Look at what the Lord has given us. Not a model to say like parrots, but to show us the true spirit of prayer, "Our Father, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done." It is all God's glory, all God's interests; self is left behind, put in a secondary place. Whenever we are thinking more of the glory of God than of our own selfish interests, we are in a true attitude of prayer. Would it were ever thus: Thy will, Thy kingdom, Thy glory. Whenever God is glorified we may rest assured that His beloved people will not fall short of their blessing.

Now read James 4:3. "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts." From this we learn that those who ask anything of God for a selfish reason will assuredly be disappointed. God will not be a party to self-gratification. The prayers recorded in Scripture, to which such wonderful answers were given, were prayers on behalf of others, or prayers that had God's glory in view in connection with those who uttered them. A second condition, then, is a pure motive.

The confidence we should have as children of God is that our Father knows infinitely better than we do, and that He seeks our profit. To ask, therefore, "according to His will," and not according to our will, is the unselfish path in which the Spirit leads. We sometimes "ask amiss," because self, in some shape or other, is our object, and not the Lord's glory; and no marvel if such prayers are not answered. "Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts." (James 4:3.) Who would wish such prayers to be answered? and yet it is well to watch our hearts as to this. On the other hand, our relationship with God our Father forbids that anything should interfere with the freest actings of filial love. The Spirit, therefore, en- joins us to "be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to make our requests known unto God." (Phil. 4:6.) He does not here promise that all our requests shall be answered, but this Scripture does enjoin that outpouring of heart becoming a child to his Father.