Be The Fruit

Identify Your Idols: Watch what you Pray For.

by Bill Blair on 14/08/08 at 7:35 am

What have you been praying for lately?  Is there one thing that you offer up to your Sunday school class or small group for prayer requests every week?  If there is something that has been dominating your prayer life then it would be wise to take a step back and examine your heart because what you are praying for might be an idol in your life.

In Seeing with New Eyes, David Powlison discusses the concept of watching what you pray for:

“Your prayers often reveal the pattern of your imbalance and self-centeredness.  Of the many possible things to ask for, what do you concentrate on?  Prayer is about desire; we ask for what we want.  Do your prayers — or lack of — reflect the desires of God or of the flesh?”

What is the desire behind your prayers?  Is it a desire that glorifies God?   

Are you praying to lose weight?  It could be that you motivation is to glorify God, but it could be that you are chasing an idol of beauty.

Are you praying for God to give you a husband/wife?  You might be consumed by the desire for a spouse rather than trying to glorify God in the circumstance you are in.

Are you constantly praying for a job, money, or increased income?  You might be enslaved by the idolatry of attaining more stuff.

The examples could go on and on, but I hope you can see that sometimes we pray with wrong motives.  Let’s take a look at a passage of Scripture that examines this issue:

¹ What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? ² You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. ⁴ You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:1-4, ESV)

This passage is all about what we do when we are controlled by our lusts.  The original language used is the language used to describe warfare.  Essentially, James tells us that people who are controlled by their lusts will murder, fight, or quarrel because they do not get what they want.  Think about a 3 year-old who just was told that they cannot have any candy and you will get the picture.  Beyond that, James points out that some don’t ask, but others do not have because they ask with wrong motives.  So, in addition to pure ugliness, our wrong desires can come out in the requests we make to God.

Let me be clear.  A constant prayer concern is not always an idol.  In many cases, if you have a constant prayer request it probably means that you are going through a trial rather than worshipping an idol, but it is wise to always examine our motives when we are making requests to the All-mighty. 

If you want to see a good example of what it looks like to seek God with lustful or idolatrous motives, just watch any of the health and wealth preachers on TV.  Think about Joel Osteen who tells people that God wants to give them their “best life now.” But what does his version of the “best life” look like?  When you get down to it, Osteen is teaching to ask God to give you whatever you desire.  What desires does Osteen promote?  Primarily, he promotes pursuing idols of better health, increased wealth, and good parking spaces.  The relationship looks more like one we might have with a genie rather than the sovereign creator of the universe.

It is good to pray for the things we desire, but we should always remember that sometimes we desire wrong things.  Take notice of what you are praying for and examine your heart because your prayers reveal your desires and your desires might be for idols that are controlling your life.  

Until next time, put God first and “be the fruit.”