Prayer; James 4:2-3
James 4:2b NASB
“You do not have because you do not ask.
Seven reasons why Christians don’t pray
1) They are in reversionism, in
carnality, in rebellion against God, so they don’t want to come to God in
dependence upon Him to ask Him for anything.
2) They lack confidence in being heard because they have
a sense of guilt and sin, and they don’t understand the doctrines related to
confession and cleansing.
3) People are generally ignorant of the biblical doctrine
related to prayer and how to pray.
4) Christians are spiritually ignorant of the mandate to
pray. They become too busy, too wrapped up in their own lives, too caught up with
temporal things to focus on God. We are commanded to pray without ceasing. We
are commanded in Colossians to devote ourselves to prayer.
5) Some Christians doubt that God is really there or that
prayer changes things. They just lack faith.
6) Sometimes Christians have gone through periods of disappointment,
especially in relation to trials and testing, and they think that God did not
answer their prayer so they become bitter.
7) Many Christians get caught up in forms of
hyper-Calvinism and distortions of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and
end up in fatalism. They just don’t think that prayer will do any good or
change anything. Yet what James says right here is: “You do not have because
you do not ask.