James 4:2-3 - Homiletics

"Ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it on your pleasures."

Prayer is not to be selfish, or for the satisfaction of corrupt appetites; and where the spirit of prayer is absent there is no promise to prayer. "Incredible as it might seem that men plundering and murdering, as the previous verses represent them, should have been in any sense men who prayed, the history of Christendom presents but too many instances of like anomalies. Cornish wreckers going from church to their accursed work; Italian brigands propitiating their patron saint before attacking a company of travelers; slave-traders, such as John Newton once was, recording piously God's blessing on their traffic of the year;—these may serve to show how soon conscience may be seared, and its warning voice come to give but an uncertain sound (Plumptre).