James 4:3

And even if you do ask God for something, he doesn’t listen to you. He knows that you are just thinking about yourself. He knows you just want to make yourself happy, and you don’t care about anybody else, so he doesn’t give you that thing you want.

Plain English Version

In The King James Version

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

In Context

2You think you really want something a lot, and if you can’t get it, you argue and fight for it. You try to work out ways to trick people, or maybe even kill people, just to get something you want. But you don’t ask God for it, and that’s why you don’t get it.

4If you are like that, it shows that you left God. You stopped following him and joined the other people in the world that hate God. They are God’s enemies. So if you join up with people like that, you make yourself God’s enemy. You ran away from God. You are just like a woman that leaves her husband and runs away with another man.

Read all of James 4

Matthew Henry on James 4:2-11

Origin of War and Contention; Against Pride; Submission to God. ( a. d. 61.) 1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. 4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever… Read the whole commentary →

This Verse In Other Editions

Study James 4:3