"Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss..."

                            -James 4:3

This evening I had my Bible open to the book of James - one of my favorite books in the New Testament - and I happened across this verse. James tells his readers here that the reason they had not received is because they had been asking amiss - or erroneously. In other words, just as searching for oranges on an apple tree would no doubt leave me with a lack of oranges, asking amiss will inevitably leave me with a lack of results. After reading this verse, I was reminded of another passage of Scripture in the book of II Chronicles:

"And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.
And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign."

                            -II Chronicles 16:12, 13

We see here that King Asa made the same mistake as the Israelites whom James was addressing in his epistle. When he became sick, just as James' readers in the New Testament, he received not because he asked amiss. Instead of going to God, he went to man and the consequences cost him his very life.

Let us be careful today that we don't make the same mistake. Instead of going to man, let's go to God. David tells us in Psalm 146:3 "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help." If we go to the Lord, we are not asking amiss and we will receive.