What May I Do For You?

Have you ever noticed that someone around you just refuses to be agreeable, and wondered why? Or that you can’t seem to be agreeable, for no known reason?

Contention, war, and strife appear to have two known causes: pride and discontent. The cause that I’m interested in at the moment is discontent.

Here is the fun part. You may be ornery because you’re discontent, and not only not realize you’re discontent, but, when faced with the fact, may not know what it would take to make you content. The fact that James needed to tell his readers why they were at war with each other is a good indicator that we may not think discontent is our problem. We may think we’re at war because other people have no sense. Or because the whole world is against us. Or because we’re having a bad day.

No, none of those things is the reason you can’t be at peace. Happy, content people are almost impossible to rile. Peace and prosperity are all but synonymous, perhaps because a prosperous, content person just can’t be pulled into a war.

You already know that James adds that you don’t have because you don’t ask. Oh, maybe you did ask, and you didn’t ask according to God’s will. No sweat—just ask the Lord to put His desires in your heart, and ask for that new thing. Or maybe you asked and your motives were wrong. No worries. The Lord is really good at purifying motives.

What I’m really getting at, though, is that sometimes we don’t recognize what we want. We go blindly on our way, with no thought for what is inside us. Perhaps you’re a young woman who has been raised around children, and there is the assumption that you will marry and have children. Maybe what you really want is to live in the bush with a bunch of Africans, as a missionary. So you’ll have strife in your life because you don’t acknowledge what you really want, and ask the Lord for it.

Or maybe you were raised in a missionary family, and it’s assumed that you will be a missionary. But you have a lightning-quick business brain, and what you really want is to go into business. Or your family may own a business, and it’s assumed that you’ll become a bookkeeper and keep the family books, when what you really want is to marry and raise children.

But isn’t it wrong and selfish to think about what you want? Let me put it this way. I dare you—in fact, I double-dare you—to receive from the Lord your heart’s desire, and then be stingy with other people. I don’t think it’s possible. You can’t give something you don’t have, but often we attempt to give others love and kindness, and succeed only in giving them judgment and martyrdom, because we’ve received nothing, ourselves, from the Lord.

The Lord waits to hear what He may do for you.

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