Forgetting What Matters
You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. James 4:2 NASB
You do not ask – You might treat this verse rather lightly because of the way it begins. After all, you aren’t a murderer. Perhaps you have even cleared away the symptoms of envy from your life. So this doesn’t apply to you, right? Think again.
The NIV adds a bit to the verse (“you do not ask God”) in order to make crystal clear that James has asking God in mind. But the addition isn’t textually warranted, and it just might push us to think that James is only speaking of “spiritual” matters. Yes, it’s obvious that asking God is the ultimate goal of a fulfilled life, but what if James has a more human perspective in mind? What if the reason you and I are frustrated, anxious, envious, lustful, angry, etc. is because we have forgotten to ask? Not simply forgotten to ask God, but more generally forgotten to ask at all. What if we experience distress because we don’t talk about what we really need? We merely assume that others can read our minds (or at least see our needs). We don’t ask! Therefore, we don’t have. And because we don’t have, all sorts of other complications occur.
The Greek phrase is ouk echete me aitheisthai. We need to pay attention to the two different negatives in this phrase. The first is ouk. It is a form of the absolute “not,” i.e., you do not have – unconditionally. Your coffer is empty. Your vault vacant. Whatever it was that you thought you needed, it isn’t there.
Did you need emotional support? Sorry. No one offers it. Was it financial help you desired? Empty again. Maybe it was a return to health. The doctor didn’t show. Maybe you longed for a restored relationship. No one answers the phone. Nothing. Nada!
But look at the second negative. It is me. While this also means “not,” it is conditional. It is the “not” of circumstances, subject to change. It’s like, “I probably will not make it to the meeting today,” subject, of course, to changes in the schedule. I just might make the meeting. It depends.
Notice how James employs these two words. First he suggests that you feel like things are never going to work out. You feel abandoned, empty, rejected, alone. No one understands you. No one cares. As far as you are concerned, this is the permanent state of affairs in your world—and you will have to do something if anything is going to change. What follows is a list of self-sufficiency choices. Your choices are probably not murder but they might include self-pity, self-medication and self-absorption. Certainly they will lead away from real connection with God, others and yourself! James offers a remedy. Ask! Don’t assume the world is impossible to change. Ask! Assume the conditional. The verb for “ask” is aiteo. It means both “request” and “demand.” Both require assumptive initiative. Both involve a request for yourself—request for things that seem like they will never happen. But they might. And that is James’ point. Not that God will be the only provider, but that you must change the situation by asking for what you think you lack. You must ask for the cupboard to be filled. Who you ask is up to you. Eventually you will need to ask God, but you can start by asking someone close at hand. After all, until you ask, they don’t know you’re running on empty.
If all of this is so obvious, why don’t we ask? Good question. Perhaps the answer starts with an assessment of how vulnerable you really are. After all, asking openly displays your insufficiency.
Up Close and Personal: As I finish writing this, I realize that I am the one who fears to ask. Yes, that’s right. I am afraid to ask for two reasons. The first is that asking shouts how inadequate I feel. It says that I can’t take care of myself, that I need someone else to make me whole and that I am unworthy because I am dependent. Of course, the biblical modality is dependence but I grew up in a world of Greek thinking where dependency is a clear sign of powerlessness. Most of my life I have spent in She’ol, that place where we exist as shadowy representations of ourselves and where, above all else, we are weak. Perhaps you know what I am talking about. It is more than guilt from sinful behavior. It is a general malaise, a state of being that constantly declares your incapacity. It is an attack on who you are, not just what you have done.
The second reason only becomes clear once I acknowledge the first. I am afraid. I am afraid that if you really knew how inadequate I am, you would withdraw your concern for me. I am afraid to let you in because I know myself too well—too well to think that anyone would really love me if they only knew all that I know. I would rather imagine that you should intuitively and automatically know what I need, and since it is clear that you don’t, that only confirms that you don’t really care about me. This is yetzer ha’ra thinking, the convoluted self-affirming logic that predicts the outcome and then acts to make it a reality. The logic is inescapable, granted the original premise that I do not deserve to be loved. Since I don’t deserve to be loved, you don’t meet my needs because I am unlovable. My observation of this truth is that you don’t act on my unspoken needs and therefore you don’t really love me because if you did I wouldn’t have to ask. There you have it. The perfect vicious circular logic of additive behavior.
James asks me (pun?) to ask my way out of this destructive wheel. It is not inevitable unless I let it be so. And even that is conditioned upon my not asking.
What now? Will I have the courage to ask?
Topical Index: ask, aiteo, not, me, ouk, James 4:2
Oh boy! I don’t ask because I’m afraid of being rejected and the pain I’ll have to work through afterwards. Father, help us!
Oh my, a time of looking in the mirror…..HELP!!
Oh! How you are in my head! Or perhaps, this world is filled with people like us…….. I know after my scleroderma diagnosis, renal failure, breast cancer and the last few years of surgeries upon surgeries help me bury myself in “She’ol, that place where we exist as shadowy representations of ourselves and where, above all else, we are weak”. Now, living “disfigured” I am not whole and I am afraid to ask because living as this shadow is just so comfortable because of its familiarity- not because it is comfortable- because it’s not!
But like Donna and Sara (and a host of many others here in THIS community), I loved this post as I know I need to scream HELP! And……. I know He will give me the courage to ask Him.
There is someone here who loves you just as you are, and he needs help too.
By the way, I didn’t mean for my post to sound pitiful or whining. Just life in the physical spilling over into the emotional and spiritual and mental and ……… Well, you know.
Oh, Donna hit the nail on the head! The answer to the question in my life of why I do not ASK is because I am afraid of being rejected. Why am I afraid of that? Because of the need to be perfect; which, if I read Skip right, is the bane of our western society. Perfection sets me up for rejection. The illusion of having to look ‘perfect’ must be the #1 thing that keeps us from the ability to relate to each other. I think Skip is right. The attempt to be ‘perfect’ is the biggest obstacle to the true definition of righteousness, which is the ability to relate to each other. Righteousness assumes that we are not perfect (competed) WITHOUT each other. The world’s understanding of perfection assumes that we are only perfect in OPPOSITION – even isolation – to each other. This is the crux of the clash between these two world views.
We have to change our belief system completely as to what righteousness is – David is so right – before we are able to leave the set up for rejection behind. I am going to have to submit to the judgment of heaven, which is going to be the measure of how well I am clearing the runway between me and all else (that ASKING stuff) to be able to duck out of the judgment of earth, which is all about keeping up the appearance of having of all together already. I cannot be rejected if I am not standing in a place that pits me against the world. If my well being is not something that is possible only if somebody else is worse off because of it, then no one is going to be in a position to reject me, which is basically self defense, if you think about it.
If I am not operating from the assumption that reality is about the survival of the fittest, then I have not set myself up as a competitor for the good stuff. Life – the good stuff – is something that we share together, not something that we only get in competition (which I think is the basis for all covetousness) with each other. The world has no models for this, so therefore I cannot look to the world to give me any ability to define relationship. It doesn’t have any. All it can do is set me up to be rejected when I ask. Conclusion: quit asking the world to define right-relating, and start asking it for connection.
There is nothing more attractive than vulnerability, but the courage – the humility – that underlies the sole basis for trust can only be found by connecting with heaven first. I cannot trade with the world with the currency of the world, which is competitiveness, or, covetousness. I can successfully connect with others only if I am dealing in the currency of heaven, but trust (which is that heavenly coin) is only possible if I have traded in the desire to be ‘first’, and ‘perfect’ and all those other underlying conditions that excite that covetousness. No one has ever been able to trust those attributes, after all. Duh.
Hello Skip, Sara, Lesli, Donna and others,
“You have not because you ask not.”
Via recent life experience, it seems others are more approachable on social media sites, especially where a common interest is the focus. I write nowadays because running small groups on Hebrew Roots was something I found others wanted short-term, not ongoing. They wanted snippets, short concise info bites not community.
Yet, self-pity and self-absorption untreated lead to the “icky” yetzer ha’ra.
To draw an analogy, the 1980s song, Lookin for love in all the strange places, might also apply to general asking. Asking for … in all the strange places, may be why we come up short or – have nothing. Just a thought.
David R
Wow, I am amazed at the insight and applicable to my life this portion of scripture is. Even the comments are deeply probing my wounded spirit. Oh! how I need to ask and make my requests known. Thank you for such wisdom in this. May I not forget what really matters and ask.
Reading the ESV and KJV it sounds as if James is saying if we ask we will receive if we truly need. Then he warns we will not receive if we ask to satisfy passion or desires… Yeshua taught the shortened psalms version we know as Our Father…
For me this implies we can ask, YHVH provides if we ask in Yeshua name. Isaiah name explanation I trust not Yeshua as a word in the prayer.
Pray I do not as my Heavenly Father knows what I need… I quarrel a lot because I neglect my own claims for fair treatment…. is it not this inner struggle that James is warning us against so that we do not blame YHVH instead of improving our faith as all is possible if we truly believe have faith as a mustard seed…
We live to die, Yeshua calls us to die so that we can live…
I have witnessed more peace and faith in those ridden with ailments and handicapped than with others like myself who just have enough… is this not James’ reprimand rather than saying just ASK…
My God, YHVH, “plucked me from the burning” (whose quote is that? I was thinking Oswald Chambers maybe) in an abusive home when I was about 5 or 6. God talked with me, wrapped His Wings around me, carried me, lifted me, protected me. He became my Everything … and I was (still am) an outcast in my super dysfunctional family. I’ve come to realize that, throughout my 60 years of life, I’ve been “an odd duck.” I never have been much of a conformist. I “am different from other people,” so I’ve been told… usually that doesn’t work so well in my favor. I have desired to be obedient to the LORD in a passionate, transparent sort of way… “warts” and all… but that turns people away in the end because most people choose not to be transparent. I’ve been told I love too much, that I wear my feelings on my shirtsleeve, that I make myself too vulnerable in the way I give to others, that I assume people want better for themselves (A HUGE FLAW OF MINE)… but, for me, not giving, not “rolling up my shirtsleeves and digging in with them” is a sort of death for me. It’s a necrosis.
People, even strangers, find me very easy to talk to (people will tell me things they’ve never told anyone.) I hear and see their pain and do what I can to help them use the suffering for good. (My home and my “stuff” have been open for needy people/animals from the time I became an adult and had my own home.) I’ve been like this since I was a young child.
When I read some of these posts, the light bulb inside my head (very dim, almost burned out some days due to chronic Lyme Disease) came on. My thinking goes this way: when people stay at a “friendly” distance and don’t really share the whole “wart-y” side of themselves (friends at different levels of intimacy), when they don’t share their real needs, pains, darkness’s, I become walled off. I distance myself from them…which they probably desire, but I don’t like that about me… at all. Messiah didn’t wall himself off… he gave… unto death…
Daria, I can so relate with what all you shared, especially the huge FLAW part!
Being pleasant and nice, makes one vulnerable to abuse.
But… the “friendly” distance perhaps is better than the pretender kind that share their sorrows and misery for their own ends. Sigh!
It just calls for decency and truthfulness in our dealings with people.
ABBA’s blessings upon you! Shalom!
I asked, I was vulnerable, and I got chewed up and spit out many times over. First by parents and teachers, broken people themselves, and people who didn’t understand my neurological processing issues of dyslexia and dyscalculia. I thought I would find safety and help in the love of a man. But twice over the men I married proved to be quite the opposite of safe and helpful. Being vulnerable with people does not always directly and immediately function as a catalyst for healing. Sometimes it opens the door for people to be cruel and manipulative. Yet being vulnerable is absolutely necessary for receiving help and healing.
We are back to Brene Brown’s excellent TED talk on vulnerability.
Perfectly said, Tanya. Basically, people love very poorly imho. PRAISE YHVH that He will let us get to know Him. Praise Him that He desires intimacy (transparency is required) … He created intimacy. People, on the other hand, no matter how “spiritual” they see themselves, continually want to build their own cisterns… cisterns that leak, cisterns of no use, cisterns that increase self-deception.
Be very wise in whom you trust yourself with (Messiah did that) but give to others with a heart full of hope that they will seek the Greatest of Lovers with everything they’ve got… He created Love. In face, His essence is Love.
Sorry, that last line is supposed to read, “In FACT, His essence is Love.”
Daria and Tanya, lots of us have been there, done that, and got the tee shirt too, and that is not wrong. I think we all have to try love from where we are first. Abusive people try that, too, you know: it just looks rather different than the trying that their victims typically employ. I think we are all guess-and-checking; even the ones who are walling themselves off from love. I think we all have different questions about what love is, and is not, and we all set ourselves up to learn a different lesson. The real question is, have we learned the lesson we set ourselves to learn, or are we just spinning the wheels of self justification and self pity back in our parking lots (not that I think either of you are doing that)?
That being said, I think there is a world of difference between being a victim and being vulnerable. There is also a world of difference between being abusive and being loving, too. They may look similar when you don’t know how to tell the difference, but part of the lessons of love we must learn is HOW to tell the difference, which is discernment. Love does not set you up for abuse, but neither does it require you to be abusive. Being vulnerable does not equate with being weak any more than being abusive equates with being strong. Victims end up giving abusers power in the name of love, and abusers end up insisting on defining what that love is for their victims. I found that it was a collusion of sorts – which is a type of relationship, but not one made in heaven.
True vulnerability comes with true strength, and that strength is humility. There is no stronger power on earth or heaven than the power of humility, which is the ability to call reality by its true name – no games or illusions. Collusions, either. No one has a thing to say in the face of the truth. I was able to redefine relationship when I became willing to accept the truth by trading in my expectations along with my attempts to mollify the expectations of others. Expectations set you up. Expectations insist on defining love, but that is the prerogative of heaven alone. A victim does not have to act in the weakness of letting themselves or others set the standard for love. Our strength comes from the truth that only heaven gets to set that standard. Humility is the act of letting it.
Just today I asked to be released from an on-going part of my
self-consumed self that I richly detest.
So, Skip, your comments today hit home. And thanks for sharing
and baring your own soul as well. We all need to better understand
that His way and purposes for us require us to get all of us out of
His way!
He needs us cleaned up and ready if we are to be used for His kingdom
purposes, most of which He’ll never reveal to us here. We simply go forth
in trust, but always knowing He’s just a heart-beat away and always, always
with His ever-listening ear closely tuned to that next beat.
If I’ve never learned anything else, I’ve learned how to ask!
It’s been a life changer. Thanks for the reminder how key it is.
I can SO relate. By all means, ASK. If someone asks, tell them. Don’t blow your opportunity to make that connection. There are some dying for you to simply ask. I know this is true…yet I can’t even take my own advice. Why? I guess there’s a few reasons. One is that I know others are running on empty and have nothing to give and/or I’ve asked too much already and have made a pest of myself. Some get emotionally burned-out from my emotional burnout. Another reason is that familiar issue of trust. Lack of trust can be a result of being mauled by a wolf in sheep’s clothing one too many times. The wounds are too deep and only superficially healed. They need debridement by an expert. There are no experts available. So-called licensed professionals are absolutely worthless. I know because I’ve had many; they aren’t allowed to show the kind of compassion I desire and I don’t want to feel patronized any more. It’s such a sickening process it makes me want to vomit. The search is on for a trustworthy person who offers to listen, can identify with the pain, show genuine compassion and gentleness, and hold me/cry with me without any expectations. Advice is not always necessary. The procedure could be reciprocated if wanted/needed. No one is perfect. Everyone has sinned; even people with certain leadership positions and responsibilities. We don’t know if we’ve done worse than others; people often keep their secrets hidden unless they are not ashamed of what they’ve done; feel someone else is going to reveal their sins for them; or are so desperate for forgiveness that they spill their souls. You have to find someone you can relax with; see what you need to when you look searchingly into their eyes; and trust. Once you find this person, make time to take them to a quiet place or go for a walk and talk for as long as it takes..and don’t forget the Kleenex! If you sense someone needs you to do this for him/her, ask them two things: Do you trust me? When/Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Of course, timing is an important consideration…but showing concern and asking them speaks VOLUMES even if they can only give you a lame answer at the moment. It shows you CARED enough to ask. They might spill their soul if the time and place were right.(either at the time of asking…or when the time is better).