James 4:1-3
“1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

What leads to a foxhole prayer – the “Lord, just get me out of this and I promise…” kind of prayer that we forget as soon as God saves our backsides? Don’t they also come from our desires? We kill and covet and we still can’t have what we want. We don’t ask God because we know it’s our self that desires. We  often then reframe the question to God, like spoiled children, hoping He won’t notice the intentions diving our desires.

Why do we end up on our knees, ducking incoming fire, praying to be saved from the mess we’re in?

God knows our condition. I imagine He is both frustrated and humored at our struggles. The battle between what we want and what God wants us to want. The battle between Godly things and worldly things. The battle between God and the world. We are the epicenter, the battle of the desires within us.

Do we seek worldly pleasures, do we seek worldly things? Do we ask God to increase our prosperity so we can show the world how great God is? Think about the motives. Think about the pride that drives the desire, the lust, the envy, for worldly things.

Or, do we take the blessings He’s given us and use them as He calls us to? Do we earnestly pray for knowledge of His will for us and the strength to carry that out? Do we take the blessings He’s given us, both financial and experiential, and use them for His ends in the world?

What leads to a foxhole prayer? Our strong self will that drives us to seek worldly things, our defiance of God, our comfort of sitting in our own poop of envy.

This is war, make no mistake, and the eternal home of souls is the target. Paraphrasing Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary: God’s grace and the Holy Spirit will cure our natural, worldly spirit. He will calm us and give us a spirit that is not of this world and consequently, not worldly.

This is war, make no mistake, and the eternal home of souls is the target. Do not store treasures here on earth…. The fruit of the Spirit…. You know the verses and they are real, the outcomes are real. Gird yourself for battle so that when God answers your next foxhole prayer, you come out wearing the full armor of God, ready to be the light in the middle of a dark battle.

There is such joy being in the presence of God, allowing Him to use you to win the war. Rise up and fight the good fight, the fight for souls.