Do You Need Wisdom? James 1:5-8 & How to Get It - Episode #26

The Prayer Podcast with Jan L. Burt

Well hey there, welcome back to The Prayer Podcast. Happy, blessed, Jesus focused new year to you. May the blessing of the Lord be upon you every day of this year! I’m so thankful you’re listening, and today we are jumping back into our series on James, where we look at verses from this powerful New Testament book and we pray based on those verses.

2024 Prayer Planner from Shannon Roberts

And I also have something fun to share with you today - so, if you’ve been around Amazon over the last few years, I am thinking you may have seen, or purchased, the really pretty chalkboard themed prayer journal - in fact, if you open Amazon and search for “bestselling prayer journal”, the one I’m talking about pops up first. Its title is Prayer Journal for Women by Shannon Roberts, and it’s for the whole year, 52 weeks. It’s so pretty, and she now has something new for 2024. It’s a planner for the whole year, but it’s a prayer planner. And I actually won a copy during an Instagram giveaway that Shannon held. I was so excited that I actually squealed in delight! I got it in the mail right around Christmas and it is gonna get prayers written in it all year long. I love having my prayers and the ways God answered in one place, and this is going to be really special for me to look back on later in the year, just a testimony to God’s faithfulness and to how He answers prayer and a written record of God moving in real time. I’m going to share a link so you can take a look at this prayer planner, and I’ll be sharing about it on The Burt (Not Ernie) Show too, so if you are looking for something like this, maybe give it a look and pray about grabbing a copy. Maybe as a gift for someone else, too. So, Shannon, thanks so very much for creating this prayer planner. It is really going to be a blessing to me and to so many others during the year. I’m expecting to have some stuff prayed through and documented in 2024!

A couple of episodes ago we took a look at James chapter one, verse one through four. And now we’re back in this James series, after a couple of special episodes for Christmas and the New Year, and I would love to invite you to listen to those if you haven’t, because I prayed on those a lot before working on them and the blessings that are shared in those shows, episodes 24 and 25, are what I know the Lord led me to pray for all of you. So, if you could use a blessing, feel free to check those out. And I also really need to mention one more thing. The Prayer Podcast has had a large uptick in listeners and download via iHeart radio. If you listen via iHeart radio, can I just give you a shout out and tell you that I’m so thankful you’ve found this show, I am humbled and honored you’re listening, and I am excited to get to know you maybe hear from you if you’d like - via email at [e-mail], if you ever have a prayer request, I do pray for every request I receive and they are always confidential…my senior pug is here in my office when I pray and if I pray out loud, he can hear me maybe…he is sort of going deaf as he is north of 14, but other than that, it’s just me talking to the Lord and it is a privilege to pray. Or find me on TT IG @janlburt.

Verse 5 NLT - If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. Vs 6 - But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Verses 7 and 8 - Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

Okay, there’s a lot in these four verses. If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. This is telling us to pray, ask for what we need when we need it in terms of wisdom, and there’s the promise that God will give it to us. He is a generous God. Sometimes we pray as if He were stingy, but He is anything but. He won’t rebuke you for asking - isn’t this good to remember? Do we sometimes pray with hesitancy, with some pauses and some angst because we’re not totally sure we can pray about any old thing? Are we ever afraid of His rebuke? Well, this states that God won’t rebuke us for asking. And then there is a BUT…when we ask Him, we need to be sure that our faith is in God alone. What’s James saying here? Is it really an issue for believers to not have our faith in God alone when we pray and ask Him for specific things we need, when we need wisdom and ask for it? Well, sure. That’s exactly what James is saying. Let’s not do that! Let’s pray with our faith in God alone! Not in our own plans for how God needs to get something done, and not with the divided loyalty that is, quite frankly, far too prevalent among God’s people. In God alone. There’s no wiggle room here, no room for any other thing to have hold of some aspect or portion of our faith. Not anything - not job status or lack thereof, not bank account numbers, not the guru we follow on social media, not our estate planner, not the self-help book we’ve been hearing about, not in anything else at all - just solely and singularly in God. And then there is a period. Not a comma, not a question mark. A period. Do not waver - okay, so make up your mind that your faith as you pray is only in the One to Whom you are praying, and then, do not waver on that point. It sounds terrible, like a rough and tumble and just awful life, one that is as unsettled as a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. The sea is restless, isn’t it? So restless. There will be no sea in heaven, no more restlessness…let’s live a life of the peace Jesus promised to leave with us, and let’s stop wavering when we pray and be done with the unsettled life that tosses us around like the restless sea. Be at peace, be at rest, and set your faith in God alone as you pray for the wisdom you need for the life you’re living on this planet. No divided loyalties between God and the world - because, ick! No longer unstable in everything that we do - because we have turned from that instability that comes from divided loyalty. We do not waver. We know the One in whom we trust, and we pray with our faith firmly rooted and grounded in Him.

And that’s my prayer for you today.

Lord, take these words from the Bible, Your love letter to us, and make them true for the one listening today. Move in their heart, mind, soul, all of their life, and show them the way to remain in Your peace, never again unsettled, but coming to You with their needs knowing that You have promised to provide the wisdom they need. Give them Your wisdom, Lord. Insight and understanding and clarity and favor all come from Your hand, and I ask You to bless them with those things. Root us deeply in You this year. May we see You exalted and lifted high, honored and glorified in all sorts of ways, and Lord, move in our lives. Act on our behalf. Life can be so good, and also so hard, often in the same life season. Bless them highly, open doors and shut others, protect and heal, lead and guide, set our feet on paths of Your choosing, show up and show off, and all the glory is Yours. Thank you for all You did for each of us and for all of us corporately as Your body in 2023. Would You do even greater things in 2024? Make us to shine bright like stars in the universe, and grow us in all the ways that You choose so that we may be fully ready to meet You one day. Thank You for the gift of prayer, we don’t take for granted what an amazing thing it is to be able to enter the throne room of grace and bring our needs, our hopes and dreams, our hurts, our praises, and our innermost fears and thoughts and the needs of our loved ones directly to You. It is a gift, and I thank You for the blessing of praying today. Hear and answer, in Jesus Name, Amen.

Thanks so much for joining me today. And as always, feel free to share this episode because honestly, that’s the highest compliment you could give. I’ll see you back here next time! Bye bye.