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James 4:3
You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
James 4:3 · World English Bible
James 4:3 in other translations
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures.
You ask, and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures.
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In context
1 Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
2 You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
3 You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
4 You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
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