Every year, Americans fail to spend $23 billion dollars in gift cards. That’s an average of $187 per person in gift certificates, Amazon cards, Starbucks bucks, and other monetary gifts they’ve received and left in a drawer somewhere doing nothing. 47% of American adults have unused gift cards at home. What’s particularly interesting is the higher the household income of the person in question, the more unspent money they are likely to have stashed away and forgotten. I’ll confess that I have more than a few gift cards for businesses that have long since gone out of business. The more I think about the fact that I do that regularly, the crazier it seems to me. I went to a coffee shop in Fort Benton last week, taking a gift card with me to pay my tab, and then forgot all about it and didn’t spend it. It’s like being told that you can get something for free and paying for it anyway.
In the Biblical book of James, a similar phenomenon is called out. “You do not have, because you do not ask.” He’s addressing the prayerless state of the church. Believers were frustrated with God’s lack of action, which prompts James to point out that the first cause of their spiritual dryness is that they aren’t talking to God about it. They aren’t asking for His participation in their lives. The implication is that God would act, but He doesn’t because they are leaving God’s action in a drawer unused. Instead, they are doing without and wondering why God isn’t moving. The philosopher Blaise Pascal said that God, “instituted prayer in order to allow His creatures the dignity of causality.” The idea is that He gave us a role in how life will turn out by giving us a share in influencing the outcome. C.S. Lewis says that He does this in two ways: by allowing us to change things through our work and through our prayers. Far too often, we trust our own efforts more than we trust God. I would argue that this rises out of a lack of relationship with God. We don’t rely on Him.
Philip Yancey wrote in his book on prayer: “Prosperity may dilute prayer, too. In my travels, I have noticed that Christians in developing countries spend less time pondering the effectiveness of prayer and more time actually praying. The wealthy rely on talent and resources to solve immediate problems, and insurance policies and retirement plans to secure the future. We can hardly pray with sincerity, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ when the pantry is stocked with a month’s supply of provisions.” Trusting ourselves, our money, and possessions more than we trust God leads to not asking him for anything. We don’t need him, so we ignore Him. I would argue that this “need-ignore” relationship isn’t the kind of relationship God desires of us at all. Loving relationships aren’t transactions. God desires to have relationship with us. This is the underlying problem that James is addressing: believers were so focused on the world around them and their own selfish interests that they didn’t consider engaging God personally. Prayer is more than a Christmas wish list. It is conversations with our Father in Heaven for the purpose of having a relationship with him. When we lack intimacy with God, we don’t talk to Him at all. James tells us that the solution is to repent of our double-mindedness and return to Him. The good news of the Gospel is that through Jesus, God welcomes us home with celebrations and joy.
