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Or you pray and don’t receive, because you pray with the wrong motive, that of wanting to indulge your own desires.

You unfaithful wives! Don’t you know that loving the world is hating God? Whoever chooses to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy! Or do you suppose the Scripture speaks in vain when it says that there is a spirit in us which longs to envy?

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When you ask, you do not receive,(A) because you ask with wrong motives,(B) that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You adulterous(C) people,[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world(D) means enmity against God?(E) Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.(F) Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us[b]?(G)

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Footnotes

  1. James 4:4 An allusion to covenant unfaithfulness; see Hosea 3:1.
  2. James 4:5 Or that the spirit he caused to dwell in us envies intensely; or that the Spirit he caused to dwell in us longs jealously