Praying with Wrong Motives

I was experiencing a very unsettling feeling. I had just approved a submission proposing to reject an appeal. Although I initially wanted to accede to it, we had concluded after much internal discussion that rejecting it was the legally more defensible position to take. 

But when we put it up, a very astute boss at the next level asked us to try to find out one more detail from the overseas authorities to back up one of our statements. We agreed to do so even though we felt the overseas authority would not reply in time, and to our surprise they did!  And from the surface looks of it (we are still trying to decipher a lot of technical charts and explanations they gave us), it looks like we may have to reverse our position...

Now this is a mortifying position to be in for a policy department, to put up something which later you realise or your bosses point out is actually the wrong position.  I mean, correction of English, better nuancing, reorganisation of arguments, I can handle, but to have to reverse your recommendation, is like being told you are doing your job entirely wrong. My first reaction was to pray that in dissecting their replies we would be proven right, that we should still reject their appeal.

However, it so happened my QT today was on James 4:1-4 'What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.'

I certainly identify with the' desires that battle within you' part - I dearly desired to be proven correct because to be proven otherwise would be bad for the reputation of my policy outfit and for me as well. The part on quarreling and fighting, I felt like I was quarreling with myself and trying to find arguments so that I should be right. But I was quite convicted by the end, that I had to pray for the right and best outcome to be achieved because that is the right thing to do, and not to pray to save my own face. Because to pray like that would be to 'ask with the wrong motives'. 

In fact I was reminded that my prayer just before our discussion with the bosses was that we would collectively come to the best outcome, although I had not anticipated that this would mean having to eat humble pie! 

Now I have to come to terms with the fact that we may have to go back to tell them we are reversing our position, and to be ok with that, because if I didn't have to care about my own reputation and career, that would be what I would gladly do.  Perhaps I should pray for courage, moral courage to do what's right, to seek to please God only and not man, and to do what seems painful as an offering to God, a living sacrifice. 

I am always surprised at how the Word of God always comes in a timely manner to remind me....