Somebody better tell this guy that he can name it and claim it

What are the things I wish for? For the company's stock price to go up? Sure. That we can get a good price on those airplane tickets for our next vacation? You bet! For world peace, a cure for cancer and AIDS/HIV? Well, let's be realistic. So I was reading in James chapter 4:

You have not because you ask not. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

James 4.2-3

Another translation says "on your lusts." Now my first reaction when I read a passage like this is to say, "the name-it claim-it crowd ought to read this." But what about me? Isn't it James himself who says "if you don't actually do it, you're like the guy who forgot what the mirror showed him"? ... Yep, 1.23-24.

The things I wish or hope for, and hence much of my unspoken prayer life, do fall into the category of "so I can spend what I get on my pleasures." I hope the mutual funds do well and my employer's stock to go up so that I can retire early and spend more time lying around. Well, to be perfectly honest, it's not just for lying around, but also for meeting with other guys for prayer and fellowship, to finish some of those projects that I never got around to finishing, etc. But wouldn't it be nice to throw a few lamb chops and some eggplant on the grill, and to pop the cork on that 1999 Châteauneuf-du-Pape? To "eat, drink, and be merry" (Luke 12.19)? How dumb!

What do I want? What do I dream of? And why?