5 Bible Verses about Praying Amiss

You ask [God for something] and do not receive it, because you ask with wrong motives [out of selfishness or with an unrighteous agenda], so that [when you get what you want] you may spend it on your [hedonistic] desires.

Go, cry out to the gods you have chosen; let them rescue you in your time of distress.”

But from what is left of the wood he makes a god, his carved idol. He falls down before it, he worships it and prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god.”

“Assemble yourselves and come;
Come together, you survivors of the nations!
They are ignorant,
Who carry around their wooden idols [in religious processions or into battle]
And keep on praying to a god that cannot save them.

Then the sailors were afraid, and each man cried out to his god; and to lighten the ship [and diminish the danger] they threw the ship’s cargo into the sea. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship and had lain down and was sound asleep.