The proud do not ask. Asking means admitting you are not the source, and pride cannot say that. So it grabs. The humble open their hands.
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” (James 4:3, ESV)
There is a wrong way to ask. It is asking God to fund the very thing already at war inside you. So ask, and ask clean. Not give me what I crave, but make me who You want.
And if you think you have gone too far to ask at all, meet Manasseh. The worst king Judah ever had. Fifty-five years spent on evil. Idols in the temple. His own sons burned as an offering. If anyone was past the reach of grace, it was this man.
They dragged him to Babylon in chains. And there, in a foreign prison, he did the one thing pride never does. He humbled himself and prayed. And the text says God was moved, and heard him, and brought him home.
If God answered that prayer, from that man, you are not too far gone to ask.
Today: Ask for one thing. Then ask Him to change what you want, until the asking is clean.