History is full of examples of societies that tamper with God’s design for marriage, sex, and the family. It’s no coincidence that en vogue progressive ideas today, ideas with distinct roots in cultural Marxism, also decry marriage and the family as oppressive institutions that should be reimagined and sexual morality as outdated and even harmful.  

The Soviet Union was well known for rejecting so-called “bourgeois” morality in ways that led to rejecting reality. Economically this meant squashing human self-interest in favor of state control.  So, basic modern commodities like cars and plumbing could take years for the average Russian to secure. Marxist-inspired agricultural science rejected “Western” science and led to the deaths of millions as crops were planted in the dead of winter, too close together, and without pesticides in the mistaken belief that they could be “educated” to take on more beneficial traits.   
In the 1920s, Revolutionary Russia rejected “bourgeois” sexual morality by attacking the institution of marriage and the nuclear family. 
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed the nuclear family was, like religion, just another means of keeping the working class oppressed. According to the Marxist dialectic version of history, prehistoric humanity lived in a state of free love, and the nuclear family only emerged to protect the property rights of the rich through inheritance, keep workers content with less, and enslave women to the home.   
Engels, who spent a lot of time in Manchester’s red-light district, was more specific than Marx in his condemnations of the family.  
He wrote, “[W]ith every great revolutionary movement the question of ‘free love’ comes to the foreground.” Together, Marx and Engels attacked “bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child.” In their view, family was a social construct that stood in the way of revolutionary progress.   
When Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they put these anti-family theories into practice. In 1918, the Soviets issued decrees “on the abolition of marriage” and “on civil partnership, children and ownership.” Marriage could be declared without the involvement of the state, and divorce could be obtained just as easily. As one Russian journalist summarized, “Divorce was a matter of choice.”   
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Though individuals can and often do overcome broken homes and/or poor parenting, it certainly appears to us that our nation and culture may not be able to rise above the overall damage that has been done. The Bible speaks of woe for the nations that forget God. In order to “forget God,” these nations had to know Him at some point in time – and then very foolishly cast Him aside. Yet, as Christians, whatever may happen, we take great comfort in knowing that the Lord will not forsake us, his children. No matter what the future may hold, we know who holds our future.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)
Over twenty years ago, Joy and I came across a news story about an increase in “rogue elephants.” Okay, what is a “rogue elephant?” It turns out that when male elephants are raised without a father present, they are likely to act out with violence and extreme mayhem, causing much trouble in Elephant “society,” as well as other smaller animals that may cross paths with them. Who knew? We also watched a fascinating documentary on the horrendous problem of young male elephants that have been orphaned. “Orphan elephants go on the rampage” by Eddie Koch tells the reader the problem’s source in the first paragraph.
Like children, young elephants need discipline if they are to grow up as responsible members of society. Wildlife biologists say that orphan bull elephants in South Africa’s Pilanesberg Game Reserve have turned delinquent because they have never been taken in hand by their elders.
This came to mind as we discussed the recent opinion piece, “America’s crisis is a lack of fathers,” by  Rep. Burgess Owens, Rep. Byron Donalds, and Jack Brewer, which focuses on the issue of the importance of human fathers. They write:
There is little doubt that America is experiencing an unprecedented fatherless crisis. Approximately 80% of single-parent homes are led by single mothers; therefore leading to nearly 25% of our youth growing up without a father in the home.
They go on to note a seeming correlation:
85% of children and teens with behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes, and over 70% of all adolescent patients in drug and alcohol treatment centers originate from homes without fathers.
In addition:
data shows that children without a father in the home are five times more likely to live in poverty than a child in a two-parent household. Furthermore, research indicates that children without fathers at home are nine times more likely to drop out of school and represent 90% of all homeless and runaway children. We can no longer afford to ignore the debilitating impact that fatherless homes have on our youth and our country.
This situation has been a long while in the making. Until the last six decades, America lived under an essentially Judeo/Christian sense of morality and ethics. It isn’t that most Americans were Christian in the biblical sense. They weren’t. However, their general beliefs about right and wrong were informed and shaped by the Ten Commandments and New Testament ideas, encapsulated in “The Golden Rule,” for example. Americans had a strong sense of “fairness,” and most believed it was right to protect the weak, live honorable lives, and remain faithful to one’s spouse and children. This certainly does not mean that all individuals were fair, honest, or faithful to their marriage vows, etc., but people believed these things were right, even if they themselves violated them in practice. Peer pressure also tended to keep people “in line” to a certain extent. Television shows and movies also reflected a Judeo/Christian ethic and promoted solid “family values.” It was firmly held that the welfare of “the children” should be put before any selfish pursuits of either spouse. It was a different world.
The family was considered the building block of society. In that milieu, the importance and roles of the fathers and mothers were well understood. They both contributed to training their children. Through observation and imitation, the children learned about relationships, work ethic, the importance of education, and how to live in a complicated world. Not all families were healthy, and the children were often trained in those environments to mimic bad behavior. But there were usually other good role models that children could emulate. Often these alternative role models would be extended family members and neighborhood men and women. One’s friend’s parents could also strongly influence the path a child would ultimately take, as could adults at church and school. It is fair to say that most children treated all adults with a respect we do not see anymore. As the 1960s rang in, the nation gradually moved away from God, and Judeo/Christian values and families became increasingly fractured. This has deeply affected and changed communities of every stripe, but it hit first and especially hard in minority families.
A study of 1880 family structures in Philadelphia showed that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families, composed of two parents and children. Data from U.S. Census reports reveal that between 1880 and 1960, married households consisting of two-parent homes were the most widespread form of African-American family structures. Although the most popular, married households decreased over this time period. Single-parent homes, on the other hand, remained relatively stable until 1960; when they rose dramatically. (African-American family structure)
While 25% of children across all ethnicities are currently being raised without a father in the home, this statistic nearly triples among African-Americans:
In the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households had two parents.
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Praying for God’s glory means letting His sovereign wisdom decide what to do with your prayers and your life. It means keeping our focus on Him and on His glory over our own. “Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.” When we can’t pray and mean “Your will be done,” we are essentially telling God “My will be done.”

Discerning our motives in prayer isn’t always cut-and-dried. As justified sinners, we should always be suspicious of our sinful hearts. “The temptation to misuse prayer is native to us and comes . . . automatically to every believer,” writes Ole Hallesby.1
Our goal behind evaluating our motives should also be to have a pure heart before God—not necessarily to have prayers answered according to our liking.
The following diagnostic questions overlap a bit, because it’s easier to expose dirty motives by shining light on them from several angles. If you can’t answer the following questions in the affirmative, then your prayers are out of bounds and it’s time to check your heart.

Am I Praying for God’s Glory?

God calls us to do all things for His glory (see 1 Cor. 10:31)— including prayer. This is why Jesus teaches us that “whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). When we pray for our own glory, we clash with God’s purposes and exalt ourselves over Him. And our sinful motives often disguise themselves so well that we think we’re seeking God’s glory when we aren’t.
W. Bingham Hunter describes one subtle way of secretly seeking your own glory as “praying with faith in your faith.”2 This type of prayer twists the good promise of answered prayer into a formula. If I pray with enough faith, I will get what I want! And this not only doesn’t glorify God but also doesn’t often work. Hunter explains how praying this way leads to frustration:
When the answer is not forthcoming, we are left only with questions: Did I have enough faith? Did my friends who prayed with me have enough faith? Should I have fasted or perhaps claimed a different promise? Attention is centered on prayer methods and techniques for generating faith. Thoughts center on us. Then they begin to shift with measurable envy toward those who apparently had enough faith: Why him or her and not me? The progression may end in speculations about the reality of God’s love, justice and goodness. The results? We feel alienated from ourselves: we have too little faith. We feel alienated from others: they had enough faith. And we feel alienated from God who set up such a system in the first place. Essentially we are telling God how to glorify himself in our lives . . . and he wouldn’t do it.3
Praying for God’s glory means letting His sovereign wisdom decide what to do with your prayers and your life. It means keeping our focus on Him and on His glory over our own. “Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.”4 When we can’t pray and mean “Your will be done,” we are essentially telling God “My will be done.”
A few questions will help you to evaluate whether you are praying for God’s glory:

Would the desired answer to your prayer cause God’s name to be praised?
Would your desired answer to this prayer bring you closer to God or push you away from Him?
How would your desired answer to this prayer impact others? Would it help you to love them more?
Would Jesus pray this prayer in the same situation?5

Am I Praying in Line with Scripture?

This question provides a helpful litmus test for our motives. If we ever pray for something that’s forbidden in Scripture (and thus outside of God’s will), we cannot expect to receive the answer we’re hoping for—and we likely have an idol in our lives to repent of. R.C. Sproul exposes one particularly heinous way of doing this:
Professing Christians often ask God to bless or sanction their sin. They are even capable of telling their friends they have prayed about a certain matter and God has given them peace despite what they prayed for was contrary to His will. Such prayers are thinly veiled acts of blasphemy, and we add insult to God when we dare to announce that His Spirit has sanctioned our sin by giving us peace in our souls. Such a peace is a carnal peace and has nothing to do with the peace that passes understanding, the peace that the Spirit is pleased to grant to those who love God and love His law.6
Don’t miss Sproul’s last point: peace isn’t from God if it’s a “peace” we’re feeling when our actions are flying in the face of scriptural truth. We should weigh every prayer and every motive against God’s Word.7 When we are clearly at odds with the Word, we need to repent. When we aren’t sure, we need to ask God to reveal sin in us and to consider what negative desires and powerful emotions may be warping our prayers.

Am I Pursuing Humility and Holiness?

After James explains the danger of praying with impure motives, he shares how we can repent of them. He quotes from Proverbs, which says that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6; cf. Prov. 3:34), and then he presents this litany of commands:
Submit yourselves therefore to God.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Be wretched and mourn and weep.
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. (James 4:7–9)
And then he closes with what ties everything he’s been saying all together: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (v. 10). Essentially, James sandwiches commands to repent between two calls to humility.
Being humble before God is a key part of testing our motives, because it (1) recognizes that our motives may be out of whack and (2) acknowledges that God both knows our sinful motives and is able to reveal them to us. If we want to properly discern our motives, we need to pursue humility and holiness, because a life of sin and pride will cloud our spiritual vision and make it difficult for us to discern our true motives.
James commands holiness and reconciliation with God. The “double-minded” person mentioned in James 1:8 is someone who claims to love God but actually loves sin. James says in verses 7 and 8 that a double-minded person is unstable in his ways and “must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.” Does sin have a grip on your heart? Those who love Jesus keep His commandments (see John 14:15). In humility, repent of any double-mindedness in your life and pursue God as your greatest love. A healthy life of prayer must never be divorced from a faithful life of Christian obedience.
This article is an excerpt from the chapter “I Have Mixed Motives” of Kevin Halloran’s book When Prayer Is a Struggle: A Practical Guide for Overcoming Obstacles in Prayer. Pick up a copy of When Prayer Is a Struggle for more gospel encouragement and practical tools for growing in prayer. Visit www.kevinhalloran.net to learn more about the book or to connect with Kevin. Used with permission.

O. Hallesby, Prayer, trans. Clarence J. Carlsen, updated ed. (Minneapolis: Augs- burg Fortress, 1994), 122.
W. Bingham Hunter, The God Who Hears (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 1986), 161.
Hunter, 161–62.
John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary, rev. ed., Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1988), 188.
This last question is a paraphrase of Hunter in The God Who Hears, 198. 76
R.C. Sproul, The Invisible Hand: Do All Things Really Work for Good? (1996; repr., Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003), 209, quoted in Paul Tautges, Brass Heavens: Reasons for Unanswered Prayer (Adelphi, MD: Cruciform Press, 2013), 27.
It’s also worth mentioning here the utility of regularly praying Scripture, which helps us to keep our hearts and motives tied to the truth of the Word. Doing so is a prayer-filtering mechanism that makes discerning our motives easier and more automatic.