If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it
to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But
when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided
loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the
wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything
from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and
the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. James 1:5-8
To have a divided mind means a person’s loyalty is being pulled between
opposing choices. Up or Down, Right or
Left, Good or Evil – we must constantly choose.
Even taking the next step is only possible when we choose which foot
goes first.
The person who has a history of choosing that which ends badly, eventually comes to the
state of a divided mind. Still sensing
what is right and good, that person finds it impossible to decide; it’s being
stuck, paralyzed by a mountain of drama and decline. This is the instability of mind that, left
unchecked, can sadly wind-up behind locked doors of a hospital ward. At the very least, it is a painful existance.
This is a common problem in spiritual matters. Apostle James may have been a sufferer. James grew up in the same house as his older
brother, Jesus. He may have had typical
sibling issues early on, but eventually found faith in his brother as Lord. But the struggle to arrive at that surrender
point, letting go of doubt and fear, may have been what was behind the
sentences he wrote about the problem of coming to God with a divided loyalty, that which gets blown-about
like a feather in a hurricane…basket-case unstable, and unable to focus on a
useful life.
Another Apostle, Paul, admitted to that syndrome:
I have discovered
this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do
what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But
there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power
makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Romans 3:21-23
Paul understood what it was like to be unstable, unable to control his
thoughts or actions. He was powerless to
consistently live out the life of self-control, or doing good, because the
fight within was too strong.
Have you been there? ---
Yeah, me too!
So, we don’t just want to identify the problem and leave it at that. That would be like noticing that you have
cancer, and saying: Oh…I have cancer, I
think I’ll go play golf.
No…if your mind is divided by the cancer of sin’s pull, you DO something about it. Let’s go back to both James and Paul for the
answer to the dilemma. The starting
point, says James, is to ask God for wisdom:
If you need wisdom,
ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. James 1:5
And, recognizing his
spiritual life-threatening condition, Paul takes us home to what to do with
that wisdom:
Oh, what a miserable
person I am! Who will free me from this
life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 3:24
For You Today
The answer is Jesus Christ, the LORD over all. He was there in the beginning when God put us
together.[1] He knows how to put you back together – stable!
There
are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some
of these:
Difficult Choices and Side Tracks & Sure Things
[1] Images: via Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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