In order for us to perform effectively, we need to be united within ourselves. The following passage makes this point quite clear:
James 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
True to form, let’s define a couple of key terms in this passage.
Waver – Of persons, their sentiments, etc.: To exhibit doubt or indecision; to change or vary; to fluctuate or vacillate (between); to falter in resolution or allegiance; to show signs of giving way.
Double-minded - Having two minds; undecided or wavering in mind.
The thoughts of a double-minded man bounce around from thing to thing. He lacks focus. He has trouble making up his mind and settling on a course of action. He is not united within himself. Instead of controlling his thoughts, he allows circumstances and impulses to toss his mind to and fro like the wind tosses a wave of the sea. His mind is always moving in first one direction and then in another. And having such a wavering mind, he is unstable in all his ways. Unstable things and people lack strength. They cannot be relied on. You see, there is power in unity. When one is not united within himself, he lacks personal power; he is unstable. And this instability effects all his ways, as James said.
In order to be effective in accomplishing a task, we need to be focused on that task. Distractions interfere with accomplishment. This brings us back to what I preached about last Sunday with respect to growing in knowledge. In order to acquire knowledge, we need to concentrate on what we are trying to learn. Note the definition of concentrate.
Concentrate – To bring to or towards a common centre; to collect or gather as at a centre; to cause to converge or meet at one point or place.
When we concentrate with our minds we cause our thoughts to focus on one thing. We are uniting our thoughts around one task. If we are concentrating when we pray to God, read the Bible, or listen to a sermon, we are focusing our mind on that activity alone and we are not allowing our thoughts to wander from it. We are not concentrating if we are distracted by noise, emotions, or impulses. Such distractions must be eliminated or at least ignored if we are to concentrate. The uniting of our thoughts gives us the power to accomplish the task before us. It is the power of unity in action.
Let me again give you a quote I cited once before in a meditation I did on listening. This quote comes from an article entitled Improving Your Memory: Tips and Techniques for Memory Enhancement. This article can be found by going to www.helpguide.org and typing in the title. Here’s the quote:
New information enters your brain along pathways between neurons in the appropriate area of the brain. The key to encoding information into your memory is concentration; unless you focus on information intently, it goes “in one ear and out the other.” This is why teachers are always nagging students to pay attention! If you’ve concentrated well enough to encode new information in your brain, the hippocampus sends a signal to store the information as long-term memory.
While a double-minded man is unstable, the man who is not double-minded is effective. An excellent example of such a man is found in the following passage:
1 Chronicles 12:33 Of Zebulun, such as went forth to battle, expert in war, with all instruments of war, fifty thousand, which could keep rank: they were not of double heart.
These warriors from the tribe of Zebulun were expert at what they did. An army of expert soldiers is a powerful force to be reckoned with. And critical to their expertise was the fact that they were “not of double heart.” Their thoughts and intents were focused on the task at hand. Each warrior was united within himself and focused upon his task. And together they were all focused on the same objective. This is the power of unity.
So unity of heart is essential to being effective in performing any task. It gives us personal power for performance. But nowhere is this more essential than in the task of serving God. You cannot serve God effectively without being united within yourself. Your thoughts and intents must all be focused on one end and that is to become what God wants you to be and so to glorify Him in all things. This being so, we can better appreciate the following prayer found in the Psalms:
Psalms 86:11 Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name.
Was the apostle Paul a powerful man? Consider how powerfully his life and ministry impact us even to this day. But Paul was also a man unified within himself as his own testimony bears out:
Philippians 3:13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus..
“This one thing I do.” How is that for being focused? That is why Paul was so effective.
Once you make the decision to become a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, you need to remain focused on that alone. You need a united heart centered on that goal. Let everything else in your life be arranged around that single purpose. Let there be no looking back or being distracted from that aim. I close with the following passages:
Luke 9:62 And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
Deuteronomy 5:32 Ye shall observe to do therefore as the LORD your God hath commanded you: ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.
4 comments:
Love it!
Or should I say,
"Hurt's so good!"
Rubber meets the road Christianity.
Thanks for a powerful blog. I've read it 3 times now and I'm getting something new with each read. God's words are indeed powerful.
In this fallen world that's
getting crazier by the day
the number of distractions being hurled at us
can be overwhelming if we allow them to take hold.
In a book titled: Distracted: The Erosion of Attention
and the Coming Dark Age (I'm quoting the editorial review)
“Maggie Jackson posits that our near-religious allegiance to a constant
state of motion and addiction to multitasking are eroding our
capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention—the
building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress
and stunting society's ability to comprehend what's
relevant and permanent.”
I would add, that this same addiction to technology, the internet, our
cell phones, twitter, facebook, and a million an one other gadgets, toys,
activites (sports, fitness, reading junk, whatever),
T.V. Show (Survivor, Dancing with The Stars, Millionaire, Idol) have the
potential, IF WE ALLOW IT, to completely cause us to
take our eye off the prize and high calling of our God
and further cause our Early Morning Devotional Decision
Making to erode into nothing more than a vapor, an old idea
that sounded good at the time, but has somehow lost it's spark,
it's power, it's attraction, now that the caffeine induced motivation
and dissipated.
I read a quote somewhere today that said something along the lines
of “Sometimes we have to slow down before we can speed up.”
In the race set before us and the reaching forth unto those things
which are before, and for the prize of the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus, we might do well to slow our lives
down a bit so that we can run a faster, more focused race.
Let's pray for each other that we all reach the finish line
together in full out sprint.
Twisted Scriptures: Breaking Free from Churches that Abuse
by Mary Alice Chrnalogar
Page 139...chapter: Vicious Information Control
...TRICKS TO KEEP YOU CONTROLLED
Leaders get you to believe that they don’t interpret the bible, but just “teach what is in the bible” - making the bible synonymous with THEIR interpretation!
Leaders teach you to think that, if you want to be truly committed to Jesus, you must believe every word THEY teach about the bible.
Leaders prompt you to think that you are probably committing sins of pride or
rebelliousness if you don’t believe every word of the bible as THEY interpret it for you.
….These are some of the ingredients for controlling….
...I haven’t written much about the tactic of putting down other groups in order to make your group look better, but it works rather well….Here is how it is done:
Teach your disciples to think that no other Christian church is living a committed Christian life & that no other church is so directly led by God. Under this influence, disciples won’t want to leave even if many teachings & activities are
questionable…..so the idea is to pump up your church as the greatest & demean others.
As I read this meditation I have various thoughts. One is of perfectionism or unrelenting standards.
Unrelenting standards are one of the customary fares in totalistic groups and belief systems; the mindset tends toward appearances becoming more important than the individual. Errors and human doubts may be evidence that the doctrine is wrong. An air of a sterile, emotionless, humanless culture often evolves. Seldom are performed tasks good enough. Individuality with interdependence becomes stifled. It can lead to an incessant strive for approval and over-dependency upon the 'correct' authorities.
There are duties in life that need great precision, such as a carpenter's saw or the surgeon's scalpel or even an artist's brush and a writer's pen. But other tasks in life do not require such. Chairs don't have to be straight nor every bed wrinkle smoothed nor every place setting exactly even.
If a man doubting or being double minded in an area of life means he is unstable in "all" his ways, should we throw out sections of the Psalms, the Pauline epistles, or other sections. Look at Proverbs, written by a double-minded man? Didn't Soloman have 1000's of concubines?
The book "Margin" by Richard Swenson, comes to mind. Also the research of Heartmath and the brain within the heart. And books/research by others in the fields of cognitive therapy and emotional intelligence.
"Unstable"..ha! Like a horse without a stable. Instead of a stable the majestic 4-legged beauty is free to roam the meadows, the fields, the sweet aromas of creation with all its wonders. (...just a play on words...something to think about...) Maybe unstabled isn't such a bad thing...with balance.
Life isn't about perfectionism and having no doubts.
To doubt is holy, to wonder divine, to play without specified direction freedom and joy....like that of a child.
Just my three cents....
Twisted Scriptures: Breaking Free from Churches that Abuse
by Mary Alice Chrnalogar
Chapter 4 BEYOND ACCOUNTABILITY
UNITY MEANS CONTANCY OF PURPOSE
Another powerfully exploited word is “unity”….
Controlling bible groups will make serious efforts to embed “unity” in the minds of their members, meaning they should change their views to whatever happens to be the current “group think.” In the scriptures, “unity” means “constancy of purpose”. The Apostles often had differences, they still kept a constancy of purpose….we can have opposing views & still have one purpose.
The bible also mentions a disagreement between Paul & Barnabas...the passage
indicates that the disagreement was so sharp that Paul & Barnabas split up...This does not mean their unity was broken. They still had constancy of purpose (spreading the Gospel). ...and God blessed them both.
Here is a concise understanding of non-biblical & biblical unity:
NON-BIBLICAL UNITY
Agreement w/ leaders & actively participating in all group activities.
BIBLICAL UNITY
IS NOT AN EARTHLY BOND. IT IS A COMMITMENT TO CHRIST, HIS
VALUES, VIRTUES, LOVE & MERCY. You may disagree w/ leaders…
THE MERE ARGUMENT THAT YOU SHOULD BE IN UNITY TELLS YOU THAT THE FACTS ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS AGREEING. WHEN A GROUP STRESSES UNITY INSTEAD OF THE FACTS, WATCH OUT.
They are asking you to mindlessly accept their opinions.
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