A DOUBLE-MINDED MAN IS
UNSTABLE IN ALL HIS WAYS
We’ve all strayed from
doing God’s Word, knowingly or unknowingly, a time or two in our lives. But
once we know what God’s Word is really saying, we are responsible throughout
our lives to stay on the path, or at least come back to the truth if we
discover we’ve gone astray.
When I was 21, and I first
started to really commit myself to Jesus, I carried my Bible everywhere, but
being a 60’s child, I was also living by the words of a popular song, “love the
one you’re with.” Free love wasn’t just a saying; it was a way of life. I
figured if I slept with a guy who I wanted to convert, it was the way I could
show him God’s love. Stupid, yes, but I was so brainwashed by that time, I didn’t
think it was wrong.
I continued to practice
free love in the name of Jesus for a little while until the day an angel
visited me as I was walking to my boyfriend’s house to have sex. The angel appeared
next to me. He was tall, with a large build, dark hair, and with an unusual air
of confidence. I was surprised but not afraid. He looked down at me, and in the
calmest, nicest voice, told me that what I was doing was wrong; it wasn’t the
way to win people to Jesus. That’s all he said, and then he just disappeared. I
didn’t stop my ways immediately, but it didn’t take long before I did see the
errors of my ways. I hope young people these days aren’t as stupid as I was,
but maybe some still are?
I was double-minded,
trying to live the sex life and serve Jesus at the same time. It just didn’t
work. It was like two opposite ends of a magnet repelling each other in my
brain. I was fighting in my own brain. Why is this important?
God says in James 1:8: “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
Jesus tells us in
Matthew 6:24: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the
other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
In 1 Kings 18:21:
“Elijah came unto all the people, and said, ‘How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.”
In Revelations
3:16, God says: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
There’s a reason
Jesus said you can’t serve two masters at the same time. He wasn’t making a
mere off-the-cuff suggestion. He was telling us that our brains can’t handle
it. It’s not just a choice we make, but it is physically impossible for our
brains to go two ways at the same time. Our brains aren’t wired to be
double-minded. If we insist on putting our brains through the test, it seems to
be risky at the least and perhaps fatal if pushed too far.
God knows what He’s
talking about. When He says, “don’t be double-minded,” He’s trying to save us
from the awful results of developing serious mental illnesses. We see the consequences
of a double mind in many Biblical characters throughout the Bible, people who
were walking a mental tightrope, including Lot’s wife in Genesis, Nebuchadnezzar
in 2 Kings 24, the man of the Gadarenes in Mark 5, and even the Apostle Paul in
Acts 9, and many more.
We truly can be risking
the physical makeup of our brains as well as our sound thinking, by teetering
on the tightrope between God’s way, and Satan’s concocted ways.
When my sister
got Alzheimer’s disease, I did some studying on it. Apparently, two different types
of mutated cells form, and they attack and destroy good brain cells. One type
of the destroyer cell is called a “tangle”! Isn’t that just exactly what our
minds become when we try to make things fit into our own ideas of Christianity
instead of what God says? Our minds get into a tangle or start splitting. God created
our minds to be stable and healthy.
No one knows
exactly where the breaking point is, so why even risk it in the first place?
God can and will
rescue, forgive, and deliver us at any point along that tightrope like He did
for me. But is anyone really aware of when they’ve gone past the point of no return?
I don’t think so.
If we look at the
Bible, we see several examples of men and women who endangered their minds. Take,
for instance, King Saul. He was double-minded. One minute he was getting David
to play the harp for him. “David took an harp, and
played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the
evil spirit departed from him” (1 Sam. 16:23). Then the next minute, Saul was
trying to kill him. “And Saul cast the javelin;
for he said, ‘I will smite David even to the wall with it’” (1 Sam.
18:11). Eventually, Saul’s mind was so messed up with indecisiveness that God
couldn’t even get to him anymore. Saul went to see a psychic (who he’d
previously threatened with death); he got her to bring up a demon who imitated Samuel;
Saul listened to her advice, and sure enough, it got him killed.
It’s not okay to be
double-minded. It’s time to check the soundness of our minds. Are we getting a
message from God one day and doing something different from what He says on the
next?
We need to get a
hold of 2 Timothy 1:7 and make it our declaration and our daily practice. Let’s
live it! “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love,
and of a sound mind.” This is how they did it in Old Testament
times, and it’s how we need to do it now:
“And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, ‘If
ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange
gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and
serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines [your
enemies]. Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and
served the Lord only. (1 Sam. 7:3-4)
Note: the “strange
gods” and “Baalim and Ashtaroth” come in many forms, but they all work to
destroy the soundness of our minds. We need to take this message as a warning.
Let’s make sure we untangle our brains from mixed messages and go back to the
source of all health, the living God.
Love, Carolyn
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great true-life stories – HOW THE BIBLE APPLIES TO THE ORDINARY AND
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