James
1: 2 - 8
2 Dear
brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity
for great joy.3 For you know that when your faith is
tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you
will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.5 If you
need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not
rebuke you for asking. 6 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. 7 Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are
unstable in everything they do.
I have been stuck on this passage
for the past 2 months, (that’s to say the least) most particularly verses 6-8...
I seem to have struggled with “Doubt” my whole life and while I wish I was here
to share the testimony of how I overcame… and my recipe for success, that isn’t
the case, I ain’t got it together yet. There are days I wonder if I ever will –
I guess you can call it the doubt talking again. Nevertheless I feel sharing
this journey might achieve one of two things:
1) Spur people who have got it together to share on how they got
it together (and perhaps I won’t doubt their testimonies and be able to press
into mine) or
2) Encourage others that may be going through the same that there
is no affliction that is peculiar to one person, and perhaps we might all grow
together into being “perfect and complete”.
So what is this doubt thing—is it
a sin or a weight or just healthy realism? Well this much study I did and I’ll
try to present it in a concise fashion. I found out doubt is strongly connected
and correlated to faith, in fact it’s been dubbed and defined as “lack of
faith”. What then is Faith? It is said to be the
substance attached to things hoped for and the evidence of things that are
unseen. An example of this will be the belief that I’m one day going to have a Christ-centered, fun-loving and community-influencing home.
(It’s not rocket-science sebi.. or maybe it is..)
And right in that “..or maybe it is..” you witness first hand
my doubts. To me doubt is as simple as ‘double-checking’, there must be an ‘or’
to everything. It’s just keeping it real. I looked up the definition of doubt: it’s
defined as unbelief, lack of faith… not trusting that which has been said or
agreed to be true... i.e. it stems from lack of trust, I want to be in control
all the time, I do not trust someone else to do things as well as I would, or
with the motives that I do, matter of fact I don’t even trust myself to be able
to do some things.
Why do I have doubts?
-Because somewhere back in my journal
of experiences, I haven’t always made the best choice or said the right words
or did the best things irrespective of how sincere and determined my motives
were... I hold on so long and then the thought comes – what if you were wrong
all along? I don’t like to be wrong, no scratch that.. I don’t want to be
wrong…particularly not when I started out trusting that I was right..agrrh!
- Because I'm a sight driven person,
I compare myself with myself, ..., typically sha I
don’t believe. What would it take me to have unwavering belief? Verses 7 and 8
says let not a doubter hope to receive anything.. Ha! I want the dream, I want
it o.. I just can’t seem to piece it together in my brain nor see it yet is why
I just decided to double-check and now the penalty is having nothing!! That’s
more than I bargained for o..
So here I come Lord, asking that you rid me, my heart, soul
and mind of the sins and the weights, the lie, the insecurities, and the fear
of the unseen that keeps me bound and keep me double checking. Help me find my
rest in you...teach me what that looks like Lord, to know what it means to be
at peace in the storm and that the storm is just an opportunity for my faith
(my belief) and my endurance to grow and not to waver. Also that when my endurance is fully developed, I will be perfect and complete,
needing nothing, for I will be assured that you are here ALL the time…like
ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the time.
