Waves of doubt

An Exposition on the Book of James Part 2.

If you haven’t yet, please check out part 1 of this series. The ideas of James are all centered around the idea of a perfectly forged faith that makes us perfect or complete.

I often find myself not finishing projects. I get 80% of the way through – good enough to get by – and then something else draws my attention away. I fixed the Ignition switch on our car, but the dash wasn’t put back together for several weeks because I had to do other things. Our house has been a work in progress for a few years, I put up 3 strands of Barbwire to keep the cows from getting out but those last two pieces are impossible for me to get to. That feeling when something is finished, it is so grand but so seldom felt by me.

We are God’s workmanship, that means that God is constantly working on us. We are never truly finished being molded into the people that God wants to make us, but there is a level that God wants to get us to on this side of eternity. He wants us to be “perfect and entire, wanting nothing…” God wants us to be finished. That does not mean perfect in the sense that we have nothing wrong with us, but in the sense of wholeness and completeness. If we get to this point, that does not mean that God is done working on us, just as a house builder may need to fix a room after a few years or remodel and update the bathroom after a while. The furniture may need to be changed and the house needs to be cleaned, but the house is complete.

God wants us to be complete. This completeness starts with Faith. We are saved by faith – that is a belief in the complete salvation that Jesus brought to us on the cross. A belief that when God looks upon us, he sees a people made righteous by the Blood of Jesus. And God wants that faith to be perfect, but that is not the only faith we are to have. We are to have faith in all of his promises. And when we have a perfectly forged faith in God, we will be perfect and complete. Then God will start to decorate the house that he has built with all kinds of character qualities.

James tells us that God’s goal is to make us perfect wanting nothing – not that we will never find ourselves in physical need, but that from God’s perspective we are whole people. Just as the house you bought may be lacking a swimming pool in the backyard, but it better not be wanting a roof. A house is complete without a swimming pool but not without a roof; in the same way, we are complete without many physical things, but we are not complete without wisdom. And James then says, “if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God…” God views a man without wisdom much like we would see a house without a roof and maybe even without walls. It is incomplete.

Here are three ways you can see if you lack wisdom:

1 – You do not believe in God or are not acknowledging him as God.

2 – You are knowingly committing sin against God.

3 – You do not think that you lack wisdom. This is evidence by a prayerless life. You do not seek God’s wisdom through your days and only pray for other people, not for yourself and not for wisdom.

Before we can get wisdom, we must humble ourselves and acknowledge our need for it. If any of these apply to you, you need wisdom. The Bible says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” we must fear God, The person who does not believe in God or treats God lightly does not fear God. The rest of that verse says, “…but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” The person who openly sins against God does not fear God and the person who thinks he has everything figured out and isn’t lacking wisdom does not fear God. We should fear God in the way that we should fear a firearm. If the gun is pointing at you and it’s loaded, you should be afraid of it going off and killing you. If you are going to rob a bank, you should fear that someone may have a gun to shoot you, and if you are the possessor of the gun, you should be afraid of pointing it in the wrong direction, so no one gets hurt. That last type of fear is more of a respect and reverence for the power that is held in the firearm. This is how we should grow to fear God. In order to get wisdom we must first understand our lack of wisdom and our need for it; this can come by reading through the Bible.

So, how do we get wisdom? First, we must ask God for it. How do you get water? You first have to go to where the water is. God is the only fountain of true wisdom. We do not get wisdom from colleges, doctors, governments, or even really smart people. We must get wisdom from God. We need to go to God for wisdom. This means that we must read through His Words but also be prayerfully asking him to give us the wisdom that we need.

When we ask him, James tells us that he will not upbraid – that means to beat us up or be mad at us. God knows our need for wisdom; He is the one telling us we need it. God does not charge for His wisdom; it is free for the asking. There is, however, a requirement for getting wisdom from God. James says we have to “ask in faith.” That is a believing request. We must believe that God is the source for wisdom. We must believe that God will give us wisdom. We must continue in his presence demonstrating our need of wisdom and our dependency on him to give it to us. This is one reason way James tells us to rejoice over the trials of our faith. Our faith must be tried so that we can depend upon it when we need it. It has been tested so that we know it will stand up to the task. We have confidence in the promises of God because we know He is faithful.

James told us that the trial of our faith is to make us perfect and entire, wanting (or lacking) nothing. If we were to hire a contractor to build a house and we had a terrible experience with it because he was always late, he did a terrible job, he left messes, he was way over time and way over budget – we would likely fire him and never use him for a project. In comparison, let’s see the contractor that God is: He always keeps His Word, He is always right on time, and He is always on and usually even under budget. When we hire Him to fix something on our house, we have confidence He will do a good job. We have believed God for salvation. He has come in and started a work in you. Why do we fail to trust Him for our sanctification, or our preservation on this earth. He that said “…I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28) is the same that said “be careful for nothing “(Philippians 4:6).

Why do we at times become so double minded? There are two reasons that I see in this text.

1 – It is because we lack a faith that has been tried through the temptation. We do not have experience with God working in us. We don’t trust His track record. Maybe even now you are doubting your salvation in Christ. We have never stood on the promises of God and been able to see that He is faithful. This is so much more than salvation. God told Peter to come out onto the water – and Peter did! But he became double minded. He stopped trusting that Christ could really do what He said. To be fair, Peter had never walked on the water before, and He didn’t know anyone that had either. This was a new area that He was trusting God in. However, Peter understood that Jesus is God and He knew Jesus’s tract record. Aren’t we the same way? We have said, “Yes, God, you are the creature of the universe. Yes, God, you spoke the worlds into existence. Yes, God, you delivered the children of Isreal out of Egypt with un upheld hand. You have preformed miracles after miracles, but I’m still not sure I can trust You with me.” Because we have not proved him personally.

2 – Our desires are not the desires that God has for us. A little further down James tells us that “God cannot be tempted with evil and he isn’t the one tempting us.” We are tempting ourselves when we are drawn away by our own lust. This word lust is just referring to desires. So, God has desire for us to witnessing to people and we have a desire to be recluses. God allows something that we perceive as negative or evil to come into our life that tests our faith, but we don’t desire the same thing that God does, and we are not wise enough to understand why the situation is there. So, when God allows a situation to come that is different from our desires our response is often to waver. We may ask God for wisdom to get through a test, but we don’t understand that the reason we are there is because God wants to change our desires, not our circumstances. As a saved person we have the nature of the old man, and the nature of the new man. We understand that God wants us to be a witness but we have two natures. We must mortify the deeds of the flesh (old man) so that our new man can live (Romans 8:13). This is why – at times we are double minded.

I do want to add a word of caution: God never promised us that we would be “Healthy, Wealthy, and Problem Free.” Just the opposite is true: if you are looking for a God that is going to give you wealth, health, and superpowers you need to look at Satan’s team of preachers like Benny Hen, Jole Osteen and Rick Waren – but that life doesn’t lead to a problem free life either. They are promising things that God never promised.

The apostle Paul, Peter, James, and all of the rest suffered great trials and persecutions because of their faith. The Word of God promises “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (II Timothy 3:12). And in 1 Peter 4:12-13 “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:” then he says “But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”

God allows trials to come into our lives, but they always have purpose. This purpose is to make us complete. God is wanting to forge a perfect faith in us, and sometimes the forging process is not what we want. But we must be as clay in the Potter’s hands, or as the steel in the Smith’s hands. No matter what we are going through, we should never doubt the goodness of God and understand that he is preforming a work in our lives. We need to rejoice in this, knowing that God is going to use us as vessels of mercy. We might also take a look at our desires and see if they are in alignment with God’s desires for us. No, the trial is not pleasant to go through but once He is done, we will be more like Jesus, and that is the end goal.

James 1: 5-8 KJV

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.

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.

For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

S.T. 
Acts 20:24
"But none of these things move me..."