Double Minded Man And the 7 Voices

James 1:

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

9 Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

 

Trials come in many kinds.

Trials test our faith.

Tests of our faith produce perseverance.

If you continue in perseverance, when it is finished, it will produce maturity and completeness in you so you lack nothing.

 

But for those of you who haven’t been made complete yet, If you lack wisdom, ask God for it and He will give it to you and not fault you for not having wisdom.

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt (have faith) that God will provide wisdom.

Otherwise, you will not receive the wisdom you ask for.

Your lack of faith in God makes you double minded and unstable in all you do.

 

Believers who are poor have their own kinds of trials. They don’t have money and are concerned with how to get more.

Believers who are rich have other types of trials. They and their riches will pass away, no matter how much they accumulate.

But all, poor or rich, who persevere through their trials, will be crowned by God in the end because they loved the Lord more than they wanted to escape from the trial and endured out of love for Him.

 

When you are tempted to escape the test instead of persevere through it, don’t blame it on God. He didn’t allow the test because He wanted to see you fail – God has no evil in Him. He tested you so you could see the evil desires that were already in you that would make you want to turn away from Him.  God and His gifts are all good, and He does not change and suddenly become evil during a test. He chose us and birthed us to be good like Him and receive His good gifts.

 

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How many of you had tests and trials in 2017?  How many of you expect to face trials in 2018? Do you expect to face next year’s trials more successfully than last year’s?  Why or why not?

 

How many of us started off with really good intentions to follow the Lord, to surrender to and obey Him, no matter what He asked?  How many of us were able to follow through with those intentions?  Why did we have problems following through?

 

Because of double mindedness.

 

A double minded man

A man of two souls, or of a double heart, that speaks and asks with an heart, as in ( Psalms 12:2 ) who halts between two opinions, and is at an uncertainty what to do or say, and is undetermined what to ask for; or who is not sincere and upright in his requests, who asks for one thing, and means another, and asks amiss, and with an ill design; does not call upon God in truth, and in the sincerity of his soul; draws nigh to him with his mouth, and honours him with his lips, but his heart is far from him. Such an one is

unstable in all his ways;

he is confused in his mind; restless in his thoughts, unsettled in his designs and intentions; inconstant in his petitions; uncertain in his notions and opinion of things; and very variable in his actions, and especially in matters of religion; he is always changing, and never at a point, but at a continual uncertainty, both in a way of thinking and doing: he never continues long either in an opinion, or in a practice, but is ever shifting and moving.

We can hear God’s voice, and have a desire to obey Him, but not long thereafter, have a desire to do something else that outweighs our desire to obey Him. We give into whatever we want most. The problem is that we want a lot of things, fear a lot of things, and these different parts of us, these different “hearts and souls” are all vying for our attention so they can each get a decision in their favor.

 

13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

 

All of that noise, all of those choices, all of those emotions and physical feelings and thoughts can create a din that just make us want to check out through our favorite substance, person or event instead of having to wade through all of that commotion to make a decision.

 

Fasting actually helps us eliminate some of those voices. By removing certain substances, people or activities from our lives, the rest of the voices become clearer and we can take the time to listen to them to hear what they are saying to us.  What they are saying is important, because if we don’t meet the needs of these different parts of us, they will hijack our intentions at any moment and cause us to fail at our most important objectives. That is why we can suddenly act in contrary ways to our thoughts and intentions just moments before.

 

That is one of the reasons we fast – to be able to eliminate some of the things that vy for our attention, especially that compete for the attention we should be paying to God, what He is saying and wanting from us. These things aren’t necessarily evil in and of themselves, but when they draw us away from Him, they become a tool in the hands of the enemy of our souls.  We are removing certain things from our lives and replacing them with time spent in God’s presence and in His Word to know His will and access the power to follow it. In Celebrate Recovery, Step 11 says We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us, and power to carry that out.

 

The other reason we fast is that it teaches us perseverance in a trial of our own choosing.  If we will let perseverance have its way, we will be more mature and complete than we were before the fast. Fasting equips us for the other trials that we will definitely face in our lives. Consider it practice for the bigger things that await you, trials that will require your obedience in the midst of all of the voices screaming at you to do things their ways. Most of those voices are coming from your body and your flesh, but some come from your soul.

 

There are 7 voices that vy for our attention at all times.  Our goal is to listen to and obey God’s voice in the midst of them, which gets hardery when things don’t go our way. That’s why James talks about persevering through trials, not running away to escape them.

 

But you need to listen to what each of these voices are saying so you understand what they want from you and can respond to each one appropriately.  These things make us double-minded, unstable in all our ways. We must come to terms with them and be prepared to overcome them through the power of the Holy Spirit so we can be single-minded and victorious in our trials.

 

The 7 voices:

The Spirit of God

The enemy

The world

The flesh

Your Soul:

Mind / Intellect

Will / Control

Emotions / Affection

 

  1. The Spirit of God
    1. What does the Spirit of God want from you? 2 things.  Faith and Love. Gal 5:6 states that the only thing that matters is Faith expressing itself through love. He wants us to Love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love others as we love ourselves.
    2. Anything He asks us, He asks us to do it in faith, trusting that He will take care of all of our needs as we obey Him. We obey Him out of love for Him, and if what He asks is for others, we are to selflessly give for the benefit of these others.
    3. The Spirit doesn’t ask us to do something and then tell us to go figure it out for ourselves. He will guide us and teach us what we need to do. We need to ask Him for wisdom on how to carry out His will, and He will provide that wisdom.
    4. We aren’t to move out in our own understanding, nor in our own power. He will provide the power to obey Him as well, IF we will continue in our faith in Him. He will not provide the power for you to do things your own way, only for doing things His way. If you choose to do things your own way, you will have to depend upon your own power and earthly wisdom.
  2. The enemy
    1. What does the enemy want from you? To steal your faith and love. He wants you to disbelieve God, to think He isn’t good and doesn’t know and want what is best for you. He wants you to stop loving this “bad” God that Satan has caricatured for you when you don’t get what you want.  He wants you to go your own way and do what pleases yourself, taking from others for your own benefit, better known as lust. He basically wants you to abandon God, His will and His plan so he can separate you from the herd and keep you for himself. If he can’t steal your faith, he will work to make you ineffectual, meaning that you don’t make any difference for the Kingdom of God. Normally he does this through distractions that please the flesh and your soul. He will use anything he can to distract you.
  3. The world
    1. What does the world (society) want from you? To have you make it your God, to let it direct you, train you, and teach you up in the way you should go.  The world wants you to agree with whatever is in fashion today, regardless if it will change tomorrow, to follow it and be like it. Taking care of yourself first, and then doing good things for other people are the noble sounding goals of the world.  But the world’s noblest callings mean nothing if they are not directed by the Spirit of God as a part of God’s plan and kingdom. Doing random good things that do not promote the Kingdom of God or bring others into this Kingdom are useless. 1 Corinthians 13 says that anything not done out of faith in and love for God, including giving up your life for others, is wasted, does not please God and has no eternal value.
  4. Your flesh
    1. What does your flesh want? To feel pleasure and have comfort at all times. It is all about itself, and it will never change or care about anything else. It cannot think or feel, it just wants what it wants and will fight you in order to get it.

 

Now these 4 voices will never change. You always know what they want, regardless of how  they seem to be going about getting them from you. That’s not quite how it works for the voices from your soul.  Their needs can be many and are very real and valid as far as they are concerned.

 

They are the parts of you that you need to listen to in order to discover what they would rather you do instead of obeying the voice of God. Ignoring them doesn’t work for long – they are the hijackers of your soul, able to derail your best efforts to obey God. Instead, you need to actually find a way to meet those needs if at all possible so they will relinquish their hold on you and allow you to choose to meet a spiritual, higher need rather than theirs.

 

  1. Your soul:
    1. Mind / Intellect
      • What does your mind want? To know everything, and for everything to make sense. Let’s say that God asks you to pay for the groceries for the lady in front of you at the store. Your mind says, “That’s not logical, it doesn’t make sense. You don’t have enough money as it is, and you are just going to give it away to some random person?  I don’t think so.  You don’t even know why you are doing it. You don’t know if they deserve it, if they will take the money they would have used to pay for the groceries and buy something bad. I’m not so sure about this idea at all.”
      • Unfortunately for your mind, God’s ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. His wisdom often appears as foolishness to the mind of man. When God asks us to do something, He rarely explains His reasoning, nor does He show us His all-encompassing plan and how this request fits in. He simply asks us to do something, and asks us to have the faith in His goodness and wisdom to accept the request, the faith to ask for His wisdom and power to accomplish what He asks, and the love for Him to please Him through obedience. Therefore, the mind is going to go crazy when the Spirit of God gives an unexplained instruction.
      • How do you generally meet the mind’s need to understand and face the unknown while doing the illogical? By providing it with scriptures that show that God knows what He is doing and has historically asked these type of things of His believers, and that this is a privilege to be asked to obey without all of the information being available. It makes sense, because this is how God works in the lives of believers. Feed your mind examples of how God has done this before in scripture and how it turned out. Don’t ignore your mind’s need for understanding – instead, give it what it needs, even if part of the answer is that God is so great, we can never understand everything or see it as He sees it because we are limited, finite human beings.
      • The problem with the mind needing to be convinced and to understand is that your mind can only compare God’s request with what your mind has already been taught to be the truth. If God asks you to help a person from another race or religion or sexual orientation, and you have been taught that these people are less deserving humans than people of your own race, religion or sexual orientation, then you will not be able to just speak scriptures to your mind. You are going to have to get to the root of this prejudiced “truth” – where did you learn it, from who? Is it really the truth as God sees it, or is it just a truth that you accepted before? When confronted with God’s truth, which truth will your mind accept, especially since it already feel comfortable with the truth it already knows?
      • Take pornography, or swearing, for example. If your mind thinks that either of those things is ok because your parent used it, then it will be very hard for you to tell yourself that it is wrong. How about women preaching – what if God calls you to preach and you are a woman, but you’ve been taught that it is not of God?
      • Where you come from and what your caretakers and influencers believed to be true will all affect what your mind believes to be true. Whatever “truth” is being challenged by what God has requested must be dealt with before your mind will release you to obey God. Your mind must be convinced of God’s truth in order for it not to fight you when God directs you.
    2. Will / Control
      • What does the will want? To have the level of control it needs. For those of you who have had their temperament assessed, you know that some people need to control a lot of other people, some need to have others control them, while others don’t want to control anyone or be controlled by anyone, or they may be ok with a modicum of control over others and being controlled by others.
      • The problem here is that, whatever level of control you may need, God may ask you to do something that is outside of your control comfort level. If you need to have control over others without them having control over you, God may ask you to do something that means relinquishing complete control and being under control. If He tells you to go into the military, you will lose basically all rights and control over yourself and others until you progress to a leadership level. If He tells you to submit yourself to a spiritual leader, you will have to surrender your rights to make your own decisions.
      • In order to persuade your will to go along with what God is asking of you, it helps to present God’s request as an expression of your control comfort level.
        – If you do not feel comfortable being responsible and in control over others, but God asks you to do this for a season, you will have to look at this request as not you, but your direct supervisor, or perhaps God Himself, being in control over the people, and you simply being their mouth piece or representative.
        – If you are asked to follow when you are used to being a leader, you will need to find a way to see the request as an opportunity to practice servant leadership. Jesus said He did not come to be served, but to serve. The first will be last and the last shall be first. Matt 23:11 says that the greatest among you will be your servant. So you can be in control through choosing to serve
        – In either case, you must listen to what your will is saying to you, why it is fighting you, and meet the needs of your will so it will freely serve God’s request.
    3. Emotions / Affection
      • What do your emotions want? Normally, it ranges between three (3) different areas:
        1. Love – meeting whatever your needs are for expressing and receiving affection, approval and acceptance.
        2. Safety – relieving your fears of being in danger of being harmed
        3. Significance – confirmation that you are important to others
      • You have to listen to what your emotions are telling you and problem solve to meet the needs that it thinks will go unmet if you obey God’s request. These needs may be basic and a part of every humans’ needs. However, these emotional needs may be very specific to your life experience.
        1. If God asks you to give up something that brings you significance, such as stepping down from a position that feeds your self-worth, then you must meet your soul’s need for significance in another way. If God doesn’t want you to serve at all for a season (possibly because you are getting your worth from serving), then take this opportunity to learn the truth that your significance comes from simply being His chosen and loved child, not what you do.
        2. If God asks you to step up and serve in an area that is new to you, and your emotions are expressing fear of failure, then you can help your soul understand that the outcome of failure should be a learning opportunity that leads toward future success. Failure is only bad when it causes you to quit, and you don’t learn anything constructive from it. The reason behind the fear of failure may really be a fear of losing safety or significance, losing your place to live, or losing the love or acceptance of someone else if you fail.  You need to determine what exactly the need is and make sure you consciously help your soul find the comfort level it needs to allow you to move forward unhindered.