If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. 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. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. (James 1:5-8)
Where is your loyalty right now? Do you depend on God… or do you not?
Maybe your marriage is in trouble and you are helpless to a solution. One day your all for fighting for it… the next day you want to put your gloves down.
Maybe there is grief and strife in a family relationship and you want to discover resolve… but there are times when you don’t even want to peer for the answers.
These are just a couple of tough choices I would hope that none of have to face but if we do we will need guidance. We will need direction from our Lord and not from this world. God created us to honor our marriages and to live in harmony with our family.
So you have to make a choice.
You need to determine who you will be loyal to.
There are many difficult decisions we are faced with in this life and they cause us to be divided in our thoughts, emotions, and actions. Our faith in God will waiver, if not daily, and when it does we are tossed around by the winds of our trials and challenges. There are times we lean His way and seek His wisdom but it is with doubt that cuts through our faith and leaves us unsettled. At sea in the midst of a storm.
When James penned his book, He was a leader of the Jerusalem church and he wrote to Christians facing persecution. I could imagine that their trials they faced for believing in God and seeking him for wisdom resolved itself to emotional and physical harm or even death. Today, you are most likely not facing that type of persecution for choosing God yet we waver as though we are. The world tells us to go against God and do for ourselves. That by our own experiences, we have wisdom and knowledge we need to navigate in the sea of life and to steer the rudder towards resolve. If you are in the middle of the examples illustrated, your persecution will come from those who will judge your decision to stay and commit. Condemn you for not thinking of just you and mock you when you tell them God will deliver you through it. These are stones that will be thrown our way in an attempt to martyr our faith in God. These are the winds that will toss us into confusion.
James knew the people of Jerusalem were at sea and in a storm and he was telling them a decision had to be made.
He was telling them to commit.
He was telling them not to waver.
He was telling them to place their faith in God.
Brian Suman 