Ask For Wisdom

"They were who we thought they were!" This coming from coach Dennis Green in one of the more famous of all coaching tirades (sorry, have to leave out all of the fun-filled expletives, this is a family oriented blog), after blowing a 23-3 lead in the 4th quarter against the Chicago Bears. Dennis Green is more famous for that tirade than probably anything else in his career. He even went ahead and patented that saying, marketing it on hats and t-shirts.

One of the biggest challenges God had with the Israelites was to break them from their slave mentality of thinking. If you think like a slave, your going to act like a slave.

One of the biggest battles we Christians face is in our mind. We have a tendency to forget who God says we are. We either sometimes think like the Israelites thought or we fill our minds with doubt.

My favorite book in the Bible is the book of James, it's contains 54 commands on how to do what we say we believe. In other words, be a doer of the word, not just a hearer of the word.
God wants us to be a model of consistency: in our hearts, our minds, in our walk with Christ.

A couple of weeks ago one of the topics of discussion that came up at our men's group breakfast was that of being double minded. And I am so glad it came up. I never really gave it much thought. But I have now consistently applied it to my life daily!! If I catch myself being in a question of doubt over something, I immediately turn to His Word and what He has to say about it. And tell myself to "Stop being double minded!"

This is the greatest battle of our mind, double mindedness. Thinking against what God's Word says about us or the situation we are in:

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
he is a double minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:6-8)

When we fall into the trapping of doubt in any situation, we do become unstable, unable to think clearly. We literally make a mess of things. And we make ourselves miserable. So why torcher yourself like that? If you don't understand what the heck is going on,God says:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. (James 1:5)

The word reproach denotes: mocking, ridicule, insulting. If you ask God for wisdom and understanding, He says He will give it to you without insulting you or making you feel small. All you have to do is ask.

To stop being double minded, take a crash course through His Word to remind yourself of who you really are, who God says you are, and who God wants you to be.

But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed. (James 1:25)