Dr. Jim: Delivered from Double-Mindedness

Well, if you were listening to the last podcast that I gave about five weeks ago, we dealt with James chapter number one.

And I wanted to deal with the issue of your soul being saved.

We pointed out that when we're talking in James 1 about your soul being saved, we're not necessarily talking about what we often call a salvation.

We're talking about the Christian life or sanctification.

It's the idea of your soul being delivered.

And the point we would ask is, what does your soul need to be delivered from? And the answer to that would be earlier in the chapter, James 1, and I'm just reviewing right now.

James says, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

And if you know much about that passage, it's talking about someone who's like a wave driven with the wind and tossed.

As the Bible said, let not that man think he should receive anything of the Lord.

So what's that phenomenon? Somebody who's asked for wisdom, but they doubt God, believe God, doubt God, believe God.

And in doing so, God says that's double-mindedness and that's not going to work.

Well, we have a great tendency toward double-mindedness because our soul is that part of us which connects with our existence here on planet Earth.

In one sense, I should say, we are a living soul.

It's our humanity.

Mind, will, and emotion sometimes people say, but it's our humanity.

It's that which connects.

with the world around us through our bodies.

The sensory realm gives to the soul data, and from that data, if we're not careful, we can make wrong conclusions.

And I used the situation with Elijah when he heard from Jezebel that she was going to kill him.

He had a normal soul reaction.

That was fear.

and he ran and got out of the will of God because he was focused on external stimuli.

So it was with Peter.

Here he is walking on the water in answer to Jesus' command to come.

He gets out of the boat, trusts Jesus to enable him to walk on water.