An Undivided Heart

For some of us, it was a week of sorrow, a week of loss, a week of great struggles, some of which may be known to those around you, and maybe some of the most intense ones are only known to yourself.

On the other hand, for some of you, it's been a phenomenal week.

I don't know what's going to happen in the week ahead, but those roles might switch.

But you know what never switches?

What never changes?

No shadow of turning.

And that's our God, who is good.

He is sovereign.

He is loving.

He is gracious.

He is kind.

He's involved in our lives.

He cares about what's going on.

And he's working in our lives and through the details of our lives to bring about his good purposes, even when we go through trials.

And that's what we're seeing as we look at the book of James.

We've been doing that for just a couple of weeks, and in today's passage, that same reality of the goodness and the grace of God and our conviction of that enables us to not be double-minded, but to be able to be men and women and young people of faith, who in the midst of our trials and difficulties, we say, Oh Lord, give us wisdom about your ways, about who you are, and about what you're doing in this world and in our lives.

I'd like to have you look and follow along as I read from the book of James.

We mentioned in the last couple of weeks that we're going to be having different people.

We're looking to involve different people in the reading of God's Word.

We started that out last week.

We'll be continuing that.

We're not necessarily going to do it that way every single week.

It'll depend upon the flow of things.

But we are looking for people who would simply like to, every once in a while, come and read the scriptures publicly for us.

There is that little card in the bulletin, and one of the suggestions was if somebody wants to do, wants to help out with that, just write across the card, three simple words.

I can read.

That's all it takes.

Doesn't have to be perfect, but just you want to be a part of things every once in a while.

Fill that in and we will be involving people.

So I'm reading from James chapter 1, the Pew Bible, page 1011.

James 1 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, there's one in front of you in the pew, take it.

It's yours.

That's what they're there for, for people who don't have Bibles to take.

And follow along as I read.

I'm beginning with James 1, and I'll be going, verse 1, I'll be going through verse 8.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.

Greetings.

And then he gets right to it.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials.

For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

And let steadfastness have its full effect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

And if any of you does lack, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like the wave of a sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

For that person must not suppose he will receive anything from the Lord.

He's a double-minded man, unstable in all of his ways.

To get into this passage, I want to just ask you a question.

First of all, I'd like to see the hands of those of you in our congregation this morning who are involved in the healthcare profession or as a caregiver of some kind or another?

So that's what you do.

Let me see those hands.

Well, that's great.

That's a whole bunch of you.

Now you can put it down, but keep thinking with me.

Those of you who raised your hands, how many of you have found in the in the course of seeking to give care and give comfort and to help and to heal, have found that you have caused people pain in the process?

I want to see those hands.

Yeah.

You may have done it unintentionally, you may have done it intentionally.

But the fact of the matter is that if we're going to help people, sometimes it involves not only bringing comfort, but sometimes discomfort.

That's the way it is in a broken, fallen, sinful world.

That's just the nature of things.

And that, in a way, is kind of a picture for us to understand as we look at the book of James.

I was thinking about this this week, and I came across the Hippocratic oath, not the Hippocrate's oath, but Hippocrates.

The code of honor of a physician.

And among other things, it says primum non nocere, at least that's what my daughter, who is a Latin teacher, told me how to pronounce it, primum non nocere.

In the first place, do no harm.

Now that's pretty clear.

But I got reflecting on that.

Do you know what it does not say?

It does not say, primum non infligate dolor.

Cause no pain.

Because we know that sometimes in order to help, it's going to create discomfort, unpleasant experiences, things that the person who is being helped, in and of those things, doesn't want.

Just wants to be helped.

I don't know if you've ever had the experience I've had of accompanying Jane.

You haven't probably had the experience of accompanying Jane.

But accompanying to Jane, I remember it very well, accompanying Jane, as our young daughter, maybe 12 months old, something like that, was taken to the doctor for her injections.

And here's this beautiful little girl in Jane's arms.

And all of a sudden, this cold, pointed, prickly thing sticks in her bottom.

And I don't remember exactly what was going through our daughter Jennifer's mind.

But I suspect it was something like, um, make him stop.

I thought you loved me.

Make him stop.

I thought you loved me.

And we have right in that a picture of the problem that we face.

We tend to look at God and we say, I didn't sign up for this.

This is not what I wanted.

This is not what I expected.

I thought you loved me.

And God is trying, trying to help us understand.

He has good purposes in bad things and uses bad things for good.

And there are some things we can only learn in this fallen, broken world, not by comfort, but by discomfort, by pain, by trials, by afflictions.

No one starts out in life saying thank you when they experience that.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, from a doctor.

All right?

I don't know how many of you have ever been told to lie down and you're put on a narrow little thing and you are slid into this tube that's about this big, and they close the door and they say, now don't move.

If you move, we're gonna have to do this all over again.

And everything within you just wants to go.

Why would we allow ourselves to be slid into something more narrow and confining than a coffin?

If we didn't somehow, I was I was gonna start talking about a colonoscopy, but I decided no.

That's we're not going there this morning.

I know I'm only here for a short period of time, but I don't know when I could get away with that one.

I don't know if you've ever been treated by a doctor where you really had some doubts about either his competence or his goodness and his good intent.

Uh we had that experience a number of years ago.

Jane had gone through chemo, and we were in a new place, and there was a new oncologist, and the oncologist wanted to do a given procedure, and the problem was we didn't have the really a whole lot of confidence in this guy.

And it was just interesting what starts going through your mind.

Like, I wonder how much he makes by having this procedure done.

Is that is that what he's here?

Is that what it's all about?

Or maybe he's doing research, and this will help his career by doing research on, and you just begin to doubt.

And and and then you begin to wonder, well, now, does he really know what he's doing?

After all, I've gone online and I've checked out bad thing to do when the doctor is recommending a procedure.

But you see, what happens is if you are not absolutely convinced in the goodness and the competence of the doctor, it is very difficult to allow yourself to be put in circumstances that are either painful or unpleasant or what.

But if you know, if you know that doctor truly has your best interests at heart, and if you know that that doctor is eminently competent, then you will allow things to be done to you, and you might even have the grace to say thank you.

See, it all depends on what our convictions are about the good doctor.

That's exactly, exactly what James is saying in a different, different words, different images.

But if we understand and truly are convinced of the goodness and the competence of God, of his character, of his sovereignty, that he knows what he's doing, and what he's doing is only and always good, and he can be trusted if you really believe that.

That makes a huge difference of how we respond.

So we're told to ask for wisdom.

Let's just walk through this passage.

Verse 5.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.

We need to stop here.

I want you to read the verse that went right before that, and the one before that, and the one before that.

I want you to see verse five in its context.

This is not the first time the word lacking has been mentioned.

He says in verse 4, let steadfastness or spiritual resilience, as we've been talking about in the last week, have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

But if you lack, particularly if you lack wisdom, in what context?

He's not talking about needing wisdom to know who to marry, what college to go to, what major to have in college, whether you should turn right at the traffic light or turn left.

He's not talking about the need which we often have of guidance in our daily lives.

That's not the promise, that's not the context.

God often gives us guidance.

But please, my friends, do not use James chapter 1, verse 5 as a promise that I asked for wisdom and now I still don't know who to marry.

James 1:5

What's the problem?

What's up, God?

That's not what he's talking about.

It's not general guidance, it's very specifically knowledge or wisdom, better said, more accurately said.

Wisdom, and as we'll see, it's wisdom about God's purposes and ways and what God is doing and the kind of God that we have.

That we can take what we know and believe at one level about God, and we can with wisdom apply that to the situations of our life.

That's the nature of wisdom about which James is speaking here.

Um we need to ask for wisdom, but what we tend to ask, and I tend to do the same thing, is oh God, why?

Why me?

Why me?

And if we're not careful, it's God, why?

Why me?

We get tense, we clench our fists, we we start being aggressive to God.

I thought you were loving God.

I we're just like that two-year-old.

Why, mother, why?

I thought you loved me.

And just like that answer to the two-year-old is this is for your good, and it's the only way to help you.

We need to begin to see in the midst of our trials, disappointments, disillusionments, hearts, uh, hurts in our hearts, that we need to remember who God is.

And the wisdom that we need, as we will see, has to do with the ways of God.

How God works, what God is doing.

So instead of why and why me, it's Lord, help me understand your ways.

But even if I don't understand why I'm going through this, help me understand your love and your character and your goodness and your sovereignty.

Let me trust you.

That's the wisdom, the ability to apply our knowledge of God in practical ways in that situation.

That's what it's really talking about.

The context, trials, difficulties, hurts, disappointments, and the pains of life.

Instead of asking why and why me, we need wisdom and specifically wisdom to respond to the tests and the trials of our lives that find their ways in our experience, that they might, by God's grace, be worked out in accordance with God's good purposes for us with these bad things.

That's wisdom.

It's wisdom.

And it's all about who God is.

And do we believe who He is, or do we believe that God exists to make us feel good and to serve our purposes?

That's not why God exists.

And we can only get a hold of certain aspects of maturity when we learn to say, Lord, I hate this, but I trust you in the midst of it.

Have your way, God, because your ways are good.

Good you are, and good you do, as we saw last week.

Now, it's important to realize that wisdom is not the same as knowledge.

Wisdom is not near mere knowledge.

Knowledge has to do with the accumulation of facts.

And there are facts about God that we need to accumulate.

All right?

But there's more to this than having notes in your Bible.

There's more to this than having verses memorized.

There's more to this than simply being able to give theologically correct answers.

All of that is important.

I'm not putting that down.

We need knowledge.

But God hasn't given us a knowledge of Himself that we might get God all figured out and neatly outlined and be able to answer all of the questions about who God is and what he's doing in ways that are terribly satisfying for us.

The study of theology is not an end in itself.

The mining of God's word for biblical truths is not the goal.

The goal is that by God's grace, the reality of the revelation of God of who he is and what he's doing would so transform our thinking that in the midst, in the midst of the terrible, painful, awful things of life, we say, I don't get it, but I get you.

I don't understand this, but I know who you are.

You are my God, and you are good, and you are competent, and I trust you, even though I don't understand.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.

I don't see it now, but I trust you in the midst of these circumstances.

That's the wisdom of God that we are to pray for.

Spiritual resilience, steadfastness.

We saw all the different translations.

The Walt Barrett version was steadfastness is translated as spiritual resilience.

That only comes under great pressure and over a period of time.

If you were here last week, remember the diamonds.

Diamonds that aren't exposed to great pressure, I'm sorry, coal that is exposed to great pressure never becomes a diamond.

Or it can be exposed to great pressure, but for a brief period of time, and it's not a diamond either.

The diamonds are the results of great pressure over a long period of time.

Silly, simple, good little illustration.

So wisdom is to trust God in doing what he does and what he always does, which is good, only and always good, even when it hurts.

And that is faith.

That is the nature of faith.

If you lack wisdom, go to God.

And how do we see God?

The phrase, the descriptor of God in verse five is the God who gives.

And it's a little muddied in some of our translations.

Go to God, who gives generously.

That's true, but the literal translation of that phrase is go to the God who gives.

The God who gives.

What we know about God is that God is a God who gives.

And we are to go to Him, and the source of what we need is God.

Wisdom is not bound up in the heart of a child.

We're not, we don't pop out of the womb wise.

We pop out of the womb foolish.

So we scream and demand our own way.

We just get older and better at doing it in more socially acceptable ways.

That's the danger.

And God says, God, He is the source of wisdom.

I would encourage you to make note of Exodus 33, verses 11 and 12, and take a look at it this afternoon.

Exodus 33:11

We're not going to take the time to turn to it, but here we have Moses, who has an encounter with God, and God says, I am going to use you, I am who I am, and you're going to go lead my people.

And Moses said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

You say you know me.

Then let me say, God, show me your ways.

That's the phrase that is used, such a beautiful phrase.

In order to follow you and be what you want me to be, oh Lord, would you show me your ways?

That's the prayer for wisdom, to know the ways of God.

That passage is one of the ones that my Bible kind of opens up to all by itself.

I've got a few of those that are just so, the the binding is such that when I flip through, it may turn to Exodus 33, along with Romans 8.

But it's a prayer that Moses says, Lord, I need to know your ways.

And because being taught God's ways is the very nature of wisdom.

It is God's nature to give, and when he gives, the God who gives, he gives generously.

Generously is what the word is.

And it's a rich word.

It's a very generous word.

It's a broad word.

He gives without restriction.

He gives without reservation.

He gives without hesitation.

There's no conflictedness in God.

Well, shall I give him this or not?

That's what's in our hearts.

But there is an absolutely undivided heart of God.

God is the God who gives.

Whatever we know about God, we know he is a God who gives.

The preeminent example of that for us is the cross.

He gives his only Son, that we might have that which we don't deserve and not get what we do deserve.

We deserve hell.

Jesus got hell instead of us, and we get the righteousness of God instead.

There's this grand change.

But God is freely, freely giving us eternal life.

That's the nature.

And you go through the scriptures, and God is constantly, because he is the God who gives, he is giving.

And when he gives, he gives generously.

He's not like us, who is internally conflicted about shall we do this or shall we not?

That's just not who God is.

Not only is he the God who gives, he doesn't rebuke us when he gives us his gifts.

That is so precious.

When I think about this, I think of a I think of a father with maybe a 10-year-old kid who gets an allowance.

I think my allowances were 25 cents, they're probably$25 a week now.

I don't know.

I have a son here.

I was going to ask him how much we uh gave him his allowance.

But the point being, when we go to God, it's not like a stingy, harmful father who says, well, I guess I'll give.

I guess I gotta.

I said I was gonna do it.

But I really wish you'd get around to cleaning up your room.

Can't you clean up your room better?

Well, here, take your lousy five bucks or whatever it is.

By the way, son, I I think you're probably just gonna squander it anyway.

After all, you're kind of a slouch.

You'll never amount to anything, but here, take your money.

Oh, there's fathers who are like that.

That's not our heavenly father.

He gives generously and there is no rebuke.

It is his nature to give, and in the midst of trials, it is his nature to give us wisdom of his character and his goodness and his competence.

That's what this passage is really all about.

God is, it's a beautiful illustration that I read somewhere in other.

God is like a pitcher, a pitcher of water.

Not a picture, but a picture, this big vessel of water.

And we're lying there or we're looking up, and there's this huge pitcher of water inclined towards us, and there's this incredibly rich and refreshing flow that is about to come over us in our trial-parched souls.

Because that's who God is.

God is the one who pours out that which we need with our souls parched by the trials and pains and difficulties of our life.

He overwhelms us if we will ask him and allow him and recognize him for who he is.

He will overwhelm us with his goodness and grace.

And we may even in the midst of the trials say thank you, and we may even have joy, even though it hurts, because God is who he is.

You see what James is saying to us here.

Now, he says, ask in faith.

Ask in faith.

Don't ask with a divided heart, ask with an undivided heart.

So verse 6 to 8.

But limb let him who asks in faith with no doubting, for let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like the wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

For that person must not suppose he will receive anything from the Lord.

He's a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Let's try to unpack that a little bit.

If anyone asks or anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, and then a second command, let him ask.

That's a command, that's an imperative, and let him ask in faith.

If we were to go back to fourth grade, uh, at least in my days, they taught you how to diagram sentences.

I don't know if that's a lost art or not, but if you were to diagram what is said here, James is saying, let him ask, let him ask in faith.

Now, faith is always at the center of our relationship with God.

We know that.

That's just always going to be central to us.

It's central in the cross, it's central in honoring and worshiping Him, it's central in responding to the pain and difficulties of our life.

We know it's central.

We also know that our faith is imperfect.

There's no big surprise there.

My faith is not perfect.

Your faith is not perfect.

And I love the story in the Gospels where Jesus comes across a man who was beside himself.

His child was being terrorized, in this case by demonic activity, and he comes to Jesus and he says, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief.

That's for us as well.

That's who God is.

He helps us in our unbelief, because our belief is not full grown.

It's not yet fully mature.

That's the point of verses 2 through 4.

It's not yet fully mature.

And there's some things that are needed for us to get full and complete and mature, and part of that is to learn to trust God in the middle of our trials.

That's part of God's ways.

That's what God is doing.

An example is given of a lack of faith, and James takes just an example from daily life.

Just as his elder brother Jesus did in his teaching, so James does.

He does it throughout.

This is the first time in this book, and we'll see several other examples.

And he says, just think about, just think about waves.

And in that context, just as Jesus, he was talking about probably the Sea of Galilee, an inland sea.

Not the Mediterranean, not the Pacific, not the Atlantic.

When you stand on the shore and look at the waves, they all just keep coming at you.

But on an inland sea, they go back and forth and front and back and up and down, and you're just tossed all around and says, don't be like a little leaf or a cork or a piece of wood there, just bouncing all around.

That's a picture of having a divided mind, having being unsettled.

Don't be like that.

Internally conflicted.

When we doubt, we are torn on the inside.

Just go back to the good doctor that you're not convinced is either a good doctor or a doctor who knows what he's doing.

What does that produce?

It produces this unsettledness within us.

An internal conflictedness.

I was thinking about a classic illustration of that, and maybe this would impact nobody in this room except our family.

But let's just say that after church today, the seven of us go out and we go to the Olive Garden.

And we sit down, they get one of those big tables for us, and so Bobby or Sally or Freddie or whoever this helper is comes bouncing up and says, I'm your server today.

Can I help you?

And I tend to want to say, Would you just leave us alone?

We want to talk.

But we give her our drink order, perhaps, and pretty soon she comes back.

Have you made it?

And she's not doing anything wrong.

What's wrong is within me.

But so have you made up your mind?

And now that's a real issue.

Look at the menu in the Olive Garden.

You made up your mind?

So if somebody is very wise and internally conflicted, they'll say, Well, I haven't, but begin with him.

So then it goes, and I'm I'm not looking at you, Jane.

Really, I'm not.

So, you know, take the order here, and it begins to go around the circle, and pretty soon this person, this unnamed person, is beginning to panic because pretty soon they're gonna have to say what their choice is.

So what's going through their mind is okay, do I do I want pasta?

Um, do I want uh um maybe I'll just have a hamburger.

No, hamburger is a bad idea at the Olive Garden.

All right.

Do I do do I want a salad?

Maybe I'll just take the salad Caesar.

No, give me a side salad.

Now, she's gonna ask, do I what kind of dressing do I want?

Do I want ranch?

Do I want vinaigrette?

Do I want Caesar?

Do I want it on the side?

Do I want it on the top?

And about this time, some very patient man sitting next to this person.

Wives, do not look at your husbands at this point.

I'm sitting there saying, Would you just make up your mind?

It's just food.

Would you just make up your mind?

God is saying to us, will you just make up your mind about who I am?

Can you trust me?

Will you trust that I know what I'm doing in your life?

Will you trust that what I'm doing is for your good even though it doesn't feel it?

And this double-mindedness is our practical understanding of who God is.

It's a conflicted, double-minded, divided heart.

The word for a double-minded man is really a word which is, could be translated having two souls or two inclinations or having two sets of attitudes.

And he's saying, folks, when it comes to me, make up your mind who I am.

It all, it all boils down to a deep, unswerving conviction of the goodness of God's character and the reality of his power.

Good you are and good you do.

Make up your mind, friends, because that is in part why God allows these horrible circumstances to come into our minds, in part.

Just trust me, will you?

It's real easy to trust, it's real easy to trust God when it's a good week.

It's not so easy to trust God when it's a bad week.

And God allows bad weeks for many purposes, no doubt.

Sometimes they may have nothing to do with us.

The whole world doesn't revolve around us.

God's grand eternal plan is not just revolving around you, but sometimes he creatively, lovingly has circumstances and situations in which he's saying, Will you just trust who I am?

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.

You know something of me, you know something of my ways.

Now trust me, please just trust me.

I'm this pitcher is ready to pour out all kinds of things on your trial parched soul.

Will you trust me?

But don't be divided.

Don't say, well, are you really good?

And do you really know what you're doing?

Those things well up in our hearts.

I get it, does in mine at times as well.

But a fixed, unswerving commitment to the God that we know, the God who has revealed Himself.

In those times, in those times, we show who we are, and we show what we really believe about God and who God is.

Remember, we've said this before, it's in times of difficulties that we show who we really are.

And what James is adding to that now is that it also shows who we really believe God to be.

And if our faith doesn't work there, our faith doesn't work.

Alright, just some real simple brief thoughts, possible personal applications.

I would urge you to think about, in the midst of trials, asking for this kind of wisdom instead of demanding answers from God as to why.

Why you.

It's not normal.

It's not normal.

It is normal to say why, why me.

Sometimes God in his grace, so kindly and gently and graciously gives us a little bit of insight into what the whys are.

Usually well after the fact.

Have you ever noticed that?

Well after the trial, you begin to, it begins to come into place.

So it's probably not wrong to ask those questions, but it's wrong to demand those answers.

And it's always right in the midst of trials to pray that God, the God who gives, would give wisdom to understand himself, his character, and his goodness in those trials.

And if you could, if we could just practice shifting the questions a little bit, it would be pushing us in the right direction.

And I would encourage you to grab a hold of that picture of this incredible, refreshing flood that God is tilting towards you and wants to pour out to your trial-drenched soul.

Is that the God that you see?

That's the God who is.

So relish.

Relish that refreshment from God, because you know and God knows your soul is parched in those times.

And God gives us streams of refreshment.

And those streams of refreshment may not be changed circumstances, it may be discovering and seeing anew who God is.

Do you want just the circumstances changed, or do you want to see who God is?

And then finally, um, do you have an undivided heart or are you internally conflicted?

Is God good?

Does God care?

Is God involved?

Choose this day whom you will follow.

Choose this day.

In the times of trial and deepest stress to your soul, choose to follow the God who is, not the God you want him to be.

I'm gonna pray.

Heavenly Father, I pray that through all of these words of mine, that somehow the reality of your words would penetrate into the trial parched recesses of our heart and soul.

Father, I pray that we would not be content to just fill our minds with truth, but that that truth would be transformed into that wisdom which we so desperately need.

Father, I pray that we would accept what the good doctor is doing because we trust him and we know his competence.

And Father, I pray that you would give us the grace to look to you and thank you.

Thank you with joy in the midst of trials.

Because good you really are, and good you really are doing.

Oh Lord, may this be a growing reality in our lives.

I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.