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. 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. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.
We normally equate double-mindedness with something other than failing to trust God. It might be in terms of people trying to be devoted to God, but also devoted to getting rich, a precarious position to be in, but a subject perhaps for another day. Or a supposed allegiance to God and country, as if the two are compatible with each other, not that we shouldn’t strive to be good earthly citizens, being concerned for our country out of love for our neighbor, while we remain beyond everything else, citizens of God’s kingdom. Or holding on to whatever sin it might be, as we continue to be religious. Double-mindedness.
But James equates it here with something we often consider much less harmful, if even a case of double-mindedness at all: the lack of faith. Do we trust God or not? That’s the question. The kind of faith and maturity God wants from us is to simply trust God through thick and thin, no matter what. When we don’t, we essentially are saying that we know better, or else we want to be in control, or we think somehow life depends on us, and that God is only there to help us in some kind of secondary, assisting way.
Instead James is telling us that God is calling us in the midst of trials to look to God, to trust God for needed wisdom. And that the issue is whether or not we believe God is willing to help us or not, and not only willing, but whether or not God will come through for us. We need to learn to rest assured in God’s goodness and faithfulness in whatever situation we’re facing. That God is with us in the trial. And that as we see in the context (click link above), God is working in our lives to make us complete in our character.
The last thing James is suggesting is that the trials we’re going through either are easy, or will become easy if we trust God. But James is certainly saying that trusting God will make a world of difference for us both in changing us over time, and in seeing us through. Both are essential, because what’s often worse than the trial itself or at least just as bad is our reaction to them. God wants to work in our lives to temper that down and help us instead to consider such situations pure joy, since we know God is at work in our lives, and that God will indeed help us, God the one in charge and not us. As we look to God in trusting prayer. In and through Jesus.
Jesus community 