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TO CHEW ON: “I hate the double-minded
But I love Your law.” Psalm 119:113
Double-mindedness is mentioned in various places in the Bible.
We see it lived out in Old Testament times in Samaria which was resettled with foreigners when Israel came under Assyrian domination. These settlers from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim brought their religious practices and idols. When wild lions killed some of them, the solution was to re-introduce the “rituals of the God of the land.” This meant that priests of God joined idol-worshiping priests in sacrificing. The society became double-minded, serving God and idols - 2 Kings 17:32,33,41.
Jesus talks pointedly about double-mindedness:
“‘No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon’” - Luke16:13. [Mammon means wealth, treasure, riches.]
Paul mentions double-mindedness in relation to celebrating the Lord’s Supper and making sacrifices to idols. He ssays, in effect, choose one or the other. Doing both provokes God’s jealousy - 1 Corinthians 10:18-22.
James speaks of double-mindedness too. A double-minded man, he says, is unstable - James 1:8. Further, double-mindedness makes our hearts and hands impure and is a barrier to intimacy with God - James 4:8.
Are we in danger of being double-minded? We’re probably not tempted to worship physical idols like the Isrealites and early Christians coming from paganism were. But Jesus’ warning that we cannot serve God and money certainly hits a chord. And in our culture, where we’re encouraged to depend on and serve anything and everything but God (money, of course, and our own wits, science, social connections, society’s moral standards in the areas of marriage and sexuality, etc.) , double-mindedness is a real danger.
The psalmist sets double-mindedness against loving God’s law. Perhaps that’s the answer for us too. As we soak ourselves in Scripture, we begin to see where we are serving two masters and where we need to choose faith and loyalty to Jesus above all other options.
PRAYER: Dear Jesus, help me to recognize and eliminate the double-mindedness within me. I want You as my only master. Amen.
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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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