Divided Individual

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

James 1:5-8

This post is likely to be a little more personal than usual, but since I graduated from college, I’ve been struggling with a lot of doubt, fear, and anxiety. Coming across these words, I felt encouraged to know that I can ask for wisdom unashamedly. As I continued reading, though, I started to really feel convicted that my anxious prayer recently very well may be representative of  a person whose loyalty is divided between God and the world.

When rough, uncertain events are happening in life, it’s easy to have all of your prayers focused on yourself and your situation. While there’s nothing wrong with praying for yourself, it is in praying for yourself that it becomes easy to find yourself divided.

When praying and thinking about others, those thoughts and prayers come more naturally simply because it’s easier to pray for God’s will to be done when it’s another person’s life. When it comes to our own lives, we know and feel our desires. It’s easier for those things to become clouded and distracted from what God truly holds dear. It’s easy to force our wants  in with God’s wants when it comes to our own lives.

The past few days, if not longer than that, I have really felt like a divided individual who is placing a lot of faith and hope in other things. If I’m really honest with myself, I would likely say that I feel like if I find the right girl or the right job, then I’ll be happy or satisfied. I need to learn to be content with God alone, to be encouraged by my relationship with Him and not by my relationships with others.

Certainly, I believe that God blesses us through people and even work that we do here on this earth, but it all has to focus and go back to Him alone.

That’s something that I really need to be learning right now.