Our temptations show us whether we are double-minded men or women. James 1:8 says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. And so there is a temptation to be double-minded. What does it mean to be double-minded? Have you ever thought about that? What is a double-minded man? Well, it is a man that has two minds. What does it mean to have two minds? It is to look to God and to the world for morality or norms and security. It is to have two sets of minds, two sets of thinking, two sets of truth, two sets of morality. It is to be compromised. What happens to someone who has the Word of God and the word of men as equally ultimate and authoritative. James says he is like a wave that is driven by the wind. The wave comes up and the wind blows one way and the other way. He is unstable in all his ways. He does not know which way to turn.
Elisha said it this way: how long will you halt between two opinions? If the Lord is God, then serve him; if Baal is god, then serve him. And so the testing and trials that God brings to us, cause us to cry out for wisdom because we do have a temptation for double-mindedness. This is not just for those out there; it is a temptation that we all face. For we hear the sirens of the world that we are tempted to draw on and go after—to be accepted by the world as being wise and smart. Yet there is a point where we have to turn our back on the world and embrace the wisdom of God which is foolishness in the eyes of the world.1
Michael Voytek
8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.