“A double-minded man,” says the book of James, “is unstable in all his ways.”
He was talking about prayer. But it’s true in so many ways, isn’t it?
If I get on Facebook first thing in the morning and check out news and views and people’s pics and lives, I’ll have a horrible time getting into the manuscript I’m supposed to be editing fifteen minutes later. Why? My brain’s multitasking. Double-minded. Unstable.
If I can’t decide between this choice or that choice, I delay choosing anything, lose time, and miss out on any blessing or result at all. Double-minded. Unstable.
Shoot, I almost didn’t write this post because I couldn’t make up my mind about how to do it. Finally I just waded in and started writing and chased the double-minded out by being doggedly single-minded about reaching the end :).
This blog and website are getting a do-over for several reasons, but double-mindedness plays in: because so many of my books cross over well (meaning they are pretty accessible to people who believe in Jesus and to people who don’t), and I want to make all of those people feel welcome in my online living space, I’ve been frozen in how to present myself here. They tell you to write to an ideal reader, a fictional person who encapsulates your “market,” but I haven’t known who that reader should be or how I should be talking to her.
Well, I still hope people of all stripes will be able to feel welcome here, and I intend to keep writing books that cross over because I think good stories generally do, and I try to write good stories. But I’m transforming this space into “Adventures in the Kingdom” because that’s where I really live: in the kingdom of God, wrestling with his Scriptures, getting to know his Spirit, caring about all the things that happen here and adventuring with all my might.
I hope that will bring stability and clear direction to this part of my life and this corner of the Internet.
And now, turning it over to you: is double-mindedness affecting any part of your life right now? How do you see a way back to stable?
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