Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Following Baal


How long will you waver between two opinions?  If the LORD is God follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him” 1 Kings 18:21.

We all do it.  We hope for this…we dream for that…we pray for ‘it’.  Why wouldn’t we since God invites us to? ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find…For everyone who asks receives’ Matthew 7:7-8.  But then we do the very thing that shoots our dream in the foot – we disbelieve!  We spend time on our knees only to stand up and walk away in doubt.  Instead of following our faith we follow our own reasoning of why our dreams will not come true…our Baal. 

We all have false gods which we follow on any given day.  What does this look like?  Following our Baal means following our own ideas towards making something happen.  Following Baal means giving more thought and worship to the things of the flesh instead of the Spirit.  Following Baal means praying for something and then following our doubts of getting it.  Let’s face it – we cannot waver between two opinions of how we see God.  Either our hearts believe that God is God or God is not.  Our doubts proclaim that God is not able…is not trustworthy to deliver the promises of His word…is not who He claims to be.  We can live as Christians being double-minded and double-hearted.  In the words of James we must know that with every prayer lifted it is in vain if we do not possess a spirit of expectancy.  While God will not contradict His will for our lives He will give His full attention to answering our prayers within His will.  He would not give us the invitation to ask for specifics if He did not intend for us to ask.  His word says to lift every request and petition to Him. 

James nails it on the head when he penned ‘But when he asked he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does’ James 1:5-8.  Notice that if we doubt we are deemed unstable in everything.  Our doubt echoes what is in our heart – how long will we waver?

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