Recently I felt led to read through the book of James. I’m a very fast reader but that means that I don’t always get the meat of the words because I skim at times. Not a terrible thing for doing college courses but with the Word of God, not so great. So I resolved to try and read slower and take time to listen to what God might be saying. All I can remember from James is the portion about the tongue inflaming things when out of control, so for someone’s whose mania occasionally takes the form of motormouth this sounded like a great book to read.

Then I ran into James 1:6-8 (NIV), “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”

Umm ouch. Now I remember why I didn’t like the beginning of James. This verse has baffled me for a long time. Dealing with bipolar and to some degree borderline personality disorder is almost literally the definition of double-minded and unstable. I can only do so much even with medication and healing, my mind sometimes quite literally plays tricks on me. I can wake up and go from up to down to up again in a matter of an hour; or I could stay down, or possibly stay up. I understand his analogy of being tossed by the wind, only now it’s called mood swings and flashbacks.

Does this mean I doubt God? What if I can’t help some of the things my mind bubbles up because to some degree, as painful as it is to admit, I’m still not fully in control of my mind? So I decided to read these verses in a few other Bible versions to see if I could understand the meaning a little better. The NLT describes doubt as divided loyalty, the Passion Translation as ambivalence, and the Amplified states doubting as doubting God’s willingness to help.

I can’t doubt God’s willingness to help because I have seen His hand in my life. I know what it’s like to sit in madness and have God come along and give me freedom. And I will never doubt that He is willing to do this for everyone. He is a good God and does only good. Likewise, neither am I ambivalent about the God I believe in. In fact, ambivalence would probably never be a word used to describe me as person or me as a Christian. I’m way too intense for that word to sit in my presence.

But it was the words “divided loyalty” that caught and kept my attention. One, I consider myself a very loyal person so to use that phrase almost makes me angry. Two, and the bigger point, I gave my heart, soul, spirit, and yes, even my oddly mixed-up mind, to God. I entered into an eternal covenant with the King of kings to forever be His child and serve Him. So, on the days that my brain is tossed about, my spirit isn’t. It resides in the shadow of my King knowing He is my present help. When my heart feels torn by impulses in my mind; my soul still sings triumphant songs to Heaven.

I might get tossed about occasionally and smacked by the seas of life, but my loyalty lies with my God. And if doubts do arise, I’ve determined to silence them with the knowledge that God is always willing to help, I’m not ambivalent, and I have set myself in an eternal covenant regardless of my mind is doing from day to day.