Bipolar Disorder
Since genuine faith is the force that produces stability in our lives, what is it that this faith must be based on?
For the person who is not trusting in God, they may base their confidence or faith in their abilities, their loved ones, their career, or some other life factor that they have chosen. When their confidence in this factor is shaken, then their stabilizing force is removed, and they become tossed with the waves of temptation and trial. Ultimately, they are looking for another stabilizing force to grab onto.
This, of course, is not what God wants because everything that you will find in this world is temporary. Our abilities diminish, our loved ones die,our careers end, economies crash, society changes; there is nothing certain inthis world at all. That doesn’t meanthat there is nothing that can bring stability to our emotional state, however,because despite the uncertainty of this world, there is someone who transcendsthis world and never changes. That truthis revealed in James 1:17-18.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
God isn’t driven by the issues of this world; He is constant, He never changes. We are reminded of this truth in the last book of the Old Testament. It says in Malachi 3:6, “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” There is no changing in God, He is the same yesterday, today and forever according to Hebrews 13:8. As James says, there is no variableness or shadow of turning. That means that He is stable and consistent at all times, and as such, you can cling to Him when the issues of life are trying to toss you up and down. Not only is God Himself our source of confidence, but according to the verses in James we last saw, the word of truth is stable and used by God. That means that we can trust the Bible and have confidence that it is true. The Word of God also does not change, it is forever settled in heaven (Psalm 119:89), and we can hold it in our hands.
I believe that the two types of gifts spoken of here are the results of enduring temptation and trial. A good gift is the result of overcoming temptation. Through facing temptation, we learn what is good and what is evil. We are tempted to do evil, and thus, are able to identify more distinctly what is good. By learning this, we grow in the fear of the LORD. Often when we are first saved, we don’t readily understand what is good and what is evil. There are some things that we do of which we are ignorant concerning their evil nature. When we learn the truth, however, we are then faced with the temptation to continue in those things. In this fashion, the good gift is God’s way of revealing the path to growing in Christ’s likeness. When we choose the fear of the LORD, we depart from evil and temptation and choose to embrace the good that God has shown us.
