Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen and I am podcasting from Chico, California. This is the first time the War of Special Forces has ever been to the town or city, I should say, of Chico.

And we’re thrilled to be here at the Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, where Pastor Gabriel is pastor and certainly had a great start and exciting Sunday. Uh, seeing the Lord is working here at this church. It’s great to be able to just come in and kind of get in the harness with them and their burden to reach their community with the gospel.

And so, if you get this podcast soon after we’ve podcasted, uh, I’d encourage you to pray for us this week that God would give us a great harvest of souls. I believe the team is well over 200 names and numbers that they have compiled inviting area teens to come. And certainly that’s been exciting.

It started on Sunday night when they took us out to In-N-Out, and there were teenagers everywhere, and our team just did a great job of, uh, engaging those young people in conversations, giving them a brochure and signing many of them up to be on their team. So we’re excited about that. Well, if you were listening to the last podcast that I gave about five weeks ago, we dealt with James chapter 1.

And I wanted to deal with the, the, the issue of your soul being saved. And we pointed out that when we’re talking in James 1 about your soul being saved, we’re not necessarily talking about what we often call a salvation. We’re talking about the Christian life or sanctification.

It’s the idea of your soul being delivered. And the point we would ask is: what does your soul need to be delivered from? And the answer to that would be earlier in the chapter, James 1, and I’m just reviewing right now, James says a double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

And if you know much about that passage, it’s talking about someone who’s like a wave driven with the wind and tossed as the Bible said, let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord. So what’s that phenomenon? Somebody who’s asked for wisdom, but they doubt God, believe God, doubt God, believe God.

And in doing so, God says that’s double mindedness and that’s not going to work. Well, we have a great tendency toward double mindedness because our soul is that part of us which connects with our existence here on planet earth. In other sense, in one sense, I should say we are a living soul.

It’s our humanity, mind, will, and emotions. Sometimes people say, but it’s our humanity. It’s that which connects with the world around us, through our bodies.

The sensory realm gives to the soul data. And from that data, if we’re not careful, we can make wrong conclusions. And I use the situation with Elijah, when he heard from Jezebel that she was going to kill him, he had a normal soul reaction that was fear.

And he ran and got out of the will of God because he was focused on external stimuli. So it was with Peter. Here he is walking on the water in answer to Jesus command to come.

He gets out of the boat. Trust Jesus to enable him to walk on water. Great picture there.

And then what happens? The wind and the wave comes up. Waves come up.

He gets distracted, looks away from Jesus, and down he goes. What happened? Double mindedness.

Yet one moment he was trusting the Lord in a remarkable fashion. And the next moment he’s sinking. And what did Jesus say?

Oh, ye of little faith. Uh, my brother John points out that word. Little can mean the idea of short.

And I think that’s what it was, because he certainly had faith for a moment as he walked on water. I mean, that’s a remarkable faith, but it didn’t last very long. Why?

Because his soul was impacted by external stimuli, wind and waves through the sensory realm. Of course, affected his soul. And he got fear in his heart.

And fear is always the antithesis of faith. And down he went. And so, double-mindedness.

We all struggle with that because we. We have a world around us that constantly gets us stimuli and sometimes we, we have fear as a result of that. That’s why Jesus said over and over again, fear not, be not afraid.

Why? Because we have such a propensity toward that. And when we do, we’re.

We leave faith and we’re to fear our unbelief. And then that then maybe we bounce back to faith and we go back and forth like a wave driven with the wind and tossed. And so that’s not a healthy condition for the Christian life.

So God gives us a solution here in James chapter 1, we diagnose the problem. If you want to go back and listen to that podcast five weeks ago, you can do that.

But God gives us a wonderful solution in James chapter 1 and verse 21, he says, “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted Word,” here it is, “which is able to save your souls.” What does it save your soul from? Again, double-mindedness believing God, doubting God, believing God, doubting God.

And that’s the point where let not that man think he shall receive anything from the Lord. And we. We all have been there, and if we’re not there, we will probably be there.

If we’re not vigilant about this matter. I see two steps in the verse. It says, laying aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness.

That word lay aside is interesting. It’s the idea of removing clothing. Uh, we do a program called The War for ten years.

That’s what I did from 1984 to 1994 or 1995. And, uh, on Friday night, uh, if it was the summertime Monday night, if it was the school year, we did a mud pit, a tug of war over a mud pit. And I have seen many young people, uh, totally get whatever they were wearing totally coated with mud and muddy water.

And often they go into a bathroom and, uh, they remove that muddy clothing and they. They bring many times they brought clothing and they put that on. And that muddy clothing many times is never even claimed.

They don’t even take it home. Sometimes they throw it away. Sometimes unfortunately, it’s just left around and the team had to pick it up and throw it away.

Um, so how do we remove filthiness and superfluity, which is abundance of naughtiness? And there’s an inference here. This could also be the idea of anger, malice, which sometimes comes when we get frustrated about our vacillating Christian life between a believing God, doubting God.

Often fear gives way to anger, and anger is another wrong reaction of unbelief. But how do we get rid of that? How do we lay aside those kind of sinful activities, that unbelief, that anger, the sinful, um, responses or actions that come from unbelief?

How do we get rid of that? Well, 1 John 1:9 is what comes to mind: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,” and, here it is, “to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

You and I need cleansing. How do we take off the muddy clothing of sin and put on a new man?

As often as mentioned in Ephesians 4, positionally, I believe that was done at salvation. But practically speaking, how does that occur? Well, the very first thing, friends, is to get honest with God and acknowledge to him the sin in your life and the fact you need cleansing.

He’s the one that can cleanse us. And we do that on the basis that it’s salvation. The old man, we put off, the old man, the new man was put on, the old man was crucified with Christ.

And the new man has been created in righteousness and true holiness. That’s occurred that needs to be practically lived out, but it’s based on what did really happen at salvation. And one of the first steps toward that occurring is, uh, really coming to the Lord honestly and claiming his cleansing power of his blood for renewal and restoration.

But also, it’s believing that in Jesus we are dead to sin, alive unto God. We’ve talked about this before, that we are a new man in Christ, created in righteousness and true holiness.

So we’ve got to practically deal with our sin by looking to Jesus for cleansing his blood, to cleanse our conscience from dead works so we can serve the living God, but also believing that in Jesus our old man has been crucified. That which was corrupt according to deceitful lusts, the new man has been created in righteousness and true holiness.

That’s very true in the reality of what happened to our spirit at salvation. We were regenerated. Talked about that before so won’t revisit it fully.

But there has to be cleansing in order to move forward. You got to deal with the sins that have, um, you’ve allowed to come into your life because of double mindedness, double-mindedness doubting God. When we doubt God, we’re into sin.

And it’s often sometimes we have fear, like Elijah ran from the, uh, from the Lord or from the will of God, I should say, and in doing so got out of the will of God. And God’s presence followed him greatly, gratefully. Uh, for God’s graciousness to us is wonderful.

But anyway, uh, so there has to be the cleansing, the putting off. And that’s based on what has happened at salvation. And practically it’s claiming the cleansing power of the blood by being honest with God and, and agreeing with him.

If there is a solution, if there’s somebody we need to get right with, and knowing that clean heart that only he can give. But then secondly, it says, receive with meekness the engrafted Word. The word meekness is an interesting word.

It’s the idea of strength under control. And for all of us, uh, this is not something that we can do in human strength. Uh, it’s, um, it’s something that the Holy Spirit can do.

And Jesus was meek in the sense that he had strength under control. He could have called ten thousand angels when he was taken to be crucified. But he had strength under control.

And we have Jesus living in us. Now, how do you get that strength under control? And the answer is, we’ve got to be broken.

Our will has to be broken. Uh, I remember as a little boy watching a cowboy break a horse. And what was he doing to that wild horse?

He was not trying to get rid of its strength. He was trying to get the great strength that horse had under his control. In order for that to happen, that horse had to be broken.

His will had to be broken. So no longer was the horse doing what it wanted to do. It was submitted to the Cowboy’s will.

Friends, do you see it? How do we have meekness when we submit to the control of the Holy Spirit? In other words, our will is submitted to his and our.

What. Human strength we have is under his control, and we’re depending on his supernatural strength to live the Christian life. That’s meekness.

It comes with brokenness. It comes with a willingness to do whatever God wants us to do. Now that’s the key.

It doesn’t just say, receive the engrafted Word. It says receive it with meekness. In other words, you have to receive the word with the attitude, God, whatever you say I’m going to do.

When you come to the Bible, you have to come with the premise, God, whatever you say, I’m doing it because if you don’t come with that premise, you may miss the will of God. I was speaking to some juniors and seniors about a week ago, and I challenged them with this you will not find the will of God if you’re not willing to do it.

And that’s the premise you come to receive with meekness the engrafted Word. Of course, we’re talking about the Word of God and the word engrafted. I won’t go into it, but it’s obviously an agricultural word.

And there’s a great miracle of life in the agricultural world, and that’s what the Bible is. It’s life giving. And it’s an illustration of the illustration of the agricultural world is what the Bible does.

There’s life there as there are in plants that are alive. The engrafted word. Okay, now I’ll put a seed in the ground.

It’s got life, and life comes out of it. You graft in a branch. And life comes from that tree into that branch.

And so it’s all about a miracle that God’s created. And so that’s what the Word of God does. When we get the Word of God, it brings life to us.

We become a conduit of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now how do you receive with meekness the engrafted Word? Well, first, you obviously have to have a willingness to do it.

And then you take that word of God and you receive it. You agree with it, you want it, you trust and obey. In fact, the next verses where it talks about be doers of the word and not hearers only.

You don’t just hear it, you obey it. And in that dependent obedience, God saves your soul. That’s what happens.

You see what happened to Peter as he began to sink? Lord, save me, he cried. He looked to Jesus.

Jesus grabbed him, I believe. He lifted him back up. He walked on the water.

I believe back to the boat. The Bible doesn’t tell us that, but it certainly inferred. And that’s what happens.

Friends, when you and I are willing to do the will of God, we hear God’s words, okay, God, I’m going to obey it. In dependence on your strength, not mine. And where our will is submitted to his that delivers our soul from being double-minded.

You have to have a willingness to do God’s will as soon as you hear it. Then immediately trust and obey. You hear the word and then obey depending on his strength, not yours.

And when you do that, God begins to deliver you from being double-minded. So you’re not believing God, doubting God, believing God, doubting God. Now you’re constantly looking to Jesus, walking on water and depending on him for deliverance from that unbelief that surfaced so often in our life.

So friends, you want to be delivered from double-mindedness. You want to be delivered from up and down, believing God, doubting God will be submitted to the will of God and submit yourselves to the Holy Spirit. Say whatever you want me to do.

Show me in your word, and I’ll depend on you to do it. And God says you will be delivered. It’s able to continually deliver your soul from being double-minded.

So I trust, young person, you will be encouraged that God has a plan. And his plan is that your soul doesn’t have to be up and down. You can be delivered, but it’s through the power of the Word of God.

You got to receive it with meekness. I hope you’re encouraged by that, and I trust the Lord will continue to stir and encourage your heart with the wonderful truths that God has given us in His Word. And that’s what we mean when we talk about total surrender.

That’s meekness. Strength under control. Our will under his control and total dependence.

That’s when we obey, depending on his strength, not ours. So really, James chapter 1 is another way of saying total surrender. Total dependence.