Singularity

 When you submit to one, you are automatically in conflict with the other. If it helps anyone to understand it better, your heart only has room for one master, and it cannot divide itself into a duplex. Your heart isn’t an investment rental that you can divvy up to get more income out of. One tenant is all it can hold, and you get to choose the tenant. Either you submit to God and are in enmity with the devil, or you surrender your heart to sin and are in enmity with God.

It’s not complicated, but we complicate it. The reason we complicate it is that our hearts are not wholly surrendered to God, our minds are not wholly submitted to His will, and we are tempted every time someone comes around and insists we can make a little side income off book, and no one will ever have to know. Just for a little while, they promise. All they need is a room with a bed, and they’ll pay cash, and no one has to know. It takes one yes, and by the time you realize what you’ve done, there’s a hole in the living room floor, which is now being used as a fire pit; the walls are spray-painted black, they’ve brought in a dozen more friends, and when you try to evict them, they threaten to kill you.

That’s what sin does in the hearts of men. It begins as a benign, timid, shy thing, but once you let it in, the mask comes off, and you see the fangs, and the talons and all the niceties are long forgotten because they were a ruse. That first high turns into something you’re always chasing but never catching. That first glance turns into such an abusive, unhealthy relationship that if he doesn’t hit you on a given day, you wonder if he’s fallen out of love with you. Sin corrupts. Even things that seem wholesome at first get corrupted by sin because that is its function and purpose.

Where they end up shouldn’t surprise anyone who starts down the road of sin and depravity, but somehow, it always does. No one ever sets out to end up homeless, toothless, riddled with disease, and having to struggle to take in a lungful of air, but they do. Even if they have enough loved ones around them to set them straight, get them help, send them to rehab, and keep them from relapsing, the success stories are so few and far between that those who make it get lauded as being of superhuman will.

Nobody wants to end up where sin and rebellion take them, and everyone talks themselves into believing that they’ll be the exception. They’ll be the ones that can play with fire and not get burned. They’ll be the one that will do the devil’s bidding when they think God isn’t watching and pretend at righteousness when He is. If anyone was unaware, God is always watching, and you can’t trick Him into believing you’re something that you’re not.

Those who thought they could pull the wool over God’s eyes will stand before Him one day and have a laundry list ready for Him to peruse as evidence that they knew Him, but alas, He did not know them, and that’s the plumb line. That’s the litmus test. That’s the pass and fail of it all, whether He knew you and not if you knew of Him.

No, I’m not being mean-spirited, unloving, or unkind; I’m being direct and Biblical. Just because the world has redefined directness to mean callous and insensitive, it doesn’t make it so. How could I dare to say I love you in Christ if I did not tell you the truth? Would I not be proven a liar by omitting what the Bible says?

Not only does James tell us what we must do, but he also tells us how we go about doing it. It’s easy to tell someone to draw near to God, and He will draw near to you, but how we go about doing that is a different matter altogether.

It’s like someone asking me how they can save money on their electric bill and me telling them to find another source of electricity. All well and good, thanks for the advice, but how exactly do I do that?

It is by cleaning our hands and purifying our hearts that we draw nearer to God. If you want more of God, you must retain less of the flesh until none of the flesh exists, and all that remains is God. We appropriate the blood of Jesus because it’s the only thing that will make us clean, but we must endeavor to wash our hands and purify our hearts. There must be an active desire to draw nearer to God and a willingness to do all that is required to achieve that desired result.

Righteousness and holiness unto God are not take-it-or-leave-it propositions or something we’re willing to pursue when the temptations being proffered are not up to a certain type of standard. I’m not married to my wife only insofar as someone younger comes along, as long as she retains her looks, or as long as she is in pristine health; she is my wife until death do us part, and it is the vow I made long ago.

Those who serve God only because they believe He will prosper them, bless them, or give them that promotion at work will stop doing so as soon as they get what they desire or when what they want doesn’t materialize. Those who serve God because He is the Lord of their lives and have a genuine desire to draw nearer to Him will continue to do so no matter their situation, circumstance, or condition. Everyone knows which type of Christian they are; the hard part is admitting it to themselves and taking steps to remedy the situation if remedy is required.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.