Your Plans or God’s?

James 4:13-15

13 Go to now, ye that say, Today or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:

14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.(KJV)

Good morning. Have you already planned your day? Here is a lesson that is good for me and probably good for you. I have a tendency to try to start my day without asking God what He wants me to do. I am already getting direction to cut calories more because I have got to lose 10 more pounds. Don’t know about you, but I love food and hate to eat small amounts, but I still need to cut down much more. In the meantime, I am trying to get myself in the habit of letting God choose how I spend my day instead of me choosing it. James is right, we don’t have any idea what tomorrow will bring and the time is a flying. My kids are grown and I am heading toward being a senior citizen and I think to myself, there is not much time left to be doing God’s will and only God’s will is worth doing. Like Paul, I have to say

Phil 3:12-13

12 Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,(KJV)

This certainly applies to me. How about you? Let’s get into the verses James gives us.

"Go to now" is nothing more than the expression we use when we say, "Com’on now". Not telling someone to come, but telling someone to be serious and be honest with themselves. So first James is saying, "Come on now, let’s be honest about reality, You say you are going to such and such a city to do your business for about a year, buying and selling the products of your business and making a profit." Then in the next verse he points out they have no idea what is going to happen even the next day. He is pointing out that they are presuming what is going to happen. The way I personally see it, James is scolding them for being so egotistical and presumtuous. They are assuming they can make their own plans. They haven’t even checked with God. James has been jumping down people’s throats, the way I see it, for all kinds of sins, but especially sins of the mouth-and here is another time he is pinpointing something to be corrected. He asks, "What is your life anyway? Nothing more than a puff of smoke or a vapour that appears for a short time, then disappears." Boy, he got that right. This life in this world is so short. We are not here long. We need to seriously consider how we spend our time and make sure it is what God wants us to do. God does not want us wasting it.

Then Paul tells us what we ought to be saying. "If it is God’s will, we will be alive and doing this or that." Why should we use an expression like that? Because it means you have submitted yourself to God’s control of your life and it is being expressed in your speech when it comes to your plans.

What James wants us to understand here is that our lives need to be spent, not doing what we like and enjoy, but what God directs us to do. We need to spend our time in doing and living in God’s will. (By the way doing things we like and enjoy is not the sin, it is the priority of it that determines whether it is a sin.)

James 4:16

16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.(KJV)

You see what James calls the boasting and bragging and planning we do that doesn’t include following God’s will first? He calls that kind of rejoicing evil. Is is wrong to make plans? No, only when you try to make plans and skip asking God if he wants you to do so. I have been guilty of that in the past. Do you know what kind of spirit is behind that? It is a willful spirit. Often too it is a stubborn spirit and idolatrous as a result.

Let us all repent of our presumption and remember to daily check in with God as to what we need to be doing. And if we are doing as He has directed, let us also remember to ask His help to do it right. May God bless this lesson to your hearts.

Praise God for the practical book of James.

May God bless you with His plans this weekend and forever. The Good News Lady