James Ch 4:13-17
13. Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit." 14. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring - what your life will be! For you are like a vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. 15. Instead, you should say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." 16. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17. So it is sin to know that good and yet not do it.
We all make plans in life. We have to or things would be chaotic. You have to plan to make a presentation for work or study to pass a test. You have to plan for someone to pick up your kids from activities if you can't do it. Making plans isn't necessary the problem. that James addresses in this passage. It is the attitude about the plans we make is the problem.
Think about the word arrogance? How do you define it? Do you think it's arrogant to declare your plans without first actually saying the words "if the Lord wills?" Think about this situation: You're in a restaurant and the waiter comes to take your order & you tell the waiter, "if the Lord wills, I'll have the steak." Or how about you get up & use the restroom and say "Excuse me. If the Lord wills, I'll be back in a moment."
It's about asking "God, am I really in submission to Your will? Am I comparing myself to other people who I consider more arrogant, that I've overlooked my own arrogance? OK, Lord, I recognize that my life is in Your hand. Every breath is a gift from You. So I surrender it to You now. What do you want me to do?"
The key here is that God's plans always trump our plans. We need to be humble enough to recognize that God might have different priorities from ours, and we should be obedient enough to make plans with His priorities in mind. Think about the current pandemic we are facing. Many plans have been cancelled. Things aren't going the way we thought it would be going.
Sometimes we live as if God does not exist. We conduct our business day to day without thinking about what God wants. We make our plans based on our hopes & dreams, not God's. We may have a rather moral code of conduct, but we're not responding to God's daily guidance.
That's what James is saying is the problem. A few verses earlier in that same chapter he is urging us to submit to God. To draw close to God as he draws close to you. It is that humble attitude of submission that is crucial if we are going to live for Him. Living in constant communication with God is vital if we're going to be flexible enough to change our plans based on His desires.
How do we need to change our habits so that we can hear God's daily guidance and follow it? What plans do you have for your life, your family, your home, your business, your church? Communicate with God about these & listen. What does he think about all this? His voice in this matters!
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