Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow! ... Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ James 4:13-15
I heard it said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”.
I think, in fact, I would prefer the word “smile” to “laugh” because a smile can be affectionate, even loving, whereas laughter may well be derisory, and I don’t think God mocks his children.
But whatever, the point itself is a good one - if we form our plans without seeking God’s guidance first and foremost, then we are likely to come unstuck, as they say.
When I was a young Christian, fifty or more years ago, I can remember people who routinely qualified their hopes or expectations of the future with the words “God willing”. (Sometimes they even used the Latin words, “deo volente”, or “dv” - “The Sunday-School outing will take place on Saturday 21July, dv”.) That seems slightly comical now, certainly very old-fashioned. But the instinct was right: what supremely matters is not what I think is right, but what God knows is right.
It may be that James picked up the warning he gives (James 4:13-15) from his older brother Jesus. In Luke 12:13-21 Jesus tells the very similar story of the rich farmer who made elaborate plans to expand his business and looked forward to many years of luxuriating in idleness - but who never lived to see another morning. “You fool” says God to him: “this very night your life will be demanded from you.”
So much for human planning! As the old saying puts it: “Man proposes; God disposes.”
Does this mean it’s always wrong for Christians to plan in advance? Not at all. Life is a complicated business, and to fail to plan, with a breezy “Oh, I’m happy just to let God guide me each day”, while it may sound very spiritual, is in fact simply irresponsible.
Some of those older Christians I mentioned earlier had, I suspect, been rather misled by the old “Authorised Version” of the Bible - what nowadays we more accurately call the “King James Version”. They didn’t understand that that word “authorised” referred to King James I (not to God), and that Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:25, “take no thought for your life...” are better translated “do not worry about your life”, a different thing altogether.
No, it is wise and prudent, indeed essential, to make plans for the future, especially on big issues like family life and matters to do with work and finances. What matters is that we never assume that we have got it right, especially when we have very strong ideas of what we would like to do. God knows best, and he may have other ideas!
The apostle Paul was constantly moving around in order to exercise his ministry. He is a good example of prayerful planning. At the end of a visit to Ephesus he assured them that he would come and see them again “if it is God’s will” (Acts 18:21). Or, writing to the church in Philippi, he “hopes to send Timothy to them”, but that is only “in the Lord Jesus” (Philippians 2:19); indeed, he is “confident” that he himself will revisit them - but again only “in the Lord” (2:24).
That little phrase “in the Lord” is key; it means, in effect, “subject to the Lord’s will”.
Once we have got hold of this, two important things need to be added.
First, we should never allow questions of God’s guidance to, in effect, paralyse us.
I have known Christians who were so anxious that they might get it wrong that they ended up doing virtually nothing at all. This can’t be right! - take that caution to extremes and you would never so much as cross the road.
No: sometimes, after prayer, talking to trusted friends, and carefully weighing up all the pros and cons, we are left to take a deep breath and take the plunge. As long as our hearts are humble and sincere, why should God our Father not lead us, even if at first it seems a little hair-raising? (I wonder how Abraham felt when God first called him to go out into the unknown?)
Second, we should never let past mistakes ruin our peace of mind or wreck our lives.
Somebody reading this might be thinking “Yes, this is all very good and true - but it’s too late for me. I made a mistake some years ago - a big, life-changing mistake - and there’s no way now I can turn the clock back.”
This may be true, and it’s right to look at it head-on. But remember, God is your Father, and he loves you and is delighted to forgive you. He is both very able and also perfectly willing to give you a fresh new start.
The only place to move on from is... well, just where you are. (Where else can you move on from!) So - stop looking to the past and start to look ahead.
Your heavenly Father has a bright new future for you!
Loving Father, thank you that at the most critical moment of his life Jesus prayed that simple prayer “Yet not my will, but yours, be done”. Help me, I pray, to make what he prayed in his crisis time the motto of my everyday life, in matters great and small. Amen.
I heard it said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”.
I think, in fact, I would prefer the word “smile” to “laugh” because a smile can be affectionate, even loving, whereas laughter may well be derisory, and I don’t think God mocks his children.
But whatever, the point itself is a good one - if we form our plans without seeking God’s guidance first and foremost, then we are likely to come unstuck, as they say.
When I was a young Christian, fifty or more years ago, I can remember people who routinely qualified their hopes or expectations of the future with the words “God willing”. (Sometimes they even used the Latin words, “deo volente”, or “dv” - “The Sunday-School outing will take place on Saturday 21July, dv”.) That seems slightly comical now, certainly very old-fashioned. But the instinct was right: what supremely matters is not what I think is right, but what God knows is right.
It may be that James picked up the warning he gives (James 4:13-15) from his older brother Jesus. In Luke 12:13-21 Jesus tells the very similar story of the rich farmer who made elaborate plans to expand his business and looked forward to many years of luxuriating in idleness - but who never lived to see another morning. “You fool” says God to him: “this very night your life will be demanded from you.”
So much for human planning! As the old saying puts it: “Man proposes; God disposes.”
Does this mean it’s always wrong for Christians to plan in advance? Not at all. Life is a complicated business, and to fail to plan, with a breezy “Oh, I’m happy just to let God guide me each day”, while it may sound very spiritual, is in fact simply irresponsible.
Some of those older Christians I mentioned earlier had, I suspect, been rather misled by the old “Authorised Version” of the Bible - what nowadays we more accurately call the “King James Version”. They didn’t understand that that word “authorised” referred to King James I (not to God), and that Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:25, “take no thought for your life...” are better translated “do not worry about your life”, a different thing altogether.
No, it is wise and prudent, indeed essential, to make plans for the future, especially on big issues like family life and matters to do with work and finances. What matters is that we never assume that we have got it right, especially when we have very strong ideas of what we would like to do. God knows best, and he may have other ideas!
The apostle Paul was constantly moving around in order to exercise his ministry. He is a good example of prayerful planning. At the end of a visit to Ephesus he assured them that he would come and see them again “if it is God’s will” (Acts 18:21). Or, writing to the church in Philippi, he “hopes to send Timothy to them”, but that is only “in the Lord Jesus” (Philippians 2:19); indeed, he is “confident” that he himself will revisit them - but again only “in the Lord” (2:24).
That little phrase “in the Lord” is key; it means, in effect, “subject to the Lord’s will”.
Once we have got hold of this, two important things need to be added.
First, we should never allow questions of God’s guidance to, in effect, paralyse us.
I have known Christians who were so anxious that they might get it wrong that they ended up doing virtually nothing at all. This can’t be right! - take that caution to extremes and you would never so much as cross the road.
No: sometimes, after prayer, talking to trusted friends, and carefully weighing up all the pros and cons, we are left to take a deep breath and take the plunge. As long as our hearts are humble and sincere, why should God our Father not lead us, even if at first it seems a little hair-raising? (I wonder how Abraham felt when God first called him to go out into the unknown?)
Second, we should never let past mistakes ruin our peace of mind or wreck our lives.
Somebody reading this might be thinking “Yes, this is all very good and true - but it’s too late for me. I made a mistake some years ago - a big, life-changing mistake - and there’s no way now I can turn the clock back.”
This may be true, and it’s right to look at it head-on. But remember, God is your Father, and he loves you and is delighted to forgive you. He is both very able and also perfectly willing to give you a fresh new start.
The only place to move on from is... well, just where you are. (Where else can you move on from!) So - stop looking to the past and start to look ahead.
Your heavenly Father has a bright new future for you!
Loving Father, thank you that at the most critical moment of his life Jesus prayed that simple prayer “Yet not my will, but yours, be done”. Help me, I pray, to make what he prayed in his crisis time the motto of my everyday life, in matters great and small. Amen.
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