Written by After our brief hiatus into our vision series last month, it is good to back in the book of James, and as we get back into James today and finish chapter 4 I have a thought for us to ponder.
God is a great planner. As your pastor I am constantly and continually amazed that all of us have a greater pastor/greater shepherd, Christ, who meets us right where we are and brings us to where He wants us to be. Let me explain how I see this unfolding before us…….When I began as pastor and people began to get to know me, questions began surfacing about the nature of what “reformed theology” is. So, enough of these questions came to my ear to move my heart (and the hearts of the elders) to begin what we did a few weekends ago, the semi-annual SonRise Seminar where I teach through a topic in depth. We had our first seminar, and in it I sought to answer the question: “What does it mean to be Reformed?” Since this seminar it seems that now with more information, more questions are rising to the surface. Some of you find this exciting, others of you find this discouraging, feeling as if you are starting over theologically. I want to remind you that God is not unaware of your struggles.
I sat down at my desk to dig back into James this week and low and behold, there before me was a text (our text for today – 4:13-17) that dives deeply into the sovereignty of God. Now I’m not sure if you know this or not, but I plan my preaching schedule 7-10 months in advance, but I had completely forgotten that our first venture back into James after our vision series break would be another dive into the sovereignty of God. I mean…I can’t plan moments like this! God was clearly orchestrating our path here, and God clearly knows what we need. It is deeply encouraging to know that when we require help from God to come in hold us when we feel lost, He shows up. Indeed, God is doing something among us, and He wants to communicate to you today that though some of you may feel in the dark, His sovereign grace is your Light. Let’s read our text for today:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
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