Always Include God in Your Plans

“Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 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.  For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that, But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil”.  James 4:13-16

Folks like to make plans, and there is certainly nothing wrong with planning.  Many troubles could be avoided by planning ahead.  However, as we all know, all of our plans don’t always work out the way we desire.  Sometimes it seems as though very few of our plans work out as we expect.  Take the current situation with the airlines.  Thousands of people had planned to go to various locations for the Independence Day holiday by air.  However, thousands of people have been stranded due to various problems, weather, lack of folks working for the airlines, and other difficulties.  I would imagine that having to spend the night, maybe even more than one night, in an airport would be extremely uncomfortable.  Some that I have seen on the news reported that they missed events, like weddings and graduations, to which they were traveling because of the troubles with the airlines.  We can all understand their frustrations, particularly since it was not their fault.  However, we have never been able to depend on men, women, and organizations run by men and women to always follow through.  Remember the slogan, “Delta is ready when you are”?  That no longer applies for just about every organization in our day because of the ever-increasing lack of personal responsibility among so many.

Not only are people giving up on integrity, but they also have another bad habit of presuming upon God’s grace.  It is true that God provides the grace needed for man to live by on a daily basis, but we cannot borrow on tomorrow’s grace.  We are not even promised tomorrow.   Some folks make plans and assume that everything will go as planned.  In James’ example that he gave to illustrate the folly of presumptiveness, he used a merchant who went into a city, intended to stay there for a year, and to buy and resell merchandise for a profit.  However, he had no idea what could happen while he was there.  A multitude of things could happen for which he didn’t plan that could turn his plans and even his life upside down.

The merchant could get sick, the economy could go into a deep recession, his competition could drive down his prices so much that he would take a loss, or he could get robbed of his merchandise and his money.  I know that sounds very pessimistic or extremely overly cautious about the decisions that we make.  Sometimes, like this merchant, we have to take a risk in order to be successful.  If we let every “what if scenario” worry us excessively, then we might be afraid to step out of our door and thus never make any progress.  The key in making plans is to depend on the Lord, listen to Him, and trust that He will guide us in making plans.  His plans are always far better than ours.  The merchant “counted his chickens before they were hatched” rather than allowing God’s wisdom to guide him and give him insight as to how to proceed.  He should have prayed first and then made his plans according to God’s will, not his own.

We can’t boast about something over which we have no control, and that includes basically everything.  Folks think they have control over their lives and their destinies, but there is always that unknown factor that can change everything even something as simple as a small home project.  I live in a house that is 80 years old.  It is a good house and has sheltered my family for many years and me for over 50 years so far.  Every time I start a project, I run into all sorts of unexpected problems.  Something that should only take a small amount of time to do ends up taking many hours, trips to Lowes or The Home Depot, and a lot of frustration.  I heard that when one runs into unexpected problems in home projects, it is called the “booger factor”.  The project will finally be completed, but not without spending much more time than anticipated.  Then, of course, half the time I don’t know what I am doing, but somehow, with the help of the Lord, I manage to get it done.

I don’t know about you, but I pray about everything whether it is a project that I am doing, every time I leave my house and drive somewhere, during bad storms, before I eat my meals, and, well, you get the picture.  God is the only One who deserves credit for all of our successes.  Without Him, we can do nothing (John 15:5).  I just wish all people would wake up to that fact.