Title: Best Laid Plans (Or, God’s Ironic Sense of Humor)
Folks, you cannot make this up. I had something that happened today that I have never had happen in 28 years and 1200 sermons. I was putting the finishing touches on my sermon when I got an email closed out a window and then realized who I deleted my entire sermon. It was going to be on a very short section moving into the next part of James and here is the great irony and the reason we can know for certain that our Lord has an amazing sense of humor.
I swear to you, this is true the entire introduction of the sermon which I’m going to try to re-create for next week was about the things I’ve learned in 28 years of writing sermons over 1200 sermons ….apparently in those 28 years of ministry, what I have not learned how to do is to save my sermon before it gets deleted.
I spent about an hour, trying to recover it through the system files and finally came to a piece where I was like you know what I remember very specifically the last Sunday of December last year where we looked at this passage in James and had an amazing discussion and I wanted to revisit that passage as we’re looking at New Year’s resolutions. Next week we’ll get back into Hebrews if you’ll have me back.
(Read/Pray)
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” 14 [k]Yet you do not know [l]what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away. 15 [m]Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your [n]arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17 So for one who knows the [o]right thing to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.
Much to my wife’s chagrin, I am a chronically specific person. I have found that if I am too specific when it comes to making New Year’s resolutions, I can paint myself in a corner, and set myself up for failure.
For example, I had some grand plans for the payment of our mortgage once the Hospice Business got up and running…we were supposed to be open in August of 2024. We opened nine months later in May of 2025.
Is James’s issue here with people making plans?
Then what, exactly is his issue?
What is the arrogance he speaks of in v. 16
Presumption.
This is where I find comfort in the words of James above: It is okay, natural, and good for a man to have a plan…but our faith is often truly illustrated in how humble we are when God changes those plans.
It is okay to aspire toward resolutions…as long as you acknowledge that the God that knows infinitely more about what is truly good for you, may have another pathway in mind. This pathway is often very difficult, and it is so for the purpose of teaching us lessons we could not otherwise learn.
This is more than a polite pre-cursor.
So James offers us much wisdom in how we should slightly adjust our resolutions. “If the Lord wills” is more than a polite precursor to a prayer request. It is an acknowledgement the HE is in control, not us. We don’t know the outcome, but we trust in HE who does.
In years of Hospice Chaplaincy… I often ask patients whom I visit, “How can I pray for you today?” And the response from the patient is often, “That I can get better!” Which makes sense, but can present a difficult counseling situation for someone facing a terminal illness.
I have discovered a great response to this.
I will respond, “I can absolutely pray for that…but let me ask you a question: What if it is not God’s will for you to get better? What if He is calling you home? What would that do to your relationship with God?”
It is in our answers to these questions where our faith is truly defined.