THE BEST LAID PLANS…
In the first few days of this new year, 2023, I felt as though I were standing on a mountaintop. In my imagination, I perceived the year starting on a vista where I could survey the months ahead in a general sort of way. It was a very simple vision. From January on I could see the year gently sloping downward toward the summer months. Then with the coming of autumn the year starts its climb towards Christmas again.
If you can picture it, the year is like a valley. We stand here on the rise, having climbed the ridge and looking down at the valley and wondering what it holds for us. What will we experience? What triumphs and successes will we know? What griefs and trials will we experience? We have no idea what’s ahead.
As we head into the unknown, we are inclined to make plans. What will we do this year? Some people like to make resolutions; others make goals; still others, knowing that both resolutions and goals are easily broken, are content to take what comes. For those who make plans, goals, objectives for the new year, they do so to take control of their lives. Rather than letting life dictate haphazardly what will happen, you are determined to make life fit your plan. And that’s okay.
There is a saying, however, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” The saying is adapted from a line in “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns. It means that no matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it.
In this bit of wisdom from James 4:13-17, he gives us a word of caution about the making of plans. The key is not to forgo making plans, but to make plans with the right attitude. That attitude involves a humble recognition that we really have no control over our lives in the way that God does.
What are your plans for the new year? Have you included the Lord in your planning? And what does it mean to involve God in your planning?
Do you have a plan? (4:13)
James presents a scenario typical of an ANE first century businessman. It was a very common practice to take one’s wares to another town that did not have that product and sell them at a profit. It would be like taking livestock feed to a town that raises pigs, sell them grain to feed the pigs, then buy some farmer sausage and go to BC and sell the sausage there (since they don’t know how to make it there apparently).
This is the scenario: “Look here, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit…’”
As far as plans go, this sounds reasonable. Did you notice the tone? I think this is what James objects to in the plan. We will go…we will stay…we will do business… (we will) make a profit.” There is such definite certainty; there are no “ifs”; there is an underlying arrogance in these goals. James will soon point out to us that God is missing in this plan.
Isn’t that the way we do life? We act like the masters of our own lives. It is very common for businesspeople to expand their commercial reach without considering God’s will in the process. We simply don’t think that way. Business is business and faith is something else. I’m not saying this to condemn anyone; I think the fact is we just don’t include God’s will in our plans. We are all susceptible to this omission.
You may think this is going overboard…to tell the truth, I am not sure of the theology either, but consider this: Sharon and I replaced the dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator in our home last year, and we didn’t pray about it. We just did it. We had the money, so we did it. Do you hear the trajectory of power in this statement? We had the money, so we did it. There’s the rub: If we have the money, we act. If we don’t have the money, then we pray. Why don’t we include God in the planning when we do have the money? Is it too much to rewire our brains to include God in the details of our lives?
Three Realities that may Disrupt your Plans (4:14-15)
If the best laid plans of mice and men are going to go awry, there are three reasons for this unforeseen disruption to your plans.
First, there is the uncertainty of the future. James countered the certainty of the businessman saying, “…yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring…” (14a). We make plans as if nothing will change in the near future. Even now, Sharon and I are planning a road trip in the summer but having no clue whether freak weather will descend on our location, or if politics or health will remain stable. We assume that we live in a peaceful context, but my son grows anxious as he watches the violent exchanges on twitter between the American right and left. We cannot assume anything.
Second, there is the frailty of life. “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes,” (14b). The imagery is apt. Think of morning at the lake when the water is calm and a lazy mist hovers over the surface. As the sun rises and the heat of the day increases, the mist dissipates; it’s gone. Life is like that. In 2003, my father-in-law thought it would be a good idea to take his sons-in-law to the Grey Cup in Regina that fall. My health was not good at that point, and I hedged. He replied that none of us knows where we will be at that point. We can’t stop living. He passed away that summer. He was right.
Third, there is the supremacy of the will of God. “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that,” (15). If the Lord wills. The Apostle Paul often spoke in this way. He bid farewell to the Ephesians saying, “I will return to you if God wills,” (Acts 18:21). And in a greater awareness of the supremacy of God’s will, Jesus when pleading to avoid the cross cried, “Not my will but yours be done.” “Lord willing” as an expression can become a mindless saying if said glibly. On the other hand, saying “if the Lord wills it,” we might be excusing ourselves from taking responsibility for our actions. If something we plan fails, we may carelessly say, “I guess it was the Lord’s will.” Rather, it ought to convict our hearts of God’s sovereignty in every area of our lives. Think of the tone as James presents it: if the Lord wills, we will live…Our very existence is in his hands. That fearful acknowledgement ought to humble us in our plans.
A Proper Attitude to Planning (4:16-17)
The underlying problem with our plans is now revealed. James speaks directly now and reveals that it is the inherent boasting in our plans. These businesspeople that James uses as a test case in v. 13 are essentially bragging about their ability to plan their own lives independently of any divine guidance. They think they don’t need God’s input into their futures.
James counters, “As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil,” (16). When people boast of their independence from God, they sin.
Jesus took issue with this arrogance in his parable of the rich fool. (Read Luke 12:16-21). The man in the parable wasn’t foolish because he made a plan – it isn’t wrong to make plans. He was a fool because he presumed to be the master of his own destiny. He didn’t take God into account. He didn’t say, “If the Lord wills it, I will build bigger barns.”
Greg Allen, in his sermon “Submitting our plan to God’s plan,” says we act foolishly when…
1) We plan without beginning our plans with prayer. When I read this first point, I thought of the many congregational meetings I have been a part of where plans have been made, decisions voted on, and people elected without so much as a prayer to seek the guidance of God. And I think one of the reasons we don’t pray is because it will make the meeting longer. Or it may slow down the decision process even more.
2) We plan with too much reliance on the plan itself. We have the money, and we have the plan, what’s the holdup? There are green lights to go ahead, it must be the Lord’s will, we muse. Who wouldn’t think so? Could it be that a good plan needs to be shelved for a better plan? Is that why God hesitates to bless our idea? Is he speaking through the one objector, the one we gnash our teeth at for voting “no”?
3) We plan with too much confidence in our own abilities to “work the plan.” When you study various God-directed successes in the Bible, it will strike you as odd that the Spirit acted more profoundly when the people were not confident in themselves but had to rely more wholly on God. It’s a curious thing. When we are confident in our own ability, it is too easy to forget God in the execution of the plan.
4) We plan in such a way as to presume on the grace of God (that is, praying, “God forgive me for what I am about to do”; or thinking, “I know this is wrong, but I’ll have time to repent later”).
Jesus has made it clear in his parable we read earlier that boasting in our wealth and abilities is wrong because it forgets God. The Scriptures teach us that there is very little that we can boast in concerning ourselves.
John Piper in his book Don’t Waste Your Life, counsels his readers that there is nothing to boast in for the Christian except the cross. “…then we must live near the cross – indeed we must live on the cross. This is shocking. But this is what Galatians 6:14 says: ‘Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (55).
When we live “on the cross” it is difficult to make plans without considering our proximity to Christ. How can we plan our retirement without the consultation of the one who died for us? How can we move? Take a new job? Even change our appliances without bending our knees (and our plans) to the Lord?
If we this seriously: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” (Gal 2:20). If we take this seriously, we cannot hold our plans so tightly and so confidently that our loving God cannot change them. And if he changes them, you can know for sure, it is for your good.
You may be wondering though, “How do I submit my plans to God’s plan?” If you plan to marry someone, build something, go to university, or try a new job – something very practical, very earthy – how do I include God in that plan?
Submit your plan to the Word of God. Ask yourself, “Does what I am intending to do fit with who God is and how he has revealed himself in the Bible?” Seek out the counsel of those whom who know love Jesus and are filled with godly wisdom. Ask them how they see your plan in light of God’s character.
Involve God right from the start. When the ideas begin to form in your mind, pray. Put the idea and the dream before God. He gave the ability to dream so let him form it in you.
Consider the will of God. We pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” How does this plan or dream help the kingdom of God to be realized in your life and the lives of those it will affect?
Keep praying. Pray throughout the process. Pray at the beginning. Pray in its outworking. Pray near the end. Pray!
Humbly submit not only the plan but its outcome to the Lord. It may not look like how you dreamed it up. Maybe it’s better. Maybe not. Submit the final result to him. If your plan fits with the nature of the kingdom of God and with God’s will, if you have invited him to be involved in the pursuit of this dream, and if you have prayed, ask him to help you to be content with the outcome.
What are your plans for 2023?
Sharon and I will continue to plan for our road trip. I am convicted now to put this seemingly trivial journey before the Lord. If I believe that everything I do matters to my Lord, then how can I ignore his wise counsel?
But as I considered my goals for 2023, I have this grand and very spiritual-sounding hope for my own life: I want to love Jesus more. And as I learn to love him more, I hope to think of myself less. I want to so lose myself in Jesus that I end up finding myself more fully in him. That’s my plan. I share it with you so that God will hold me to it and that you will bear witness to it.
AMEN
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