Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Yesterday
we looked at two major truths about understanding the nature of God’s
sovereignty: First, God is not random in
what He does, and second, that tends to mess with your plans.
jSo, now
begins our follow-up of how to cooperate with God Sovereign.
#1 Make Your Life’s Plans With Eternity in Focus
And now I
have a word for you who brashly announce, “Today—at the latest, tomorrow—we’re
off to such and such a city for the year.
We’re going to start a business and make a lot of money.” You don’t know the first thing about
tomorrow. You’re nothing but a wisp of
fog, catching a brief bit of sun before disappearing. Instead, make it a habit to say, “If the
Master wills it and we’re still alive, we’ll do this or that.” As it is, you are full of your grandiose
selves. All such vaunting
self-importance is evil. In fact, if you
know the right thing to do and don’t do it, that, for you, is evil.
The
greatest arrogance in the universe is presuming upon God. Stuff disappears quickly, just like our
plans. James teaches us that making our
plans requires a reality check about the sovereignty of God.
Some years
ago the Florida lottery ran television ads attempting to promote ticket
sales. Of course the chances of winning
a lottery are one in several million gazillion, which is a rather conservative,
if not altogether mathematically-accurate estimate. However,
each commercial would end with an average-looking person holding up the winning
ticket, saying with a smile: You never know…!
We need to
heed that saying about tomorrow for our lives – you need to include God in your
plans…because you never
know if you have tomorrow…or if today God will require your presence before the
bar! Friends, life is incredibly short;
eternity is incredibly long.
It may not
be necessary, but I’ll say it anyway, it is wiser to prepare for eternity, than
anything in the here and now.
It is
certainly not begging the issue to repeat – failing to prepare for eternity is
more than dangerous – it is foolish!
James is so
thorough. He has told us to not leave God out of our
plans.
Tomorrow we
will (if God permits) turn to the other vital issue which naturally follows…how
to include God on a practical level.
For You Today
Those
of us who were born in the United States have no idea what living under a
sovereign ruler is like. We hold a
sacrosanct idea of freedom; we make ourselves sovereign over our own lives. We do what we want.
But
for a follower of Jesus Christ, acknowledging and embracing God’s sovereign
rule is the disciple’s baby step
#1. Absent of knowing and living by that
rule in our hearts, we cannot even think ourselves Christian.
NOTES
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