Embrace the Year Ahead
James 4:13-15 Some of you say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to some city. We will stay there a year, do business, and make money.” Listen, think about this: You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Your life is like a fog. You can see it for a short time, but then it goes away. So you should say, “If the Lord wants, we will live and do this or that.”
So what are your plans for the year ahead? Are they good plans that spark a sense of anticipation in your heart? Or is there a sense of foreboding that hangs over you like a dark cloud?
When you think about it, there are two sorts of plans that we can have – two ways of looking at the future: Positive plans that we launch into with confidence and gusto, and (if I can call them this) negative plans, as our sense of uncertainty morphs into doom and gloom.
But sometimes things don’t work out the way we’d imagined. Our good plans fall in a heap. The bad things we thought would happen don’t eventuate. So, with all that uncertainty, how do you embrace the year ahead? How do you equip yourself with a realistic outlook that’ll serve you well no matter what life throws at you? Well …
James 4:13-15 Some of you say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to some city. We will stay there a year, do business, and make money.” Listen, think about this: You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Your life is like a fog. You can see it for a short time, but then it goes away. So you should say, “If the Lord wants, we will live and do this or that.”
In other words, don’t rely on yourself. Don’t boast or wallow (as the case may be) in what you think or see, but lay it all at God’s feet. He knows it all. He is ever faithful. He loves you beyond words.
If He wants, we’ll live and do this or that.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.