The Mist that Made a Difference
James 4:13-17 13 Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 16 As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.
17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
Intro: Professor Lowell of Harvard University was speaking many years ago to a gathering on Columbus Day. He said that there were three profound things about Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America: First, when he left Spain he didn’t know where he was going. Second, when he arrived in the New World he didn’t know where he was. Third, when he returned to Ferdinand in his court he didn’t know where he had been. And he did it all on borrowed money!
-Does that sound like any of us at certain times in our lives? We don’t know where we are going, where we are, or where we’ve been? We may set out with certain ideas about what we’d like to accomplish, but after it’s all said and done we find that our journey looked nothing like the vision we had in mind. In fact, our destination may have totally changed along the way. Sometimes this is good because it means that God is leading us, and as we learn to follow Him instead of our own desires, we find that He takes us to the very place we ought to be. Other times life just happens to us and around us and we lose sight of our destination and goals. God doesn’t want us to live aimlessly, nor does He want us to live arrogantly- just assuming that He will bless whatever we decide to do.
-Here’s what I’d like to impart to you today: Our temporary lives can make a lasting difference if we will surrender our plans to God.
-Let’s examine a few guidelines that will help us prepare for the future.
1. Don’t be presumptuous about your plans
13 Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.
-How often do we make our plans and go about our business without really consulting with the Lord? If you look at this verse, there is nothing wrong the activities mentioned. It might be okay to go to a certain city. It might be okay to spend a year there. And it might even be okay to do business there and make money. The problem is found in the presumptuous words, “We will.” If they could hear God speak, they might hear the well known phrase, “Who’s we?”
-Psalm 127:1 Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.
-God wants us to understand that without Him we could not have, do, or be anything. He made it all. He owns it all. He made us for a purpose and He does have a plan that includes us. God’s plan includes you. Does your plan include God?
-Now we sometimes include God, but we don’t really honor Him. In other words, we start with our own plans based on what we want, then we fit God into our plans somewhere along the line. The problem is that our plan is self-centered instead of God-centered. God doesn’t fit in a corner! He takes center stage in our lives. Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “Either Jesus is Lord of all or He is not Lord at all!”
-So don’t start with your plan, start with prayer. Talk to God and ask Him to lead you and guide you into what He has planned for you. Sometimes we dream dreams and get excited about an idea we have. I am aware that God often puts desires and dreams in our hearts and minds and some of our bright ideas may have come from Him! However, do not automatically assume that your desires and dreams are in sync with God’s plan for you. The timing may be off, the motives might be wrong, and more information may be needed. So, submit your plans to the Lord, giving Him full veto power.
-Include God in the formation of your plans. Include God in the execution of your plans.
2. Recognize the temporary nature of this life
What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
-As we follow Jesus, we all land somewhere in the middle of two separate forces. First, there is freedom in Christ because of His grace. We are free from sin and judgment and free to live for Christ! However, that freedom includes the freedom to fail. I didn’t say we have the freedom to sin, even though we sometimes choose to do so. We are free to fail in the same way that a parent hopefully gives a child the freedom to fail as they learn and grow. In other words, sinless perfection is not a yoke that God hangs around our neck. We are free to learn and discover who God is and who we are in relation to Him. There are many correctives along the way as we learn to do life with God. So this first force is the acceptance that we are imperfect broken people who will make mistakes along the way.
-The second force is the fact that we don’t really have time for mistakes. There is a sense of urgency for each of us to live up to our God-given potential in the short time we have left on this planet. Paul encourages the Ephesians to redeem the time or make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil and limited (5:16). We must not waste the valuable resource of time and opportunity doing our own thing! Doing our own thing puts us in the driver’s seat and categorically into a state of disobedience to God. When was the last time you asked the Lord what He wanted you to do? Too often we are telling Him what we are going to do and asking Him to help us do our thing. That won’t work.
-Now, these two forces both need to be kept in balance with each other. Again, the first is accepting the fact that we will fail and get off track sometimes as we are learning to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. And the second is that there is no time for such delays because people are dying and going to hell around us and we must help them see that Jesus is the answer for their life!
-Most of us tend to lean one way or the other at different times in our lives. So if you are leaning too far to the left, just blowing off your mistakes and missed opportunities, I believe the Lord is telling you to wake up! Stop wasting time and making excuses! Grow up and lean into the race. Man up – if you’re a man! Woman up – if you’re a woman! This is not the time to go through the motions! Start spending time in the word and in prayer and get battle ready!
-Now if you tend to lean too far to the right, maybe the Lord would tell you to relax. Lighten up! You are so tense and uptight that you are choking the life out of the relationships around you. Step back and take a deep breath and realize that you are not the Messiah! Neither are you the Holy Spirit, so quit trying to do His job for Him! Allow the Lord to lead you beside the still waters, and make you lie down in green pastures, and restore your soul.
-No matter which way you are leaning, life is too short to waste opportunity through neglect or to lose future opportunities by being overbearing. Both extremes can have self at the center in the forms of self-indulgence or self-achievement. As Augustine said, “Pray as though everything depended on God and act as if everything depended on you.” Our time on this earth is temporary. We are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. But we can be a mist that makes a difference if we do life with God!
3. Acknowledge the leadership of Jesus in your life
15 Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 16 As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.
-Submit your will to God’s will. Deo Volente (DV)
-At one point in the wilderness, Moses told the Lord, “Lord, if You won’t go with us, we’re not going either!” I don’t think he was being disrespectful or disobedient. He just knew that without the Lord leading them and being with them, what was the point of pursuing the dream? It would be a nightmare without the Lord!
-James addresses the issue of pride again here. When we make plans without God’s leadership and say we are going to do this or that, James calls it evil boasting or bragging.
-Two Texans were trying to impress each other with the size of their ranches. One asked the other, ’What’s the name of your ranch?’ He replied, ’The Rocking R, ABC, Flying W Circle C, Bar U, Staple Four, Box D, Rolling M, Rainbow’s End, Silver Spur Ranch.’ The man was much impressed and exclaimed, ‘Wow! That’s sure some name! How many head of cattle do you run?’ The rancher answered, ’Not many. Very few survive the branding. Pride has a way of killing success. It definitely keeps us from living up to our potential.
Proverbs 3:5-6 5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths.
-If you trust your own instincts, will God direct your paths? If you trust the Lord with certain areas, but not others, will He direct your paths? If you seek His will in some things, will He lead you? He wants our wholehearted trust and He wants us to consult Him in all we do, and then He will lead us forward.
-Elizabeth Elliot tells of two adventurers who stopped by to see her, all loaded with equipment for the rain forest east of the Andes. They sought no advice, just a few phrases to converse with the Indians. She writes: "Sometimes we come to God as the two adventurers came to me -- confident and, we think, well-informed and well equipped. But has it occurred to us that with all our accumulation of stuff, something is missing?
-She suggests that we often ask God for too little. We know what we need--a yes or no answer, please, to a simple question. Or perhaps a road sign. Something quick and easy to point the way. What we really ought to have is the Guide himself. Maps, road signs, a few useful phrases are things, but infinitely better is someone who has been there before and knows the way.
-So God is more than a GPS system, giving emotionless directions. He wants to travel with us, leading us every step of the way!
4. Ask God to help you do the right thing
17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
-Did you ever get an incomplete in school? If you failed to do what you needed to do, your report card might have had the 3 dreaded letters – INC.
-A doctor called one of his patients into his office to deliver some very important news. "I have received the results of your tests and I have some bad news and some good news", said the doctor. The patient was quiet for a moment, sensing the severity of the announcement. "Let me have the good news first, doc", said the patient. The doctor took a deep breath and said, "You only have 24 hours to live." "Oh my goodness", shouted the patient, "If that’s the good news what could the bad news possibly be?" The doctor replied, "I was supposed to tell you yesterday."
-In context v.17 indicates that when we know to submit ourselves to God and His plan for us, but fail to do so, we are sinning. It is a moral issue because it boils down to obedience vs. passive aggressive rebellion against God. And this applies to all of life. If we know God wants us to do something but through neglect or busyness or for some other reason we bypass it, we are sinning. Again, we can make excuses for ourselves because of our special set of circumstances, but it doesn’t fix the problem. We can tell ourselves that God will understand. We just don’t feel up to it today. But that won’t remove the moral obligation of doing good.
-So instead of making excuses, we can ask God to help us do the right thing. We can repent for our selfishness that causes us to miss opportunities to do good.
Conclusion: Our lives are short. Just a mist that appears and then is gone. But if we will travel with God, He can do something significant with us. We need to avoid being presumptuous about our plans. We need to recognize that this life is temporary. We need to acknowledge the Lord’s leadership in our lives. And we need to ask the Lord to help us act on what we know is right.
