When Your Plans And God’s Plans Don’t Match

For instance:

• I have known for sometime that Keith played sports and he was very good at playing baseball.

• I found out that Jenney was a cheer leader in junior high and high school.

• I found out that Clyde was a pilot.

• I found out that Carlos was a finish carpenter.

• I found out that Pete played as a backup player for the Kansas City Chiefs pro-football team.

• I found out that Frankie and Brenda love flowers.

• I found out that Mickey tells us that he was voted in his senior class as the most attractive. (Sometime you have a hard time believing all the things you hear though!”)

In this sermon I want to share two things with you.

Let’s look at the scriptures to see what we are to do when we learn that OUR PLANS AND GOD’S PLANS DO NOT MATCH!

First, let’s look at there are…

I. SOME THINGS WE DO NOT NEED TO DO TODAY!

It is interesting to learn things about people…things that we did not know.

There are many things we do not know about each other.

But one thing I know about everyone here in this congregation is that everyone here has good intentions.

The reason I know that is because you would not be here if you were not a person of good intentions.

But when it comes to having good intentions we all have heard that THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.

Illus: That is, we could interview people in hell and they would tell you THEY DID NOT INTEND COMING TO THIS HORRIBLE PLACE CALL HELL!!!

But nevertheless they are there and they are there for eternity.

The book of James has a lot to say about people who live their life with good intentions.

Let’s look at a man WHO HAD GOOD INTENTIONS

Look at James 4:13-17 with me. You might see yourself in the life of this man…BUT I HOPE NOT.

Now look at this man if you will in James chapter 4:13-17. “Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

I think it is safe to say that James is talking about a business man planning what he is going to do.

But I want you to notice as he is making plans you cannot find God in those plans at any time or any place.

This man is not making plans to sin; everything he is talking about doing is not sinful.He is a man making plans for his business.

James didn’t speak against the idea of making plans.

In fact, in this passage, he actually sets forth a very good pattern for the making of plans in life.

We should make plans.

Illus: Winston Churchill said “That to fail to plan is to plan to fail.”

All through the bible we have people who made plans.

• God himself has already planned out the end of the age. God can look down in the future a thousand years from now and He has everything planned.

• The apostle Paul was a firm believer in making plans. At the end of his second missionary trip, when he was about to leave Ephesus for Jerusalem, he told the believers there, in Acts 18:21 “…“I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem; but I will return again to you, God willing.” And he sailed from Ephesus.”

But as we make plans each day we need to include God in our plans.

• Sometime when I kiss my wife good bye in the morning when I’m leaving to go to my office I tell her what James 4:15, teaches us. I tell her that I will see her this afternoon “If the Lord wills…”

• Sometime when I kiss her good night I tell her, “I will see you in the morning, If the Lord wills…”

Sure, we can add that phrase to our vocabulary “If the Lord wills”. But this isn’t about vocabulary…It is about attitude.

This man had his future all planned out! He thought he knew exactly what the next season of his life was like.

But look at how Jesus talked to a rich man who was making all kinds of plans of building bigger barns without God....Luke 12:20 “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’”