Guess What I’m Doing Tomorrow!

I remember growing up one of my favorite days in school was when my class went on a field trip. It did not really matter where our destination was, it just mattered that we got to do something new and get out of the classroom for the day. One of my most memorable field trips was in the first grade and we got to go for a train ride. After the train ride we went to what I remember as the biggest and best play ground ever and had a picnic. I was so excited about this field trip that I wanted everybody to know what I was getting to do. Oh what a presumptuous little boy I was. James wrote, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring” (4:13-14a).

How often do we get caught up in the “big plans” we have for the weekend or summer vacation? Sometimes we get so excited about those big plans that we neglect the bigger plans God may have in store for us. James went on to write, “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (4:14b). James really puts us in our place. Let us remember that our big plans are mere specks on the mural God is painting. “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:15). Is it wrong then to be excited about those plans you made for the weekend, the summer vacation, or the train ride in 1st Grade? Absolutely not! James just wants to keep our lives in perspective to the will of God, not the will of man, “As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil” (4:16).

Now that you know the right thing to do, are you going to do it or are you going to continue in your arrogant boasting about the things going on or about to happen in your life? James sums it up by writing, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (4:17). It does not get anymore plain than that. This can apply to more than just boasting about tomorrow. This addresses the passive Christian lifestyle as a whole. We cannot just sit back and do nothing as Christians when we know what we ought to be doing. So get up and go do it. What will you do tomorrow…if the Lord wills?

Who Is This Jesus? on Prezi