Is Planning Bad?
Look here, you people who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” How do you know what will happen tomorrow? For your life is like the morning fog — it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Otherwise you will be boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil. (James 5:13-15)
Is the Biblical principle to not make plans?
No. We can see in other places that it is not. So we will spend several days exploring and crystallizing our plans and how to make God a part of them.
There are two aspects of those passage. First it asks: “How do you know what will happen tomorrow? It’s here a little while, then it’s gone.”
When you come up with your plans, that should be one of the first aspects to think about it. Yes, 10 and 20 year plans are good and give vision, but many people make plans that put off living richly right now.
I know I have. You make sacrifices of time and people and enjoyment here on earth.
Second principal in this passage is that making plans all on ou own is boasting, and “all such boasting is evil.”
The planning process should be a partnering with God. Wouldn’t you like your plans to be done in concert with God, a case where you can humbly say, “If the Lord wants us to?”
I have had known people who never commit to any action and all their prayers are, “If the Lord wants us to, then….” or simply waiting to hear what God wants them to do.
As we will explore later, that’s not a Biblical principal. Active planning in partnership with God, however, is.
Action
What, in your life, is important and achievable right now? Imagine your life is just a morning fog, temporary, and that you don’t know what will bring tomorrow. What is a plan that you can begin now that will bring life into the present moment?
How have you partnered with God? Or how have you excluded him from these plans?
Prayer
Write our a personal prayer to God in which you, in your own words, seek God’s will in the plan and invite him into a partnership into what your plans should be.
