Part 10 | Planning the Future with God in Mind
From James 4:13-17
📖 James 4:10 (ESV) Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Point 1: Identify my .
📖 James 4:13 (ESV) 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”—
The ultimate is planning as if God didn’t .
📖 Proverbs 21:5 (ESV) The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.
📖 Luke 14:28-30 (ESV) For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
Point 2: Acknowledge my .
📖 James 4:14 (ESV) yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
3 areas of :
A. I have no of .
📖 Luke 12:18–21 (ESV) ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
📖 Proverbs 27:1 ESV Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
B. I’m not the of the .
📖 James 4:14b (ESV) What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
C. I’m to cause .
📖 James 4:16 (ESV) As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
📖 James 4:17 (ESV) So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
Point 3: God’s .
📖 James 4:15 (ESV) Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
📖 John 5:30 (ESV) “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of Him who sent me.
📖 John 10:10 (ESV) The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Confession #1: God’s will is a thing.
“If the Lord wills”
📖 Jeremiah 32:41 (ESV) I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.
Confession #2: If God’s not , I won’t .
“We will live”
📖 Colossians 1:17 (ESV) He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
📖 Hebrews 1:3 (ESV) He upholds the universe by the word of His power.
Confession #3: When God , I will ultimately it.
James 4:15 “…and do this or that.”
📖 1 Peter 4:1–2 (ESV) Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.
God’s will is not a to your ; it’s the to .
Point 4: Move with .
📖 James 4:17 (ESV) So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
📖 Hebrews 13:20–21 (ESV) Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Sermon in a sentence:
Plan with , trust God’s , and enjoy the reality that is .
Notes Section:
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