James 4:16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.
In modern cultures, we often have our calendars planned out ahead of us for many weeks or even months. Some of this is necessary, such as in my job where I do a fare amount of travel. I need to know details and plan accordingly. This is a necessary and prudent thing to do in order to be a wise steward of my time and finances. The difficult part when reading this verse is to balance due diligence and prideful planning. What is prideful planning? This is when we boast is what we will do based on what we have done. We see the trajectory of our abilities and it begins to fuel our pride. We begin to be too self-confident until we replace God’s plans with our own schemes. The pride can get us into all kinds of problems. What can we do about this? We can commit our plans to the Lord and allow Him to bring success (Proverbs 16:3). Live in such a way that we are ready and willing to obey the leading of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives, the little things and the big things. We can still do our planning, but we do this through much prayer. We open our hearts to receive God’s will. This will develop a spiritual sensitivity that may lead us to become more involved in the lives of the people around us, especially the widows and orphans (those in deep need) as James mentioned in James 1:27. God will grow within us compassion and love which will lead us to be witnesses of His grace in our lives.
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