March 21 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 80—James 4:13–17

¹³ 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"—¹⁴ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Devotional:

One of the important functions of God’s Word toward us is to expose our sin. If you were asked to describe a proud, worldly person would you say — it’s someone who says: "Today or tomorrow I will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"? No, that sounds too normal! It sounds too ordinary! And that’s exactly the point. This sin is so common that we take it for granted. And it comes naturally to our fallen hearts. "In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek [God]; all his thoughts are, 'There is no God.' His ways prosper at all times; your judgments are on high, out of his sight; as for all his foes, he puffs at them. He says in his heart, 'I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.' ... He says in his heart, 'God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it.'" (Psalm 10:4–6, 11).

We live in a day of personal digital assistants and planning mania. The very mindset of our culture encourages us to indulge our sinful propensity to presume in our approach to life. Again, the problem is not planning; the problem is presumption. "Presumption" is one word for it. What are some other words we might use? Imagined autonomy. Practical deism. Functional unbelief. We imagine that our choice is the deciding factor. We speak as if we have the ability to make ourselves succeed. That is the height of worldliness!

Click here for background on the author of Are You For Real?: Meditations in the Epistle of James for Secret or Family Worship.