If the Lord Wills: A New Year’s Message

The answer to the anxiousness many feel about the future is found in James 4:13–16:

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. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

What the Lord is saying through the Apostle James is that, as humans, we make plans—we decide to travel and make a profit—but we are fallible and finite. We can’t see the future. We have no idea “what tomorrow will bring.” More than that, our lives are just vapors; we’re here today and gone tomorrow like the flowers of the field or a morning mist. (How’s that for an encouraging New Year’s message?) The things we dwell on and consider so important in the moment are just like our lives: a mist.

This can drive us to anxiety, or it can drive us where we should go: to the Lord. The proper posture as fallible, finite humans is to live by this principle: “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” When we truly understand that our lives are not our own, that we belong to God, and that he is sovereign over all circumstances, we can approach a New Year—with all its unknowns, fears, and worries—with confidence because God is our rock, our shield, and our fortress. It’s not the economy, the government, our current circumstances, our health, or anything else. It’s God! He holds tomorrow, and our fallibility should lead us to humble dependence on him.

He holds tomorrow, and our fallibility should lead us to humble dependence on him.

As you enter this New Year, step forward with confidence in whatever circumstances the Lord has currently called you to walk through, knowing the God who sees the end from the beginning is with you and will never leave you nor forsake you. And, if the Lord wills, “we will live and do this or that.”

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.