If the Lord wills it...

April 6

Read: James 4:6,13-17

If the Lord wills it

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  - (4:6, 1 Peter 5:5)

“Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” - (4:15)

Jesus gives "the law” to the proud and grace with mercy to the humble. Try reading through the life of Christ and look for this pattern. It is an outworking of the truth in James 4:6 - God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. He always has. In our lives, it is the same. Some days we need to Spirit of God to remind us of our need for him… we need to be led, corrected, and humbled… shown the perfect picture of Christ that we are being made into. It is humbling to see where transformation has yet to take place. Other days, in our brokenness and downtrodden state, we need the Lord’s grace and restoration… we need him to show us a picture of who we truly are… already perfected in HIM.

I think this is why there is tension at times amongst the people of God; neither extreme will do. Certain “camps” of Christians fall on either side of the issue. Some will champion “The Law”, rules, legalism, and performance. They will seek to “break” the people of God and keep them “broken” and contrite. They treat everyone as if they are proud and in opposition to God. In short - they lack grace, kindness, and mercy. On the other hand, some can only conceive of grace, mercy, and love. In these sorts of places, there is little correction, call to right living, or antidote to the narcissism and arrogance that wars against the Lord. We cannot simply “give grace” all the time… because grace can be counterproductive to the arrogant and proud. Likewise, we cannot simply heap performance-based guilt and shame because that is absolutely NOT from Jesus. We actually need BOTH. We need to feel the pressure and sting of God’s opposition to us when we are proud, and we need a liberal dose of his grace and mercy when we are humble and contrite before him. If we lack EITHER of these we are at a deficit.

One of the ways that arrogance sneaks into our lives is in the way we pretend to control things. We have an inflated view of our influence in the universe. James warns against this arrogance. Look at the flow of the scriptures here:

“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?” (v.13,14)

James is not against planning, but he is addressing a certain way that we may be tempted to think. This is a matter of pride and arrogance, he says so:

“As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” (v.16)

There is an arrogant and prideful way that we can “evil-ly” boast about our plans for the future… a way that we think about the future apart from God. This is a natural outworking of God being absent from our lives… or simply compartmentalized into a proverbial corner. God is in opposition to us living this way. (cf. 4:6) The scriptures give us a better way:

“Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (v.15)

If the Lord wills. This is James’s way of encouraging us to humbly seek the Lord and bring him into every bit of life with us! This is a habit of humbly seeking him and submitting to him the details of our lives. This is the OPPOSITE of God being absent in our lives… it is an extreme PRESENCE… an integrating into all of life. What do you think you will find when you HUMBLY submit your plans to the Lord and welcome him into ALL of life? What do you think he is going to give to you when you come to him humble and low? The Lord will lift you up! He has more grace, love, mercy, compassion, and hope to give to you than you can imagine; “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Hear this truth, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” AMEN. Love you guys. - JDP