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by Logan Ames

One of our most beloved words in the English language is “deserve." No, I haven’t taken a poll of any sort, but I am making that judgment based solely on the sheer volume of people I’ve come across in my life who complain about not getting what they feel they have a right to have. When I worked at Hershey’s Chocolate World as a teenager, I occasionally had the job of handing out FREE miniature candy bars to people after their completion of the FREE tour ride. It always amazed me when, every so often, a person would walk up and ask if we had a specific kind he or she likes and if the answer was “no," that person would walk away complaining. Sometimes, I just wanted to ask, “What’s wrong with you people? It’s FREE!” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve witnessed more and more adults applying the “I deserve it” attitude to jobs, promotions within their agencies or companies, and benefits or rewards for their hard work.

At the heart of this attitude is an arrogance that assumes we deserve anything that we have in the first place. It’s the opposite of the humility that James encourages throughout his letter to the early church. He writes in James 4:13-17 that we should never live our lives without knowledge of the reality that our entire existence depends on God. We’ve just recently celebrated our nation’s Independence Day here in the U.S. It’s the time of year that we display our pride as a country that defeated its oppressors and has maintained its freedom and independence from any other nation ever since. God has blessed us with these freedoms. However, notice that we have no day on our calendar when we celebrate or remember our dependence on God. Maybe I’ll start writing to Congress and the president and suggest it. For Christians, we can certainly say that our National Day of Prayer, which is annually the first Thursday in May, fits that bill. But it’s probably not something the nation as a whole or even our leadership will ever agree to enact. Why? Because, as human beings, we all generally resist any insinuation that we are not in control!

James has some cold, hard truth for those who still think they deserve everything they have, and I’m sure his words were quite challenging to his intended audience of boastful Jews in the early church. He doesn’t mince words. Instead, he declares, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14). In the big picture, we are only here a fraction of the time and that is why he says we ought not be walking around saying all the things we are going to be doing tomorrow or next year in another city apart from God’s will because we don’t even know if we’ll be given tomorrow (James 4:13-14). James is not against making plans; he is against making plans outside of the will of God, with absolutely no consideration for what the Creator of the universe might want you to do with the life He has given you.

Francis Chan, in a video Bible study shown on Right Now Media, relates James’ statement about the vanishing mist to the steam that comes off of a tea kettle that is only there for a few seconds or minutes until it is gone. True humility is learning to see ourselves this way compared to a God on whom we depend for each day and every breath we take. If you aren’t certain that our very breath comes from God, I encourage you to read the Creation accounts at the beginning of the Bible. Genesis 2:7 tells us that “the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Without the breath that God gives us directly from Himself, we are nothing but lifeless clumps of skin and body parts.

James believes that this realization should make us consider the Lord’s will in everything we do. He writes that we should say “if it is the Lord’s will” before or after each plan that we say we will carry out (James 4:15). Now, I’ve never read this verse to mean that we must actually say those words before every mundane task we plan out. I don’t think I need to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, I’m going to make bacon and eggs in twenty minutes." What James is describing here is an attitude that accepts that not even the next twenty minutes are guaranteed. Charles Spurgeon said, “There are two great certainties about things that shall come to pass - one is that God knows, and the other is that we do not know." The ones to whom James wrote were talking about their future plans with no regard for what the Lord wanted. They not only considered their future something they knew about, but they also primarily saw their future as an opportunity to travel more and make more money (v. 13). It was all about themselves and what they desired.

There are actually two issues addressed by James in this section, one being the sovereignty of God and the other being our submission to Him. Many believers accept that God is sovereign over everything yet still live as if He is not. We might chalk it up to enjoying our “independence," but the best life is to admit dependence on God and seek to please Him in whatever we do and wherever we go. Once we’ve accepted the fact that He is sovereign, the only logical response is to ask, “What does He want from me?” Since some of the early believers did not demonstrate such an attitude, James wanted them to know that their attitude of independence was actually sinful. He referred to it as arrogance and said that the type of boasting that ignores the need for God is evil (James 4:16). Most of us probably don’t realize it’s that big of a deal to talk about our life goals and plans without first considering the Lord. We don’t recognize it because it is so common. Nevertheless, it is something that God clearly opposes, according to James 4:6 and many other passages in Scripture. If you live your life apart from God’s will, you cannot expect Him to bless it.

James concludes this section of his letter with another statement we don’t typically think about. He says in James 4:17, “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them." Most believers are familiar with all the sins of COMMISSION, meaning the person chose to do something that is wrong in God’s eyes. Here, James says there are also sins of OMISSION. Since sin just means to “miss the mark," we can miss the mark God has planned for us because we are choosing not to do what we know we’re supposed to do. This is a lack of submission to God and His will. James 1:27 tells us we must look after orphans and widows in their trouble. Jesus tells us all the things we must do to be considered his followers in Matthew 25:31-46, and our salvation depends on it! These and many other Scriptures regarding good things we must do are not even debatable. Yet, so many believers arrogantly ignore them in favor of wanting to “do their own thing."

Friends, if you have been ignoring God’s will for your life, it’s time to recognize His sovereignty and live in submission to Him. He will equip you for anything He calls you to do, if He hasn’t already equipped you. Get rid of all the other goals in your life that are independent from God and choose, like Paul in Acts 20:24, to simply aim to complete the task God has given you. That’s all that really matters beyond this life anyway.

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