What is your life? No longer our own, but Yours, Lord.

What is your life? No longer our own, but Yours, Lord.

James 4 v. 13 – 17

‘Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’
As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.
Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.’

NOTES
Robbie Williams, in his song, ‘Feel’, says
‘I sit and talk to God – and He just laughs at my plans…’

I recounted yesterday morning how I’d once sought God for the plans
for a particular period of ministry, and rather than give the blueprint, I sensed God call me, again and again, ‘Follow Me’. My plans are futile, and God keeps His cards close to His chest. He invites us to join the adventure of ministry / mission.
That’s it.
‘What is your life?’, James asks, ‘if it’s not to do the Lord’s will?’
Life is nought without Thee, says the hymn-writer. Jesus says, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’

James could have boasted about being a true brother of Jesus.
But we’re reminded that he rather presents himself as a servant of God / Jesus.
What about ourselves – are we too full of ourselves, too caught up in our own plans, that we miss the real adventure of our faith – to discover what God created us to be, and to do, for His greater plan.

PRAYER
Jesus, be the centre,
be my source,
be my light,
Jesus.
Jesus, be the centre,
be my hope,
be my song,
Jesus.

Be the fire in my heart
Be the wind in these sails
Be the reason that I live
Jesus, Jesus.
AMEN.

Phil Gough