Do What is Right

What to do when the way isn’t clear.

Who here uses a planner or an organization app to keep up with things in their life?

Anyone make checklist or to do lists?

How do you keep organized and make sure you don’t forget something?

All those tool are used to help us plan for the future, so we can plan and prepare for it.

There is nothing wrong with planning, actually it is a really vital life skill, but there is a lesson in James 4 about not getting too overconfident in our planning and preparation.

Perhaps the most prominent Gray Area in our lives is our futures, so how can we navigate that

James 4:13–17 CSB

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. 15 Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.

I just re-watched the first Twisters movie last week preparing to watch the new one when I get the chance.

The main focus of the team in the movie (and the later discovery documentary series) was to study tornadoes in order to better understand how to tell when one is going to hit to provide better warning time for people.

So here is the thing that hit me: obviously knowing a tornado is going to hit your house 15 minutes before rather than 3 minutes before is great, but that does nothing to prevent the tornado from hitting your house.

This is what James is saying in James 4.

We can make plans, prepare for those plans, move in the direction of those plans, but we can’t make those plans happen.

It is about what it is we are most FOCUSED on.

What happens to us tomorrow, next week, next year, and 5 years from now really is gray isn’t it?

But if that is what we are focused on fixated on, then we are not going to be as focused on what happens today.

Today weather forecasts tell us the likelihood of severe weather in our region based on the technology they have to see in the future.

I have caught myself getting anxious about those forecasts even days ahead of time, only for those days to come and go with little to no bad weather.

It does no good to fret and worry. All I can do is know what I need to do if those predictions become reality.

James reminds us that God is in control, that He knows where our lives are heading (it is not gray to Him).

So all we can do is focus on what is best for us to do today.

There will always be gray areas. We ought not be distressed by our uncertainty, but instead embrace it, continuing to do what we know is right and allowing God to help us navigate the rest.

Here’s a summary of the 5 questions we should ask in the gray areas of life:

1. Is the Holy Spirit convicting me that this is wrong? (Rom. 14:23; James 4:17).

2. Is this action causing a brother or sister to stumble? (Rom. 14:20; 1 Cor. 8:9–13).

3. Is this action harmful rather than beneficial to my faith? (1 Cor. 6:12; 10:23).

4. Is this action mastering or controlling me? (1 Cor. 6:12; 9:27).

5. Is this action causing me to be disobedient to someone whom God has put in authority over me? (Eph. 6:1; Heb. 13:17)