If The Lord Wills It
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When Your Plans Meet God's Purpose: Learning to Hold Life Open-Handed
There is something deeply human about the desire to plan. We map out our days, color-code our calendars, and program our destinations into GPS before we ever pull out of the driveway. We calculate estimated times of arrival, budget our bathroom breaks, and book our hotel rooms months in advance to get the best rates. Planning feels like wisdom. It feels like responsibility. And in many ways, it is.
But what happens when we plan as though we are the ones in control? What happens when our schedules become so rigid that there is no room left for anything — or anyone — outside of what we have already decided?
That is exactly the tension the book of James confronts head-on.
The Illusion of Certainty
In James chapter 4, verses 13 through 17, the writer addresses people who speak with total confidence about their future plans — where they will go, how long they will stay, what business they will conduct, and how much money they will make. On the surface, this sounds like responsible adulting. But James pushes back with a pointed question: do you even know what will happen tomorrow?
He describes human life as a mist — something that appears briefly and then vanishes. It is a humbling image. Not because life is meaningless, but because it is finite and fragile in ways we rarely stop to acknowledge. We speak of our future plans with the certainty of someone who has already read the last chapter of a book we have never actually seen.
The truth is, none of us can guarantee the next thirty seconds, let alone next year. Yet we structure our lives as though we have been handed a detailed itinerary and told exactly how many pages we have left.
The Heart Behind the Plan
James is not condemning planning itself. He is addressing the heart posture behind it. When our plans are built entirely around our own ambitions, our own timelines, and our own desired outcomes — with no acknowledgment of God's sovereignty — we have quietly placed ourselves at the center of a story that was never ours to direct.
The alternative James offers is not passivity or carelessness. It is humility. He suggests a posture that says, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." This is not a religious phrase to tack onto the end of a sentence. It is a genuine orientation of the heart — an acknowledgment that God knows what we do not, sees what we cannot, and governs what we will never be able to control.
Why We Grip So Tightly
Understanding why we struggle to release control is just as important as knowing we should. When life becomes unpredictable, when circumstances spiral beyond our reach, many of us respond by gripping our schedules even tighter. We become more rigid, not less, because control feels like safety. It feels like a buffer against the chaos.
But that response, though deeply understandable, actually works against us spiritually. The tighter we hold our plans, the less room we leave for God to move. And God, by nature, does not always move on our schedule.
There is also the matter of trust. Life has a way of disappointing us. People fail us. Circumstances blindside us. And over time, we can begin to transfer that distrust onto God — unconsciously deciding that if people are unreliable, perhaps God is too. So we take matters into our own hands, because at least then we feel like someone competent is in charge.
The Bigger Picture We Cannot See
Here is what changes everything: God is not working only in your life. He is working through your life, across countless other lives, in ways that are deeply interwoven and far-reaching.
Think of a mosaic. Up close, all you see are tiny, individual pieces — some of them jagged, some of them dull, some of them seemingly out of place. But step back far enough, and those same pieces form something breathtaking. What looked like disorder at close range becomes a masterpiece from a distance.
We experience life at close range. God sees the full mosaic.
That interruption that threw off your morning might have been the very moment someone needed to cross your path. That detour in your plans might have been God repositioning you for something you could not yet see. That season of confusion or disruption might have been the preparation required for something that was still years away.
Psalm 119:37 speaks of turning our eyes away from worthless things and fixing them on what truly matters. So much of our anxiety about planning comes from keeping our eyes locked on the immediate — the today, the this week, the what-I-need-right-now — rather than trusting the One who holds the full timeline.
Learning to Plan with Open Hands
None of this means we stop making decisions or abandon all structure. It means we begin our planning differently. It means we bring our goals, our calendars, and our ambitions to God before we set them in stone. It means we hold our plans loosely enough that when God redirects us, we bend rather than break.
It means we practice what might be called open-handed goal-setting — moving toward a destination without demanding a perfectly straight path to get there. Life rarely moves in straight lines. Neither does faith. But if we know the direction we are heading and we are trusting the One who knows the terrain, we can navigate the curves without losing our way.
It also means learning to see interruptions differently. Not every disruption is a disaster. Some of them are invitations — invitations to trust more deeply, to slow down, to be present for someone else, or to discover that God was already working in the very moment our plans fell apart.
An Invitation
The question worth sitting with is this: what are you holding so tightly that God cannot get His hands on it?
It is not an easy question. And the journey from rigid self-sufficiency to genuine dependence on God is rarely quick or clean. It tends to look more like a slow, stumbling process — two steps forward, one step back — than a dramatic overnight transformation.
But every small act of surrender matters. Every moment you bring a decision to God before charging ahead is a step in the right direction. Every time you choose trust over control, you are practicing a kind of faith that quietly reshapes a life.
God does not expect perfection in this. He simply asks for willingness.
There is something deeply human about the desire to plan. We map out our days, color-code our calendars, and program our destinations into GPS before we ever pull out of the driveway. We calculate estimated times of arrival, budget our bathroom breaks, and book our hotel rooms months in advance to get the best rates. Planning feels like wisdom. It feels like responsibility. And in many ways, it is.
But what happens when we plan as though we are the ones in control? What happens when our schedules become so rigid that there is no room left for anything — or anyone — outside of what we have already decided?
That is exactly the tension the book of James confronts head-on.
The Illusion of Certainty
In James chapter 4, verses 13 through 17, the writer addresses people who speak with total confidence about their future plans — where they will go, how long they will stay, what business they will conduct, and how much money they will make. On the surface, this sounds like responsible adulting. But James pushes back with a pointed question: do you even know what will happen tomorrow?
He describes human life as a mist — something that appears briefly and then vanishes. It is a humbling image. Not because life is meaningless, but because it is finite and fragile in ways we rarely stop to acknowledge. We speak of our future plans with the certainty of someone who has already read the last chapter of a book we have never actually seen.
The truth is, none of us can guarantee the next thirty seconds, let alone next year. Yet we structure our lives as though we have been handed a detailed itinerary and told exactly how many pages we have left.
The Heart Behind the Plan
James is not condemning planning itself. He is addressing the heart posture behind it. When our plans are built entirely around our own ambitions, our own timelines, and our own desired outcomes — with no acknowledgment of God's sovereignty — we have quietly placed ourselves at the center of a story that was never ours to direct.
The alternative James offers is not passivity or carelessness. It is humility. He suggests a posture that says, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." This is not a religious phrase to tack onto the end of a sentence. It is a genuine orientation of the heart — an acknowledgment that God knows what we do not, sees what we cannot, and governs what we will never be able to control.
Why We Grip So Tightly
Understanding why we struggle to release control is just as important as knowing we should. When life becomes unpredictable, when circumstances spiral beyond our reach, many of us respond by gripping our schedules even tighter. We become more rigid, not less, because control feels like safety. It feels like a buffer against the chaos.
But that response, though deeply understandable, actually works against us spiritually. The tighter we hold our plans, the less room we leave for God to move. And God, by nature, does not always move on our schedule.
There is also the matter of trust. Life has a way of disappointing us. People fail us. Circumstances blindside us. And over time, we can begin to transfer that distrust onto God — unconsciously deciding that if people are unreliable, perhaps God is too. So we take matters into our own hands, because at least then we feel like someone competent is in charge.
The Bigger Picture We Cannot See
Here is what changes everything: God is not working only in your life. He is working through your life, across countless other lives, in ways that are deeply interwoven and far-reaching.
Think of a mosaic. Up close, all you see are tiny, individual pieces — some of them jagged, some of them dull, some of them seemingly out of place. But step back far enough, and those same pieces form something breathtaking. What looked like disorder at close range becomes a masterpiece from a distance.
We experience life at close range. God sees the full mosaic.
That interruption that threw off your morning might have been the very moment someone needed to cross your path. That detour in your plans might have been God repositioning you for something you could not yet see. That season of confusion or disruption might have been the preparation required for something that was still years away.
Psalm 119:37 speaks of turning our eyes away from worthless things and fixing them on what truly matters. So much of our anxiety about planning comes from keeping our eyes locked on the immediate — the today, the this week, the what-I-need-right-now — rather than trusting the One who holds the full timeline.
Learning to Plan with Open Hands
None of this means we stop making decisions or abandon all structure. It means we begin our planning differently. It means we bring our goals, our calendars, and our ambitions to God before we set them in stone. It means we hold our plans loosely enough that when God redirects us, we bend rather than break.
It means we practice what might be called open-handed goal-setting — moving toward a destination without demanding a perfectly straight path to get there. Life rarely moves in straight lines. Neither does faith. But if we know the direction we are heading and we are trusting the One who knows the terrain, we can navigate the curves without losing our way.
It also means learning to see interruptions differently. Not every disruption is a disaster. Some of them are invitations — invitations to trust more deeply, to slow down, to be present for someone else, or to discover that God was already working in the very moment our plans fell apart.
An Invitation
The question worth sitting with is this: what are you holding so tightly that God cannot get His hands on it?
It is not an easy question. And the journey from rigid self-sufficiency to genuine dependence on God is rarely quick or clean. It tends to look more like a slow, stumbling process — two steps forward, one step back — than a dramatic overnight transformation.
But every small act of surrender matters. Every moment you bring a decision to God before charging ahead is a step in the right direction. Every time you choose trust over control, you are practicing a kind of faith that quietly reshapes a life.
God does not expect perfection in this. He simply asks for willingness.
Posted in Practical Faith, trusting God, Worship
Posted in #bookofjames, #faith, #pastorstevenlarrabee, #lacrossecommunityCOTN, #biblicalteaching
Posted in #bookofjames, #faith, #pastorstevenlarrabee, #lacrossecommunityCOTN, #biblicalteaching
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