How silly it is to make our plans independent from the One who made us. How silly it is to carve out our own autonomous niches. How silly it is to live, dream, and aspire with God’s will as a secondary concern. With that said, is James implying that all of our attempts to “plan for the future” are inherently wrong? Absolutely not.
Is it wrong to make plans for the future?

Is that what James is suggesting in James 4, as he writes:  
“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.”

Now, if we’re being honest, I’m sure many of us have made similar statements to the one that James is paraphrasing. Heck, I’m sure that even JAMES had said such things.

So what’s the problem?

How can it be a bad thing to plan ahead, or to dream for the future? 

Well, at issue is where God fits in one’s dream– if He is there at all. Notice the absence of God in the words that James says are typical of man’s plans.

You see, even as Christians, our “fallen setting” is to see God as essentially a background player to the drama of our life. We reduce Him to someone who swoops to the front of the stage only in times of crisis.

In other words, we often see Him as a passive participant in our day-to-day lives. And the effect of this is that when we plan for the future, we fall into the trap of thinking “we’re the ones driving the bus,” and that God is just along for the ride. We reduce Him to a backseat driver.

How silly this is.

How silly it is to make our plans independent from the One who made us. How silly it is to carve out our own autonomous niches. How silly it is to live, dream, and aspire with God’s will as a secondary concern.

With that said, is James implying that all of our attempts to “plan for the future” are inherently wrong?

Absolutely not.

Scripture regularly advises us to think (or plan) ahead, such as when it uses the example of “the builder” in Luke 14, who must first “count the cost” of the building that he is erecting before he can begin the work.

Further, in James 4:15, the author stresses the key to a good plan: whether it conforms to God’s will. Specifically, he says that we ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”

That’s the difference, that’s the pivot point– whether our plans conform to God’s will for us.

Now, God’s will can be tricky to know, in the sense that we do not know all that His will of “decree” contains, for He alone is God.

But we do know His prescriptive will. Scripture informs the principles behind every decision we’ll ever make.

So go ahead and make plans, but do so in concert with the principles of His Word, being led by the Spirit, and praying that God use your efforts (or redirect them) as He deems fit.

And you know what?

As you do this, you’ll find that your plans will conform more and more to God’s, for He will seed those plans in your heart in the first place. This is being “led by the Spirit,” a Spirit that not only leads you, but gives you the grace to accomplish the ends to which you’ve been appointed.

Toby B. Holt is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.