Walking with The Way

James 4 

 ⁴ You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? ⁶ But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷ Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw near to God and He will draw near to you...

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” ¹⁴ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” ¹⁶ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

This passage, from James in the daily reading in the One Year Bible, begins  with one of the paradoxes in scripture. A paradox is two things that seem to be opposites, yet both are true. Doubters and skeptics will often point to these paradoxes to say that the Bible contradicts itself and so, can't be true. Some times the paradox comes from the inability to translate Hebrew or Greek, the original langauges of scripture, into English. Other times it can be a matter of context or simply that these opposite ideas are really two different sides of the same truth.

James tells us that to be a friend of the world makes us an enemy of God. Probably the most often quoted scripture verse, John 3:16 says   “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. If God loved the world, how does our friendship with it make us His enemy? The word world in the John 3:16 verse is referring to God's creation, mankind and evrything else that God created. Jesus came to redeem man and restore creation because of God's love. The world that James refers to is the fallen world systems of man, the things that man has created or elevated above God. Loving the things of the world, materialism, intellecualism, greed, lust and other forms of self centered, self exhalting behavior, that's what puts us at enmity with God. To be in line with God's will, our love of the world must be like His. It must be a love that is motivated by seeing the redemption and restoration of others, not the advancement of ourselves. This can only happen, as James says, when we draw near to God and humble ourselves.

James then goes on to say that we need to take care with how much we plan to do. It is not wrong for us to have plans. Short, mid and long range planning is a good thing for us to do. What James wants us to remember is that we need to keep everything in perspective when we make our plans. We need to allow God to direct both our planning for the future and our living in the present. Not many of us have lived lives that were exactly what we thought they would be 20,30,40 or 50 years ago. Even when we are following Christ, God doesn't often reveal all the details of our future lives to us. He knows our tendency would be to worry too much about and try to change or avoid some of the things that will come our way. What James is saying, that we don't even know what tomorrow holds, so we should not get too caught up in our plans, echos Jesus words from Matthew 6.

²⁵ “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? ²⁷ And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? ²⁸ And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, ²⁹ yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! ³¹ Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ ³² For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. ³⁴ “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. The key for us is to live our lives abiding in God, walking with Him. We can.t allow ourselves to get ahead of Him, fall behind Him, or turn to the right or the left without Him. There is a path we should take. Rick Joyner often says there is a ditch on either side of the road. Our human tendency is to over correct when we gotten off the path. We end up swerving from one ditch to the other, living on one side of a paradox or the other. The key for us is to remain centered on the path. Jesus says in Matthew 7:

¹³ “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. ¹⁴ For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

and in John 14:5-6 Thomas *said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Walking with "The Way" each moment of each day, seeking His kingdom and His righteousness, that's the way to plan our lives so that we can live in all that He plans for us. 

Jeremiah 29:11

 For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. 

Amen