“On Praying & Planning” - FBC Morning Light (11/6/2023)

Well, good Monday morning to you. I hope you had a good weekend this past weekend. Did you gather with God's people yesterday?

I hope you did and were encouraged by and challenged by God's word as it was preached.

Well, today as we start this new week, we're in Ezekiel chapter 17 and 18 for our Bible reading as well as in James chapter 4.

I want to focus on James 4 with two very important points that James makes. One has to do with praying and the other with planning.

So regarding praying, listen to what he says in verses 3 and 4. He says you ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Adulterers and adulteresses, he says, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And here's his point. When we pray and ask

God for things that we just want for ourselves and we're just really selfish in our praying, we want some,

I mean, it can be just about anything, right? Anything that makes us, gives us pleasure, anything that makes us, we think will make us happy, but it really doesn't have anything to do with or is there no, and there is no consideration of God's will for us.

It's mostly something that has enticed me in the world and it's allurements.

Well here's the thing, selfish asking is sure to be denied.

I can't, I can't expect God to honor requests that are merely for self indulgence and for fulfilling fleshly worldly passions.

I can't expect him to do that. Now he may, he may because, you know, sometimes God gives us what we ask for, but then we suffer the consequences for it down the road.

Well anyway, James is, is making clear the point that we can't expect to.

We can ask, but don't expect to receive, not when we're just doing it for ourself. All right. And then the other important point he makes has to do with planning.

And this comes out in verses 13 to 15, he says, 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. What is your life? It's even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.

So in making plans for the future, and we should, and I hope you do, it's wise to make plans for the future, but in those plans that we make for the future, we must always yield them to the will of God, realizing that I'm totally dependent upon him, even for my next breath.

I mean, I'm recording this thing on a Monday before, a week before it's actually going to, you're going to hear it.

And you know, in the providence of God, you may see this, but I may no longer be here.

I just don't know. I'm totally dependent upon God for my next breath. Now regarding these two points,

I came across a devotional, a page in a devotional book I've been using.

It's entitled Refreshment for the Soul by Richard Sibbes. It's just a collection of devotional readings from, he's called the

Heavenly Doctor. Richard Sibbes was a pastor, a Puritan pastor a few hundred years ago, but he has some really rich things to say in his writings.

And so on one day recently, Sibbes was actually dealing with his passage and he deals with both of those two points.

I just want to share with you what he had to say. First, regarding the matter of praying, he says this, we ought not to set upon anything wherein we cannot expect

God's guidance and so consequently cannot trust him for a blessing upon what we do.

Or if we do, we must look to meet the Lord standing in our way as Balaam did in opposing our lewd and wicked intentions.

What Sibbes is actually doing here is he's tying together the asking and the planning.

So we can't expect God's guidance or God's blessing when we're just doing it for ourselves.

And then regarding the planning itself, a little more extensive quotation, but listen to what he says.

He says, God's providence extends to every particular thing. He guides our incomings and our outgoings.

He disposes of our journeys. His providence extends to the smallest things, to the sparrows and to the hair of our heads.

He governs every particular passage of our lives. This should teach us to set upon our affairs with looking up to heaven for permission, power and endurance.

James enforces this by reproving the contrary, as we just read in chapter 4 verses 13 to 15.

Let us therefore in all our affairs be holy and not bind or limit our holiness only to coming to church.

But seeing at all times and in all places we are Christians and ever in the presence of God, let us place ourselves always in his eye and do nothing but that we would be willing

God to see and labor to behold him in every good thing we have and give him thanks in all the good we enjoy.

Wise counsel, I think, from the heavenly doctor. So in our praying and in our planning, it always needs to be subject to the perfect will of God.

So our father, I pray today that this would be our perspective when we come to you in prayer.

We would not be asking for selfish stuff just to consume upon ourselves, but we would be asking in line with what pleases you.

And then in our planning, may we always be subject, always subject our plans to your will and may the best of our knowledge, may those plans be in accordance with what we know your will to be.

And this we pray in Jesus name and for his sake. Amen. All right. Well, listen, have a good rest of your