Boasting in Your Arrogance – James 4:13-17

When I did counseling, I often found myself “knowing” exactly how I must conduct the session to bring about help and change.  I was in essence saying, “I will do such and such and it will be profitable.”  Arrogance!  I realized it was important to consult the Lord about the session, to humbly acknowledge that He is the dispenser of all good things.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13-17, ESV)

Faith is demonstrated by our actions and our actions must be guided by divine wisdom, even the way we do business. The people James is addressing here are people of some means, rich people, rich people who know the Lord but are tempted nevertheless to boasting. There is something amazing in the experience of those who have learned to make money and who, even if their starter money wasn’t their own, have still managed to continue to make a profit from it. But it can breed an arrogance that forgets that our daily bread is provided by God and nothing we do to make money would work unless God was in it.

There may be every likelihood that if we go to a market for our product we will make a profit. But God is the sovereign disposer of all plans and our lives are short and our wealth may be short. Our best practice is to always recognize that God’s will ultimately determines our destiny. If He wants us to prosper we will but that is totally up to Him. We must not brag about our abilities since even those were given us by God. If we have been warned and so know to take this approach but fail to do so, we have sinned.

What do you find yourself assuming will be the case for you as if God has nothing to do with it? Do you assume you know how to make your relationships work? Do you assume you know how to keep your job? Do you assume you can talk your way out of anything? We long for security and too often believe that it comes from something we manipulate in life to make it happen. But He must be our security. Nothing and no one can take His place and give us real security.