"If the Lord Wills" | Fighting Practical Atheism
This past Sunday was a blessed day together.... as well as challenging convicting. At least it was for me. Our text this week was one that may have felt like a baseball bat landing smack dab in the middle of our foreheads. The book of James has been encouraging (I hope), but I have found it to be practically challenging as well. There was no shortage of a challenge this week.
There is a phrase that has lived in Christian vocabulary for generations. You have probably said it yourself, or heard it spoken in passing by someone at church, in a greeting card, or even by a grandmother sending you off on a road trip. "Lord willing." Two words. Simple enough. But behind those two words sits one of the most convicting truths in all of Scripture, a truth that has a way of holding up a mirror to the way we actually live, as opposed to the way we say we believe.
The fourth chapter of James is where this phrase finds its biblical home, and it is not a comfortable place to sit.
The Plans We Make Without Asking
James writes to scattered, persecuted Christians who are making plans. Real, practical, everyday plans. They intend to travel to a particular city, spend time there, conduct business, and turn a profit. Nothing about that sounds scandalous. In fact, it sounds responsible. It sounds like wisdom.
But James does not let it pass without examination.
The problem is not the planning. The problem is the posture behind the planning. These believers were mapping out their futures with a quiet but dangerous assumption running underneath everything: that tomorrow was theirs to spend as they saw fit. That the days ahead belonged to them. That their ambitions, their timelines, and their destinations were ultimately within their control.
One pastor and author, Kent Hughes, captured this with striking clarity when he observed that many Christians attend church, raise families, build careers, and navigate the full current of life without any substantial reference to what God actually wills for them. They change the ancient wisdom of Augustine, "Love God and do as you please," into something far more self-serving: "Do as you please and say that you love God."
That is a hard sentence to read. It is harder still when you recognize yourself in it.
What Your Life Actually Is
James does not soften the confrontation. He asks a question that cuts straight to the bone: what is your life? And then he answers it. He describes human life as a mist, a vapor that appears for a brief moment and then vanishes. Here and then gone.
This is not meant to be depressing. It is meant to be clarifying.
Proverbs speaks to this same reality from multiple angles. Proverbs 16:1 reminds us that while the plans of the heart belong to a person, what actually comes to pass is directed by God. Proverbs 16:9 echoes it: a person charts a course, but God is the one who establishes the steps. Proverbs 19:21 declares that many plans fill the human mind, but it is the purpose of God that ultimately stands.
This is not fatalism. It is not a reason to stop thinking carefully about the future. It is an invitation to hold your plans with an open hand, recognizing that the One who holds tomorrow is far wiser, far more powerful, and far more loving than you are.
The Sovereignty That Gives Peace, Not Fear
God's sovereignty is not a doctrine designed to make you feel small and powerless. It is a doctrine designed to make you feel safe. John Piper defines it this way: God is powerful and authoritative to the extent of being able to override all other powers and authorities. That means nothing that comes against your life is beyond His reach. Nothing that threatens your tomorrow is outside His governance.
Job understood this after walking through the most devastating season of his life. His words in Job 42:2 amount to this: nothing God purposes can be stopped or undone. Daniel 4:35 carries the same weight, describing a God who acts according to His will among all the inhabitants of the earth, and no one can hold back His hand or call His decisions into question.
The clay pot does not get to interrogate the potter.
And yet, if you are honest, you have probably lived some days as if you were the potter. Making decisions without prayer. Filling in your calendar without consulting God. Moving through your week on autopilot, technically believing in a sovereign God but practically behaving as though He were not involved in the details.
This is what some have called practical atheism. Not a denial of God with the mouth, but a functional dismissal of God in the daily rhythms of life. It is one of the quieter sins, which makes it one of the more dangerous ones.
Humble Wonder as a Way of Life
James offers a remedy, and it is beautifully simple. Instead of declaring what you will do and where you will go, you say: "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."
This is not a magic phrase. Saying the words without meaning them changes nothing. But the posture those words represent, genuine dependence on God, genuine acknowledgment that your days are held in His hands, is the posture of a person walking in humble wonder. It is the posture of someone who has looked at who God is and responded appropriately.
Pride, at its core, is a hard focus on self. It is the turning inward that says: this is my life, my time, my plan, my future. Humble wonder is the turning outward and upward that says: none of this is mine, and I would not want it to be.
The Weight of Verse 17
James closes this section with a verse that carries enormous weight: knowing the right thing to do and not doing it is sin. He is not just talking about dramatic moral failures. He is talking about the quiet, daily choice to live as though God's will is optional rather than central.
You know that your life is a vapor. You know that God governs your steps. You know that pride leads to destruction and humble dependence leads to peace.
The question James leaves you with is simple, and it is not a comfortable one.
Knowing all of that, how will you live tomorrow?
Killing Pride Under God's Sovereign Grace,
Bro. Tony
There is a phrase that has lived in Christian vocabulary for generations. You have probably said it yourself, or heard it spoken in passing by someone at church, in a greeting card, or even by a grandmother sending you off on a road trip. "Lord willing." Two words. Simple enough. But behind those two words sits one of the most convicting truths in all of Scripture, a truth that has a way of holding up a mirror to the way we actually live, as opposed to the way we say we believe.
The fourth chapter of James is where this phrase finds its biblical home, and it is not a comfortable place to sit.
The Plans We Make Without Asking
James writes to scattered, persecuted Christians who are making plans. Real, practical, everyday plans. They intend to travel to a particular city, spend time there, conduct business, and turn a profit. Nothing about that sounds scandalous. In fact, it sounds responsible. It sounds like wisdom.
But James does not let it pass without examination.
The problem is not the planning. The problem is the posture behind the planning. These believers were mapping out their futures with a quiet but dangerous assumption running underneath everything: that tomorrow was theirs to spend as they saw fit. That the days ahead belonged to them. That their ambitions, their timelines, and their destinations were ultimately within their control.
One pastor and author, Kent Hughes, captured this with striking clarity when he observed that many Christians attend church, raise families, build careers, and navigate the full current of life without any substantial reference to what God actually wills for them. They change the ancient wisdom of Augustine, "Love God and do as you please," into something far more self-serving: "Do as you please and say that you love God."
That is a hard sentence to read. It is harder still when you recognize yourself in it.
What Your Life Actually Is
James does not soften the confrontation. He asks a question that cuts straight to the bone: what is your life? And then he answers it. He describes human life as a mist, a vapor that appears for a brief moment and then vanishes. Here and then gone.
This is not meant to be depressing. It is meant to be clarifying.
Proverbs speaks to this same reality from multiple angles. Proverbs 16:1 reminds us that while the plans of the heart belong to a person, what actually comes to pass is directed by God. Proverbs 16:9 echoes it: a person charts a course, but God is the one who establishes the steps. Proverbs 19:21 declares that many plans fill the human mind, but it is the purpose of God that ultimately stands.
This is not fatalism. It is not a reason to stop thinking carefully about the future. It is an invitation to hold your plans with an open hand, recognizing that the One who holds tomorrow is far wiser, far more powerful, and far more loving than you are.
The Sovereignty That Gives Peace, Not Fear
God's sovereignty is not a doctrine designed to make you feel small and powerless. It is a doctrine designed to make you feel safe. John Piper defines it this way: God is powerful and authoritative to the extent of being able to override all other powers and authorities. That means nothing that comes against your life is beyond His reach. Nothing that threatens your tomorrow is outside His governance.
Job understood this after walking through the most devastating season of his life. His words in Job 42:2 amount to this: nothing God purposes can be stopped or undone. Daniel 4:35 carries the same weight, describing a God who acts according to His will among all the inhabitants of the earth, and no one can hold back His hand or call His decisions into question.
The clay pot does not get to interrogate the potter.
And yet, if you are honest, you have probably lived some days as if you were the potter. Making decisions without prayer. Filling in your calendar without consulting God. Moving through your week on autopilot, technically believing in a sovereign God but practically behaving as though He were not involved in the details.
This is what some have called practical atheism. Not a denial of God with the mouth, but a functional dismissal of God in the daily rhythms of life. It is one of the quieter sins, which makes it one of the more dangerous ones.
Humble Wonder as a Way of Life
James offers a remedy, and it is beautifully simple. Instead of declaring what you will do and where you will go, you say: "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."
This is not a magic phrase. Saying the words without meaning them changes nothing. But the posture those words represent, genuine dependence on God, genuine acknowledgment that your days are held in His hands, is the posture of a person walking in humble wonder. It is the posture of someone who has looked at who God is and responded appropriately.
Pride, at its core, is a hard focus on self. It is the turning inward that says: this is my life, my time, my plan, my future. Humble wonder is the turning outward and upward that says: none of this is mine, and I would not want it to be.
The Weight of Verse 17
James closes this section with a verse that carries enormous weight: knowing the right thing to do and not doing it is sin. He is not just talking about dramatic moral failures. He is talking about the quiet, daily choice to live as though God's will is optional rather than central.
You know that your life is a vapor. You know that God governs your steps. You know that pride leads to destruction and humble dependence leads to peace.
The question James leaves you with is simple, and it is not a comfortable one.
Knowing all of that, how will you live tomorrow?
Killing Pride Under God's Sovereign Grace,
Bro. Tony
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