Welcome to the Feminine Podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Thank you for joining me today.

I hope you are enjoying the arrival of Fall. Here in Moscow, it's harvest, full moon

and everything. And it's just been glorious. Until all the smoke from force fires start

rolling in. But it's still just such a great time of year. Today I'm going to talk to you

about a really simple but powerful truth from the book of James. So let me read a few

verses from chapter 4, 13 through 16. Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will

go to such and such a city, spend a year there by and sell and make a profit. Whereas

you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is 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. But now you boast in your arrogance. All such

boasting is evil. So these verses are not forbidding us to make plans. I couldn't make it

through a day without having a plan. The thing James is getting at is that we should

watch what we say. We should be careful to remember how little we really know and how

little we have any control whatsoever over our circumstances. As James says, we don't

even know what will happen tomorrow. And that is the truth. Our lives are amissed. But

they seem very permanent to us, don't they? So we make plans as so nothing could interfere

and James calls that arrogance. James is applying this particularly to business ventures.

We counter chickens before they hatch. We count up how much money we will make before we

have it in hand. And sometimes we even spend it before we get it. Instead, we need to make

our plans humbly with an open palm. If the Lord wills, I will do such and such. If the

Lord wills, I will turn a profit on this business. But if he does not will, I may lose everything.

We must not only acknowledge that our success is completely in his hands, but that a business

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