Carpe Diem or Deo Volente?

Well, good morning, friends.

You know what today is.

Today is Sunday, the 10th of July, 2016, and you know what that means.

God is still on the throne.

He was all week long.

It was an awful week in many ways.

In our nation, in some of our lives.

And yet God is still on the throne.

He was all week long.

He is today.

This is the day that the Lord has made.

We will rejoice and be glad in it, for he reigns.

And he will still be on the throne all week, the week to come.

We have no idea what's before us.

But we know by his grace and through his word who our God is.

He is good.

He is faithful.

He is trustworthy.

He is righteous.

He is long-suffering with this his creation and with us his wayward children.

And we trust the Lord.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we so desperately need you.

We need you as a society.

We need you as a church.

We need you as individuals.

We rejoice that you are ever and always the same and good and gracious and kind and trustworthy.

So today, by faith, we say we trust you.

Have your way with us.

Open your word to us.

Help me with my impoverished words.

Bring to light that which you are saying to us.

Give us ears to hear and a heart that is ready to respond.

Oh, speak to us, Lord, I pray.

In Jesus' name.

I'd like to ask you to turn, if you would, in your Bibles to James chapter four.

We continue to work our way section by section through this incredible, this incredibly practical, pertinent, helpful, challenging, frustrating at times, but always true words from God.

And today we have come to the next section, to James chapter four.

And let's see, I'm not sure what the problem is here.

I'm not getting anything.

Well, we will just.

All right.

Thank you.

Wonderful magical people upstairs who make things work that I have no idea how it all functions.

We have come to James chapter 4.

James 4 · chapter mention

It's a passage.

Okay, uh just sorry, one more technical thing.

For some reason, I'm not getting it on the monitor there.

So if we're not careful, we'll have to keep turning around.

So we'll see what we can do to get that one on in the back.

All right.

What would Paul and Silas and Jesus have done without technology?

I love it and hate it all at once.

Anyone with me on that?

Amen.

All right, we are looking at a passage, and I will explain what C D or D V means as you go along, but as we go along.

But what this passage is talking about is about as practical and contemporary and as applicable to our daily lives as almost anything in the book.

James, through the Holy Spirit, is speaking or spoke in the first century words which have been preserved for us today, words that deal with something that we all are active and involved in, that we're thinking about and reflecting on all of the time.

It's talking about the future and how we relate to it, because we're always dealing with what's to come.

We always have thoughts, we always have plans.

You have some plan for this afternoon.

I hope that plan involves coming to the church picnic.

You have desires, you have intentions.

That's just the way we are wired together by God.

How we think about the future and how we make plans.

That's what this passage is really all about.

This is something that is unique to the human being.

We're part of the animal world, but unique among the created beings.

The animal world deals in some ways with the future.

I mean, uh store up nuts and hide them in the yard, uh, put on extra fat.

We do that, but for different reasons.

Um but if we fly south, uh it's because we want to get away from the cold, but we make decisions about that.

Animals do those kinds of things, make certain preparations for the future, but they do it instinctively.

But God has given human beings the ability to reflect, to think, to consider different options, to choose among the different options, and to set forth intentional activities related to the future.

Sometimes we do it well, sometimes we do it poorly, but that's part of what being a human being is all about.

The ability to reflect upon the future and to make intentions and plans and decisions related to it.

You have various plans.

Some of you have plans to uh to go off to college.

Some of you are thinking about maybe I'll sell my house and get away from these crazy winters and move down south.

Uh some of you have just moved back or moved here and have plans and are looking for an apartment.

Some of you are thinking about having children.

Some of you are hoping that you will stop having children.

I mean, you know, and I'm not being-I don't mean to be facetious, it's just we're we're always coming up with plans.

There's nothing wrong with that.

That is intensely human.

That is part of how God has wired us.

Now, this passage provides important biblical instruction about how to go about thinking about the future.

Important authoritative information about how a believer, in contrast to a non-believer, is to think about and make plans for the future.

There's words of cautions here.

But we're all involved in doing it, making plans.

Someone once quipped a cute little comment, whether you think it's cute or not, uh, it's true.

You want to know how to make God laugh?

Tell him your plans.

There's an awful lot of truth to that.

We make all kinds of plans, and sometimes by God's grace, we get it right, and oftentimes our plans are almost laughable.

And God gloriously keeps the red pencil in his hands and corrects and shapes our plans.

Um so what God is instructing us about here is how to think about and relate to the future.

Let me read for you these uh few verses, James chapter 4, verses 13 to 17.

James 4:13–17

I'm reading from the ESV.

The uh the title, which the titles of the paragraphs and the sections are not inspired.

They're added by the editors.

Sometimes they're way off, in my not so humble opinion.

This one, at least in the ESV, is spot on.

It says, boasting about tomorrow.

I think he ought to have a question mark there.

Is that what we're doing?

We're boasting about well, let's just see what God says.

Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such a town, spend a year there, and trade and make a profit.

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

You're like a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will 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.

Now, in this passage, there are really two ways, two widely differing ways of viewing the world.

Two totally different paradigms which we assume as we go through life.

And they are captured by two phrases.

The first phrase that, although it doesn't appear in this passage, there's something very pertinent that we find in this passage.

It's carpe diem.

Carpe diem, that's a Latin phrase for seize the day.

Do we have any Robin Williams fans out there?

Uh Dead Poets Society, um, a very sad, but I think a very powerful and excellent film, and Robin Williams in this in this movie plays incredibly plays the role of a young gifted teacher in a prep school for young adolescent boys, and his goal, his goal for teaching is to not go through the book as it is to prepare them for life.

And at a particular moment, after he is has gained their trust, he gathers these boys around him, these high school age boys, and he shows them pictures of classmates from a generation before, all of whom are dead, and he has them stare into the eyes of these former students, and he says to them in a hushed and powerful tone, he says, Seize the day, boys, seize the day.

Make something extraordinary of your lives.

It's a powerful moment in a powerful film.

The rest of the movie is the unfolding of what happens for good and for ill in the lives of these young high school boys as they attempt to do just that, to seize the day, to make their lives something extraordinary.

It's actually a noble and a motivating thought.

It's something that in a way I can relate to.

The idea that we're not just passive, that we can take initiative.

God has created you and me with the ability to take initiatives.

And yet there is something about the idea of seize the day, boys, make of your lives something extraordinary, which has some very serious aspects to it that we will take a look at.

The other, and that's the C D of C D or D V.

The D V is also from a Latin phrase that has been used among Christians for centuries, Deo volente, deo volente, which basically simply means if God wills or God willing.

This is a very different way of looking at reality, a very different view on life, a very different world view.

It has been used, as I said, Deo Volente, DV, Dei V, has been used for centuries by believers to express, even as they go about making their plans, they realize they are not fully in control.

Do we realize that we are not fully in control?

Yes, we realize that at a certain level, and yet do we go about our lives making plans as though we determine what happens in and of ourselves?

In former days, pious, and that is a good word, it has been co-opted to mean something bad, but pious, godly, God-fearing, people who try to bring God tangent to their lives, godly people throughout the centuries, have used this phrase God-willing and have tacked it on to their statements about the future.

The Puritans and the godly Methodists of previous generations placed it at their at the bottom of their letters and it appeared on their pamphlets, and it was just these two letters at the bottom, DV, and everybody knew what that meant.

We've got our plans, Lord willing.

It would be as though when uh Scott had uh talked about the things in the bulletin, um, faith is hosting a five-day club this week for your children, ages five to twelve.

Now, if the Puritans or the early Methodists had written that, they would have said, Faith is hosting a five-day club this week for your children, ages five to twelve.

DV.

Or Games on the Lawn will take place this Wednesday, Wednesday evenings at 7 o'clock during the months of July and August.

DV, Lord willing.

There's nothing wrong with making plans.

And just tacking on DV, if that's not if it's not the attitude of our hearts, has absolutely no meaning and becomes just a pointless, meaningless repetition.

But the fact of the matter is that there are two differing views of the world, and this passage is helping us get in touch with some of both of these.

Now, although we're gonna do this runs, comes out of our mouth pretty easily, we're gonna do this with the full recognition that we don't have the power to accomplish what we're setting forth because we don't control the world.

Deo volente ought to be a part of our vocabulary and a part of our mindset.

Um it's not necessarily an either-or, and that's just one of the realities, but there are, it might be, you won't be able to see very much about these, but let me explain.

Here are two totally different worldviews, a Ptolemaic and a Copernican worldview.

Up until the 16th century, the the view of the world of a Greek uh scientist and philosopher, Ptolemy, uh reigned.

That's as we looked around, and it's a picture where the earth is in the center of the universe, and the sun, moon, and stars rotate around the earth.

And if you just look out, the sun rises, the sun sets, the moon does its thing, the stars, and uh a very understandable observation about how reality functions puts us in control at the center of the universe.

And we do have an influence on the world around us, but this worldview said, and it's very um very nice, we're in the center of the universe.

Imagine that, everything revolves around us.

And it even looks that way, doesn't it?

And then at the uh the beginning of the 17th century, I believe it was, um, Copernicus, uh using and observing the same natural phenomena, came up with a totally different view of the universe.

And again, you can't see it from that picture, but there is a view of our world where, at least as far as our galaxy goes, it's the sun, not us, that's in the center.

And everything else revolves around it.

And that is probably scientifically, I don't question it a bit, a more accurate view of things.

The problem is, I rather have the world revolving around me than me revolving around anything or anyone.

And these two points of view reflect Carpe D and seize the day, boys, make something extraordinary of your life.

I am the captain of my fate, the master of my soul.

Or, Lord, I really hope I don't die before I get to the picnic this afternoon.

And I hope the rain doesn't uh wash it out.

So I very easily say, and not wrongly, we're going to the picnic this afternoon.

And yet, in the back of our consciousness, or perhaps in the forefront of our thinking, ought to be an understanding that God and not we are in control.

When God is at the center, our own will and our own agenda is not at the center of our lives.

We have a will, we have an agenda.

But we don't have the ability to determine all of that.

We must find our place in reality.

And the fact of the matter is that we are not so invincible.

We're just little bumbling people.

And God is great, and God is good, and God knows what he's doing, and God does what he will, and what he wills is always and only good, and we can trust him.

Well, this is not a difficult passage uh to understand.

Sometimes when you exposit the scriptures, it's really hard to understand.

Uh we just expose what is there in the word.

We don't we don't try to add to it, we don't, we try not to detract from it.

We try to expose it, and sometimes it's hard because it's buried pretty deeply.

Not so this passage.

It's right there, right on the surface.

So let's just spend some time uh looking at it, and then let's spend some time saying, what in the world does this?

Mean to us.

Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.

Now it's very interesting.

What we have is James talking to Christian contemporaries of his who are what in our day we would call Christian businessmen and Christian entrepreneurs.

And you could just picture a group of these believers who have a business sitting around in their tents with maps stretched out before them, not inappropriately, but but saying, okay, let's go over there.

I think there's good opportunities there.

Let's stay there for a year.

Let's do some business.

Let's make some money.

It is as real and as contemporary as it gets, because that's the way it happens.

Life works that way.

Tomorrow we'll go there or there and we'll do this or that, and we trust that we'll make some money.

But if we leave God out of our plans, as it sure seems that his readers were doing, what James is revealing to us in 16 and in verse 13 and 14 is that that is practical atheism.

That's thinking and acting just the way the world around them functions.

Now, in the New Testament time, we have this picture that there wasn't much commerce and there wasn't much mobility.

Actually, that's not true.

There was more mobility going from place to place in New Testament times than there was in medieval Europe.

You had an extensive road system.

The Pax Romana, the the Roman Empire, had a measure of peace and stability.

You had major thoroughfares, paved roads connecting major cities, and people moved back and forth all of the time.

We just flew back on Friday from New Mexico.

And I think it would have been at least as easy to get from Corinth to Rome as it was to get from El Paso to Grand Forks on Friday.

For all of our advancements, travel is not simple.

It wasn't simple then, but there was a lot of commerce going back and forth.

If you read the last chapter of the book of Romans, Paul, who had traveled the Mediterranean, particularly the north half, northern tier of what's modern-day Turkey and Greece and Italy, had traveled widely, was sitting in Ephesus, and he wrote to the believers in Rome.

And chapter 16, there are scores of names of people that he says, give them my greetings, and he names them by name, and these were all people that he had met elsewhere during his journeys.

There was a great deal of mobility.

We see this as we read the book of Acts.

We read of Priscilla and Aquila in Acts 18.

When Paul arrived in Corinth, he encountered these two women who had recently come from Rome.

And they came there in connection with their tent-making business, Christian businesswomen in the first century, far more common than what we're usually thinking of.

Or Lydia, whom he met in Philippi, was a businesswoman who had traveled to Philippi from Thyatira in connection with her business of trade of expensive purple goods, purple cloth.

So people moved around all the time.

We don't know the names of the merchants and the entrepreneurs about whom he is speaking, but we know the names of businessmen and entrepreneurs in our midst.

And there is nothing wrong with being a businessman or an entrepreneur.

My father was a businessman and he got really ticked off when he went to church for all kinds of reasons.

But one of the things he said the preachers always have it out for the businessman.

I think that might have been something in his own conscience that was bothering him more than what actually was said.

But the point is, there is nothing wrong.

There is many things right about being a Christian businessman.

The question is, how do you plan and make plans for the future?

And do you think that you are really in control of this or not?

One writer described what was going on here, and it's simpler for me to read what R.

Kent Hughes says.

His challenge is specifically aimed at materialistically focused Christian merchants in his congregations who arrogantly mapped out their own destinations and sojourns with no reference to the will of God.

It had not been easy for them when they first became Christians.

In fact, their conversions cost them socially and economically.

In the initial flush of spiritual forgiveness, they had borne the difficulties with grace, for they hung on to Christ with everything they had.

But as life settled down, the cares of making a living began to dominate again.

They came to assume that prophet and God's will were one in the same.

Does that sound familiar?

That prophet and God's will are one in the same?

That's preached through across pulpits in our country all the time.

God wants you to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

A prosperity gospel.

You do not find that in the pages of Scripture.

It is biblical baloney, but it sounds good and it makes us feel good.

It just is wrong.

There is no promise in this life of health, wealth, and happiness.

There is a promise in the life to come, and we keep expecting what is reserved for us, and we will fully experience there to be our lot now, and we secretly assume that tomorrow will be pretty much like today, only a little better.

Why would we think that?

Tomorrow will be pretty much like today, only a little bit better.

And so we make our plans and we ask God to bless our plans.

We'll come back to that.

Soon they reverted to being self-made, self-assured men, though now Christians, who lived as if this life were all there is, and they prayed in reference to their lives.

It was not to ask God where and what they should do, but to ask his blessings on their plans.

And we do that all the time.

And I do as well.

And I have to catch myself from assuming that I know what ought to happen.

And then trying to make my will happen, forgetting who is at the center of the universe.

They were so like us.

We are such children of our times that we could not conceive it would ever be God's will that we not become rich and prosperous.

He's talking to our generation as much as he was there.

Sadly to say, we have often advised our children the same way.

Be sure to get into a profession where you will make a good living son.

What?

Be sure to get into a profession where you will make a good living son.

What worldview does that reflect?

Now there's nothing wrong with getting into a good profession and making a good living.

But if that's our assumption of what's important in life, and if that's the values that we communicate to our children, then we are practical atheists, leaving God out of the picture, seeing things at a purely material and horizontal level.

If you're having problems with what I'm saying now, I just warn you don't come back next week.

Look at the heading of next week's section: Warnings to the Rich.

Some have even objected to their children going into Christian work because it is not lucrative.

Despite Christian trappings and evangelical nods, we often live without serious reference to God's will.

And that is practical atheism.

Verse 14.

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

You're like a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Who do you think you are?

He had just asked that question in the passage we saw last week.

Who do you think you are to judge your brother?

And now he's saying, Who do you think you are to assume that you know best and you know what should happen, and you can determine that tomorrow, by golly, is gonna be like today, only a little bit better.

Seize the day, boys.

The brevity and the uncertainty of life.

You do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

This is probably a reference to one of my life verses.

I have weird life verses.

Proverbs 27, 1.

You do not even know what a day will bring.

That verse was emblazoned on my soul on September 29th, 2002, when my head exploded.

I had a major cerebral hemorrhage, was being airlifted to a hospital in Germany.

Jane and I said goodbye to each other at the helicopter door, and I said, I know my birthday and I know my death day, and I should have died that day.

By God's grace, uh I had no more mental problems afterwards than I had before.

But the point of it was, I had no idea what that day would bring.

I got up that Sunday morning, I f I organized my thoughts, I was getting ready to go preach my heart out in a little church in southwestern Germany, and boom! My life exploded.

You never know what a day will bring.

You do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

You're a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Proverbs 27:1, one of my life verses.

Proverbs 27:1

Another one is let your way of life be free from the love of money, being content with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you.

Therefore we may confidently say, The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?

Job 9 says, My days are swifter than a runner, they fly away.

The older you get, the faster they seem to go.

Isn't that right?

My days are like a runner, they fly away, they skim past like boats of papyrus, like eagles swooping down on their prey.

Psalm 102, my days are like the evening's shadow.

They vanish in smoke.

Psalm 90, verse 10, the length of our days is 70 years or 80 if we have the strength, yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.

Psalms 90:10

I love that expression.

We quickly pass and then we fly away.

Just like that.

Sooner than you think.

Life is short no matter how long we live.

Life is short no matter how long we live.

Psalm thirty-nine verses uh four to six.

Turn there just for a moment.

Psalms is easy to find, kind of in the center of the Bible.

Psalm 139.

The problem is it has 150 chapters in it.

One uh one thirty-nine, I'm sure.

That's a typo.

Unless Psalms has changed since I read it last.

Thank you.

This long silence was me backtracking for my assurance and certainty.

Psalm thirty-nine, O Lord, make me know my end, and what is the measure of my days?

Let me know how fleeting I am.

Behold, you have made my days a few handbreads, and my lifetime is nothing before you.

Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath.

Surely a man goes about as a shadow.

Surely for nothing there in toil as man heaps up wealth and does not know who gathers it.

Now, this may sound like a cynical, negative view of a crotchety old man.

It's actually a view of reality that young, invincible men have trouble with.

I look out at some of you, Carl.

Invincible! And there's nothing wrong with being young and feeling invincible, it's just you are young, but you are not invincible.

And what the scriptures would have us do is to come to understand that soon, sooner rather than later, and the easy way instead of the hard way.

Would that we came to the realization that our lives are fleeting and we learned that soon and we lived accordingly, we would learn it the easy way.

I stood at the spreading of ashes of my sister on Thursday in New Mexico.

Her family had to face that, and they faced it the hard way with no hope.

Would that we would learn soon in the easy way it can all be over in just a second.

A puff of smoke.

Story is told of an ancient king in Constantinople.

I don't know if it's true, and of course I hesitate to repeat things that I don't know are true, but the story goes like this.

If it's not true, it ought to be.

A king in Constantinople, who on the day of his coronation uh gave instructions to a servant to go out to a quarry and to chisel out a piece of marble that would be his, not the servant's, but the king's tombstone, and that it be carried around before him uh the rest of his life.

Living in light of the reality of your own death.

That's what the scriptures focus on as we discover and reflect on the brevity and uncertainty of life.

Story in Luke chapter 12 that Jesus told, Oh, you foolish man, you do not know, do you not know that this day your life will be required of you?

Luke 12 · chapter mention

Well, verse 15, back, and I know it's in James 4, verse 15.

James 4:15

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

Deo volente.

Deo volente, if the Lord wills.

We are to live life in light of the reality that God is really on the throne and not we ourselves.

I do not repeat that every week because I can't think of anything else to say.

I repeat that every week because we desperately need to have that imprinted on our mind, etched on our souls.

We are not in control, but we know the one who is, and he is good and gracious, and we may trust him.

All kinds of examples of this, the way this worked itself out.

Uh, Acts chapter 18, Paul was in the middle of his third missionary journey, and he was asked by the people he was ministering to in Ephesus to stay longer, and his answer is, I will come back if it is God's will.

Acts 18 · chapter mention

Or 1 Corinthians 4.19.

Paul, while he was in Ephesus, wrote to the church in Corinth, anticipating his future visit, and he said, I will come to you very soon if the Lord is willing.

De V, D V, De O volente.

1 Corinthians 16 7.

I hope to spend some time with you if the Lord permits, but I will stay on in Ephesus until Pentecost.

He makes his plans, but he knows who holds the red pencil.

It's as simple as that.

Now, this is not a mindless slavish formula that if we just tack on the end of every sentence that we happen to cast in the future tense, that that's it's not about saying, Insha'Allah.

I don't know if any of you have had opportunity to be around pious, and that's a good term, Muslims.

Sincere Muslims.

There's this expression Deo volente in Arabic.

It's insha'Allah, Allah, Allah, Inshallah, if God wills.

And they tend, uh, pious, believing, uh, well-intentioned Muslims, when they talk about future things, they are more inclined than we are to say de Ovalente.

But just tacking it on to our sentences has no value.

The question is, what's our worldview?

What do we really see and what do we understand about things?

Verses 16 and 17 make it clear that ignoring God is an arrogant evil.

It's arrogant boasting.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance.

All such boasting is evil.

What's wrong here?

What is James saying?

Is arrogant evil?

Assuming that you know what tomorrow brings.

The arrogant evilness is not having plans or desires or intentions from the future, but planning and acting as though.

We know we are the captain of our fate and the master of our soul.

Do something extraordinary with your lives, my friends.

Jesus calls this boasting and bragging.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance.

All such boasting is evil.

What's wrong with that?

When we assume an ability that is not ours, we boast.

And what is assumed in this passage is that we do know what tomorrow will bring and will make our plans as though we can make it happen.

That's what is an arrogant evil.

It is claiming an ability about the future we do not have.

It is the error of Invictus.

And I want to share with you a poem.

I've made reference to it before.

It goes like this out of the night that covers me, black is the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstances, I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shades, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.

That is pure paganism.

It is pure atheism.

We are not the master of our fate.

The captain of our soul.

A couple of simple thoughts by way of application, and we'll get on to the picnic, Lord willing.

What do you do with this?

Well, I would say give God the red pencil.

He's got it anyway, so give it to him.

Some of you are old enough to have turned in English compositions to your English high school teacher, and the high school teacher had this horrible thing.

It was a red pencil.

And my essays would come back marked up all over the place.

They needed to be.

They needed to be.

Now, how this works out in practice, well, Acts chapter 15, verses 37 to 41, we won't take the time to turn to it.

Acts 15:37–41

The beginning of the second missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas after the Council of Jerusalem, Paul said, let's go back and visit the cities that we served in before and we'll see how they're doing.

And before we know it, before that chapter is out, Paul and Barnabas had such a hard conflict, a bitter dispute with one another that they went their separate ways.

And I'm not suggesting that that argument between Paul and Barnabas was good.

I'm just saying, isn't that so real?

We're gonna do this.

Let's go do this.

And before you know it, you can't even work together.

Now, the interesting thing about that, two interesting things.

One is God used both of them.

Isn't that just like God?

Isn't that just like God to take our sinfulness and cause some good to come out of it, not justifying it, but just recognizing God is not limited to our failures and foibles.

The other thing is that about 20 years later, and this dispute between Paul and Barnabas had to do with John Mark, who Paul said is a quitter and he wanted to go home in the middle of the journey, and Paul said, I have no use for him.

And Barnabas, the son of encouragement, said, We're reading between the lines, oh come on, we can, and he said, No, and so they split up.

Twenty years later, Paul said, Bring John Mark to me, for he is useful in the ministry.

I love that.

He who at one point was useless to Paul, in Paul's estimation.

We don't know what happened in the intervening years, but we do know that this one whom Paul thought was useless had become very valuable for him.

And when he was in prison, it's one of the things he wanted.

He wanted John Mark with him.

Another aspect of how this works with a red pencil, and we don't have the time to go into this, but read this afternoon between the raindrops, or the deviled eggs, or whatever it is.

Read Acts 16, 8, 6 to 10.

Paul had a plan.

He was coming from the west, and so he headed east.

And he decided to go north, but the spirit of Jesus would not permit him.

And so he had come from the west, he decided to go north, and so then he turned south, and he could not go south.

And being the astute scholar and diviner of God's will, just think about it, he had come from here, he tried to go there, he tried to go there, all he could do was go further west, and he went west until he ran out of land.

East.

That's east, thank you, dear.

He went east, the only direction that he could go, because all of the other ways were blocked.

And he got there and his way was blocked again because he could go no further.

And that's when God appeared in the night and gave him a call to Europe, the Macedonian call.

You see, that's the way it works.

That was not Paul's plan.

But that was God's plan.

And that's the way it works in my life.

The way it works, I trust in yours.

Make your plans in humility and with a sense of dependence.

Make plans.

Don't deny you're a human being.

Make plans.

Just do it being small, being humble, being dependent upon God.

Don't just make your own plans and then expect God to bless them.

Why would you do that?

Well, I know why I do that.

I'm a rotten sinner.

I think I know best.

And you do too.

But let's not, let's, let's covenant not to just make our plans and then expect that God's going to bless our plans.

That is a pagan way of living.

Someone wrote it this way, and I thought it was wonderful.

When you plan, have the Bible in one hand, pen and paper on the other hand, and both knees firmly planted on the floor.

Final thought.

In light of this, we can rest in peace.

Now I don't mean rest in peace, R.I.P.

But we can have rest and we can be at peace, knowing that it's not all up to you.

In our many travels over the years and enjoying the hospitality of Christians and spending the night in many guest rooms, we saw a couple of plaques, one of which was on the side of the bed.

When you go to bed tonight, leave all your problems with God.

He'll be up all night anyway.

Isn't that wonderful?

What a way to rest in peace.

And then finally, and with this, I close.

Do not, my friends, feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything.

That's my job, says God.

I don't feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything.

That's not your place.

That's not a way to live.

May we learn the lessons of Carpe Diem and Deo Volante.

Would you stand for the benediction, please?