This week's episode features Dr. Joel Snider and focuses on James 4:13-17.
Life is unpredictable. Our days don’t always go as planned. It doesn’t always meet our expectations. Our culture’s standard response is to “take control.” Advertisements encourage us to take control of our lives, our investments, our desire to stop smoking. The ones on endlessly. Products that promise to put us in control grab our attention. But many events are outside our control. Cancer still strikes; stock markets still crash; drunk drivers still cross the yellow line into the lane of someone we love. Control is an illusion.
The author of James offers another approach: trust in God. Trust is the message of scripture. It’s behind the story of manna in the wilderness and the request for daily bread. When was the last time we had to trust God, just to eat. In Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller says, "I just think it would be easier to trust God if I had extra money to trust him with.” For sure.
Philip Yancey focuses for us: Trust does not eliminate the bad things that may happen, whatever sparked our fear in the first place. Trust simply finds a new outlet for anxiety and a new grounding for confidence: God. Let God worry about the worrisome details of life, most of which are out of my control anyway.