Celebration Sunday

Today was Celebration Sunday at TurningPoint. We celebrated our second anniversary in our current location. The day was filled with great worship, plenty of food, fun and fellowship and even a concert by our own praise team. We also had a girls trio who came up from Riverbend and sang a couple of songs for us. All in all the weather remained beautiful this year and a good time was had by all.

But I'd like to focus on this morning's message by Pastor David as he preached out of James 4:13-17. This passage is about boasting about tomorrow. James talks about how we often make plans to do something or go somewhere in the future yet we can never really be sure whether or not those plans will come to fruition because we never really know what tomorrow will bring.

Pastor David taught that counting on the future is unwise. James 4:13 says, "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..." By saying this, man acts as if he is in control instead of God. This is foolishness because as James goes on to say in verse 14 "you do not know what tomorrow will bring..."

James tells us in verse 15 that instead of boasting in our own man made plans we should say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." No matter how we plan we just don't know what the future holds. Pastor David made a great analogy, he said, "To God, eternity is like an open map and He sees it all. To man, eternity is like an open labyrinth and he only sees where he is."

Does this mean we should stop planning then? Of course not. James is not telling us to drop out of life. We just need to make our plans aware that God is in control and not us.

Before you were born God knew every thought you would think and every word you would speak. All our plans should wait until God either opens the door or closes it. This does not mean sitting around doing nothing. Pastor David said we need to live life now, doing what God wants us to do while we wait on His response to the plans we've made.

So remember, It is God who governs our lives and not chance. Recognition of God with regard to the future is true wisdom.

Hope you all enjoyed our Celebration Sunday as much as I did.

God bless

Rob