James 4:13-17

v13-14: Don’t leave God out of the picture. Be cautious about making plans apart from God. It is so easy to have visions of “what [we] will do, be, and enjoy in the future,” and forget that life is uncertain and we do not know how long we will live. “Since this life is so uncertain, we should all prepare and store for the life to come.”

v15: “All our plans and all of what we actually do... should be referred to God. All we intend and all we do should be with a submissive dependence on God.” This is does not prevent us from proposing “to do this and that for ourselves, our families, or our friends,” but we do so tentatively, remembering that providence may make us have to change them.

v16-17: To know that we should depend upon God, and then fail to do so in our plans and actions, is sin. When our “conscience is rightly informed,” we should be concerned “that it is faithfully and constantly obeyed.”