James 4:13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; ¹⁴ 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. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

I would venture to the guess that the majority of those who claim to be Christians view God as sovereign over just some of the important things such as the birth of Christ, His death, and resurrection. You know, the big good things. But then would in the same breath claim God “would be a monster” if our future including the mundane things were determined.

James 4:13-16 clearly refutes such a notion that God’s will only encompasses major biblical events and the good things which happen in our lives. James is speaking about traveling and working, he didn’t mention “faith” or any religious thing when it came to God’s will in this passage. James intent was to show that God is sovereign over ALL things, even the little taken for granted mundane moments of our lives.

Some would protest that God is manically creating robots to do what He wants when He says. But really think of this in a broader sense in the realm of who God is and what His purpose is which is ALWAYS to bring glory to Him alone. He is the potter we are clay, we have no right or ability to tell the potter what to do and when to do it. It also speaks to God’s unfathomable intelligence, His omniscience. He knows the end from the beginning.

Once you get to this level of understanding of who God is, your understanding of Scripture opens up big time! Things which did not make sense before start to make perfect sense. If you believe God created man as a free agent, able to do anything outside of His sovereign will and purpose, you not only made man sovereign but Scripture will never make sense in a systematic context. You will be ignoring much of Scripture and centering on only those verses or passages which you think is making man sovereign.

No earthly man will have privy over the complete council of God outside of His revealed word. Our finite brains could not for a second contemplate to His level and all the details which He has purposed according to His will according to His good pleasure.