I'm Jonathan Lehman.

I'm Mark Devere.

And welcome to this episode of Nine Marks Pastor Talk.

Nine Marks exist to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches learn more at nine marks.org.

Mark, you and I had a different conversation plan for today, but we're going to do this

one now that will be released on Tuesday.

Why do you always practice a Lord willing?

The book of James tells us to do that, says we shouldn't brag about what we'll do today or

tomorrow because we don't have tomorrow.

And Christians have historically used a phrase like Deo Valente, God willing, or just Lord

willing, whenever they've used the future indicative, when they put up posters for a meeting

that's happening in the future. It's traditional to put DV in parentheses or something like that,

indicating that all of our plans are

subject to the Lord's will.

And it seems like this is an especially appropriate time to remember that.

Yeah, because the day on which you and I are recording this is a day in which our church

has announced that for the first time in 102 years, we will not be having services for the

next three Sundays, as long as the D.C. Health Board gives

the guidance they've given to us. They've asked for there to be no meetings of more than

a thousand, and now today they've dropped the number down to 250. So our elders decided on two

nights ago just to not have a Sunday morning, Sunday evening, or Wednesday evening,

public whole congregation

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