October 25 I Tuesday
Jeremiah 6-8
1 Timothy 5
“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
—Isaiah 55:8-9
From the opening verse, if God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, how can we know His thoughts? There is only one possible way of knowing another person’s thoughts and that is for that person to tell us. The only way we will know the thoughts of God is if He tells us. One of the vital aspects of Scripture is that God reveals His thoughts and mind to us, as Job shares: “He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings utter darkness into the light” (Job 12:22).
But God is more than just a mind and intelligence. In fact, knowing God is more than knowing information about God. The great danger in thinking that Scripture primarily reveals God’s thoughts is that we begin to think the highest response to God is found in a knowledge of His mind and obedience to His will. That, however, is not the highest response we make to God. Scripture tells us there are those who had this objective: to understand the mind of God and to obey scrupulously the will of God—they were known as Pharisees.
Knowledge is important, but knowledge alone can make us cold. If we see God as supremely intelligent, we reduce Him to a little more than a powerful, celestial computer, where the Bible is His printout of His instructions. Yet, He is not all brain, mind and intelligence; to know His mind and to obey His will is essential but that is actually not enough. God has a heart; hence, the highest virtue is not simply obedience to His will.
The highest virtue is, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). To love Him with all our heart means we have to make a connection with His heart because we can love Him with our hearts only as we connect with His heart. Without knowing the heart of God and without loving Him with all our hearts, we can read and study our Bibles in order to get to know God, but it will be like studying the anatomy of a corpse in order to get to know the person who once inhabited it. We will not know the person by studying their corpse. We have got to know the life that pulsated within it. Thus, detached from the heart of God, the Bible has been the source of wars, battles, antagonism, fights, squabbles and fallouts because we have not known the heart of God. Would we endeavour to embark on a journey to know God beyond His thoughts, mind and intelligence and into His heart?
Prayer: Loving God, You are more than just mind and intelligence; You are a real person with a heart. Guide me Lord into Your heart. Praise You!
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