Thought for Thursday
For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. Isaiah 55:8
When Don Richardson took the Gospel to the Sawi natives of New Guinea in the 1950s, he found a people who had no concept of most of the things that the rest of the world takes for granted. Along the Yonkel River, he found villages of people who had never seen anyone outside their own clan, had never travelled any more than a dozen kilometers from their birthplace, had no concept of reading and writing, and had no knowledge of the use of tools beyond what they could fashion out of wood, bone, and stone. But what Mr. Richardson found most frustrating in his efforts to reach these dark souls was their concept of treachery and betrayal as the ultimate goal for achievement. It took the missionary a long time to find a key to make any headway with a people who viewed Judas Iscariot as a super hero. We would find it difficult to deal with people whose thought processes were so different from ours. How difficult must it be for God to get through to humanity, whose thoughts and ideas are so far removed from His own!
Scientists who study the human brain tell us that even the most brilliant among us are capable of using less than ten percent of our mental capacity. Perhaps somewhere in that great untapped 90 percent of our minds is an ability to understand God’s thoughts, I don’t know. But it is evident that even the believers fall desperately short of appreciating God’s thoughts. We are so saturated with our own sinfulness, so enwrapped in an environment that has no time and little appreciation for the Almighty, that even our concept of Who God is is woefully inadequate. And yet God would commune and reason with us.
God seeks to reach us through His Word, which He would unfold for us every day as we read and study it. God reached down to earth in the person of His Son, to purchase our redemption in drops of His precious blood. In Jesus words of ministry and of suffering we find a revelation of the loving heart of God. We know that God is far beyond our ability to comprehend. But we must accept what we can grasp, and seek to align our thoughts with His as much as we can.
How do we learn about God’s thoughts? By reading His expression of those thoughts in His Word. And doing so on a regular basis. -Jim MacIntosh