Day 4: Align your thinking with God’s thinking!

In the following days I'm going to deal with one great, basic requirement for walking with God which is agreeing with God.

This is stated so clearly in Amos 3, verse 3, which says this (and it's a question):

“Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” (NKJ)

To agree means to harmonize in our ways and thoughts. So we cannot walk with God unless we learn to harmonize with God in His ways and His thoughts. However, the Bible also makes it clear that by nature, God's ways and thoughts are quite different from ours. This is stated with great clarity and emphasis in Isaiah, chapter 55, verses 6 through 9, where the Lord is speaking through the prophet, and He says this:

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. [Notice that when we turn to God, it's not enough merely to turn in outward act, but what really matters is our inward ways and thoughts. That's what has to be forsaken, our own ways and our own thoughts in order to turn to God and to relate to God and be reconciled with God. And then God goes on and tells us why:] ‘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.’” (NIV)

So God says emphatically, clearly, "My thoughts are not your thoughts; my ways are not your ways. The way you think is not the way I think. Your natural ways," God says to man, "are not in harmony with mine." In fact, He says, there is an immeasurable gap, "as the heavens are higher than the earth," that's the measurement of the gap between God's ways and God's thoughts, and our ways and our thoughts.

That is why it says, at the beginning of this text, "Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” It is now that He invites us to give Him our own thoughts and to bring our thinking in line with His thinking.