“I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”–John 3:12

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”-2 Peter 3:8 

…be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” -Hebrews 13:5

My thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways declares the Lord. For 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

“…be still and know that He is (I am) God!”–Psalm 46:10.

 

All That I Live For

He’s the beauty of a starlit evening
And the mystery of the sea.
He’s the music of a newborn crying
And the promise of eternity.
He has the strength to move mountains
Yet, the grace to forgive our sin.
He is present, past, and future,
All that is and all that’s ever been.
He is the sovereign ruler of the world
His plans are intricate.
His thoughts are impenetrable
For His mind is infinite.
To save us from our sins
He sent His Son to be betrayed.
Then saved the world by resurrecting
The sacrifice He made.
He is all of this
And so much more,
This is love, this is God,
This is everything that I live for.
©Linda Troxell 03/24/2017

 

When Adam and Eve ate from the tree, thus breaking the law of sin and death, it severed the spiritual connection between man and God. It could not be otherwise. It is a law of the universe that the penalty for sin is death. The laws of the universe cannot be broken.  To understand this better let’s look at a universal law we are all more familiar with; one we see every day. We all know about the law of gravity; we don’t question it and we don’t expect God to simply suspend it when it is convenient for us. Most of us would not consider praying to God to prevent an object we drop from hitting the ground. We may pray that the object does not break when it hits the ground, but for the most of us, it would not occur to us to ask Him to suspend the law of gravity for us.

Well, it is no different as to the law of sin and death. The penalty for sin is death; a death of the spirit, the severing of man’s connection to God. As with the law of gravity, we cannot expect God to suspend this law for convenience sake. God is not a lawbreaker; it is not in His nature. Can He break universal laws? I don’t know, probably, He is omnipotent. But why ask if He can, when we know He won’t? There are many things you and I are capable of doing that we don’t do because it is not in our nature. For example, let’s consider breaking of man’s laws. I am certainly capable of breaking laws. And, if I am honest, I do break laws; I speed occasionally, I have occasionally littered, and I’ve even removed one or two of those tags we find on pillows, which tell us not to remove by penalty of law. But all kidding aside, there are many laws I would never break because it is not in my nature to do so. I would never, for example, rob a bank.  Is that because I am just too moral? Well, I hope that is the final, bottom line reason. However, morality aside, I would never rob a bank because I am unwilling to suffer the consequences; and risk taking is not in my nature.

I know some of you are thinking, “if God can do anything why didn’t He just fix His severed relationship with man?” Well, He did. Remember Jesus? Remember God sent Him to be the sinless sacrifice for sin that would satisfy the law of sin and death? God sent Jesus to die that we might be born again. Born Again= A Spiritual Rebirth in which our spiritual connection to God is resurrected. That is how God fixed it because He wouldn’t break a universal law. So He found another way. I’m sure some of you are thinking, “but come on, that took like 4,000 years. Why would it take God that long?” Well, I am not going to presume to speak for God regarding his reasons and motives; mostly because it is not my place to do so. But also because I have finally quit trying to understand God’s infinite mind with my finite mind. God did it when He did it and time is irrelevant.  But, I can tell you that 4,000 years to God is nothing more than the time to take an afternoon nap; time to sleep on the problem, if you will.

This entire discussion reaffirms, for me, a number of things about God. 1. He created us in His image so that He could be spiritually connected to us. 2. We are so important to Him that, when man basically flipped Him the middle finger and disobeyed Him at the first sign of temptation, instead of saying to Himself, “Oh well, back to the drawing board.”, He made the biggest sacrifice in the history of sacrifice to reestablish our relationship with Him. 3. The reason we must have faith in Him and believe in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of His Son in order to have a spiritual rebirth is not that He wants us to jump through some hoops, or because He has some narcissistic flair for the dramatic. No, it is because if we cannot fully believe in those things now, how could we ever believe there was a time we were spiritually connected to Him in the first place? As Jesus said to Nicodemus in John Chapter 3, “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?–John 3:12. And finally, 4. If there is an obstacle in our life, particularly in our connection with Him, for which we are asking His help, we need to be patient. We need to remember and believe what 2 Peter 3:8 tells us: “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”

We do not know, nor can we ever understand or figure out how God thinks.  It would be like expecting a dog to understand or figure out how its master thinks.  But we humans, in trying to understand both dogs and God, tend to personify both. We project our feelings, thoughts, and abilities on to each because we are unable to imagine any way of thinking or feeling but our own. So we inflate the abilities of a dog to equal our own, and we deflate God’s abilities to our level in our quest to understand each of them. We can no more think like God thinks than our dog can think like we think. We will never be able to think like God. He understands things we don’t even know exist. He considers everything at the same time; we don’t even know what everything encompasses. He can consider how events of today will affect those events which will happen in the future; we cannot see the future. And, perhaps most importantly, God is infinitely patient as time has no meaning to Him; whereas we have the patience of,… of…well, of a human. In the end, I guess God explains it best himself: My thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways declares the Lord. For 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

So, the next time you begin to wonder why God has given you, or not given you some blessing or obstacle, the next time you become anxious because you don’t understand where God is going with your life, or the next time you are tempted to believe God is just not working in your life at all, I hope you will remember the difference between you and God that makes wondering about all of those things wasted energy. We cannot, nor will we ever, understand God. We need to learn to, “be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” –Hebrews 13:5. Think it through; have a little faith. We don’t need to understand, we don’t need to anticipate and we don’t need to be anxious about anything. We need only to “…be still and know that He is (I am) God!”–Psalm 46:10.

 

 

Points for Prayer and Pondering

Are there things in your life you’ve had difficulty understanding why God hasn’t fixed or changed?  Do those things involve violating universal laws?  

Can you think of some things that you could do but don’t simply because they are not in your nature? List some of those thin

What are some of the things you have tried to understand about God’s infinite thinking with your finite mind?