Higher thoughts, Higher ways...

by Elizabeth Stewart

I've been thinking a lot lately about how prone we are, how prone I am, to think that the way I think and what I think is right.  I become so sure of my rightness that I build a fortified wall around my opinions and my own way of thinking that even the Lord Himself cannot penetrate, not because He's not able, but because I won't let Him. You see, He's not One Who goes around violating my free will and my free will is pretty dog gone stubborn most of the time.

I've also been thinking a lot lately about how prone we are as human beings to perpetually swing to extremes.  We see it clearly in the Bible ever since sin entered into the garden.  We see it in our world today.  We see it in the church today.  There are those who swing to the extreme of ultra legalism. Their relationship with God is based on rule keeping.  Like the religious people of Jesus' day, they've taken God's basic commandments and added hundreds of manmade traditions on top of them.  Then there is the other extreme.  In their rejection of legalism, there are those who have taken the concept of liberty to the extreme.  In the name of grace, they think that anything goes and that God is okay with that.

Somewhere, in the midst of all of this mess of my own willful wrong ways of thinking, in the midst of the extremes that we tend to wander off into, is this door called Jesus that we are bid to enter.  Apart from coming through that door, we cannot enter God's sheepfold or be called one of His sheep. Apart from coming through that door, we cannot hear or discern between the Shepherd's voice and the voice of the deceiver. Therefore, we really have no way to know whether or not the way we think is right or wrong, we have no Voice correcting the extremes to which we tend to swing. Because the way is narrow, many avoid it, equating narrow with constraint and confinement. The truth is, that once we enter through that narrow gate we can fully experience the limitless, boundless love of God, access the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe, and delve into the depths of His plans, purposes and possibilities for our lives.  The narrow way leads us to the abundant life we were always searching for but could never find when we were leaning on our own understanding. Unfortunately, we are tied with strong cords of affection to our own thoughts and ideas. We've spent a lifetime forming and protecting them.  The fact that the whole structure of our lifelong mindsets just might be wrong, just might need to be dismantled and replaced with God's way of thinking, rocks us to the core.  Our flesh screams at the idea of letting go of our "I thinks" and abandoning ourselves to the search for what God thinks.  Then, to take it a step further, to actually have to surrender our thoughts in order to embrace His, why, that's like dying, like dying to self!  Exactly!  However, it's when we take those "I thinks", even those extremes we may be holding on to, and lay it all on the altar of surrender- it's when we give God permission to show us what He thinks, when we are willing to admit that His ways are higher than ours and that His thoughts alone are right and true - it's then that we find that the Creator really does know better than the created, the Redeemer really does know better than those He redeemed.  It's then that we find that His higher thoughts, His higher ways, are what is best for us.  His thoughts and ways lead us to wholeness, restoration and abundant life.  Our Father God, really does know best and He always wants what is best for us.

just following, 

www.justfollowingjesus.com