KNOWING THE THOUGHTS OF GOD.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY THIRTY FOUR.

JEREMIAH 29:11.    For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

So can we know the thoughts of God? This verse says that His thoughts are thoughts of peace, He doesn't think evil thoughts about us but that His thoughts are directly linked to our future and to give us hope. So if we compare this verse with Isaiah 55:8-9 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are My ways your ways," says the Lord "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thought higher than your thoughts". So do these verses in Isaiah mean that we cannot know the thoughts that God has towards us? I have heard many Christians express that thought, that we can never really know the thoughts and ways of God based on these verses out of Isaiah. So let us take a closer look at the context of these two verses. Isaiah 55:6-7 Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near, Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteousness man this thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, and He will abundantly pardon. We see here that the call of God in these verses is for the man who is walking away from God to abandon his ways and his thoughts and to come back to God and to call on Him and that God will have mercy on him and forgive him, it is a call to come back to the ways and thoughts of God. Verses 10-13 show us the result of returning back to God, coming back to His word and His ways, we will know the peace and joy of God, His word will not return back to Him but as we submit our lives to Him it will accomplish the things in our lives that it was sent to do. So we see from this passage in Isaiah that we can know the thoughts and ways of God and that He wants us to know these things so that we can walk in His word and in His purpose for our lives. In Psalm 119:11 David said, "Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You" in verse 105 he said, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path". God's thoughts and His plans for us are weaved into His word, apart from His word we cannot know the thoughts that God has towards us. In James 1:21-25 James says that we are abandon sin, we are to receive the word of God with humility as it is the word that will save our souls and that we are to do what the word of God says about us because if we don't then we deceive ourselves, and he goes on to say that the man who sees what the word says and then does it will walk in the blessings of God. Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 shows us that while we walk in this flesh body we do not war in the flesh, it is not a fleshly battle that we are involved in but a spiritual one and our weapons are not carnal or fleshly, but spiritual and that in God they are mighty to pulling down the strongholds that Satan wants to establish in our minds through our thinking, this is why we must take every thought captive and bring our thoughts into obedience to what the word of God says, in other words abandoning our thoughts for God's thoughts. In Romans 12:1-2 it says that we are to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices, in other words dead to ourselves and alive to God, and that we are not to live our lives conformed to the world but that our we are to be transformed as our minds or thoughts are renewed to the word of God so that we can walk in His ways, in His good, acceptable and perfect will. So can we know the thoughts and ways of God? Yes of course we can, and it is actually imperative that we do know His thoughts and His ways, so that we can live the lives that Jesus died on the cross to give us. AMEN.