Making God’s Thoughts My Thoughts, My Ways God’s Ways

I have listened again and again to several writers’ reiterate multiple repetitions of the concept of the church only being or becoming the church (again) to the extent it is a house of prayer (again.)

I had taken a day off to be at home to read, pray, and reflect. God directed me to Isaiah 55:8 in a round about way, taking me back to a word-by-word review of that verse’s linguistics and logic.  I have visited it many times, and always before I have come away with a vague sense that I was missing something significant there….. puzzled.  But now it has clicked ….

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.

This is not simply a repeated, doubled and reversed comparative expression of the ineffability of God because of the vast differences  between Creator and Created.  It is a statement of fact that also describes THE WAY for both things….THOUGHTS (or biblical principles, or orthodoxy) and WAYS  (or actions, or orthopraxis) of both God and mankind to BECOME companion truth REALITIES through the union of the wills of God and mankind.

BECAUSE GOD’s THOUGHTS ARE NOT OUR THOUGHTS, OUR WAYS ARE NOT HIS WAYS.

One reality (the righteousness of our ways) depends upon the other reality (the righteousness of God’s thoughts) prevailing.

Transformation (the ultimate expression of which is complete redemption) BEGINS WITH RENEWAL OF THE MIND…. To WHAT END?  To  HAVING THE MIND OF CHRIST,  to THINKING THE THOUGHTS OF GOD, mediated through the Holy Spirit that IS ACCOMPLISHED BY PRAYING ….. and prayer becoming a CONTINUAL receptivity to the thoughts of God as heard and known in the Spirit and known and confirmed in the Word.

The biblical directives to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and to work out our salvation is to adopt the active posture of readiness to receive God’s thoughts that we bring to the relationship, the covenant, the sacrament (ourselves being a living sacrifice) in prayer (to hear the principles, the instructions, the wisdom, all those Psalm 119 things His Word IS) and then respond with our adoration, praise, gratitude, and obedience   (which is the praxis, God’s will  and ways intended for us to complete.). Once we do that it looks line THIS:   God declares…..

YOUR WAYS BECOME MY WAYS

when  …. (or as or because)

MY THOUGHTS ARE (or are becoming more attuned with) YOUR THOUGHTS !!

Perhaps the reason our ways are not His ways (praxis) is because we have not received and embraced God’s thoughts (principles)  to become our own.  That is what having the Mind of Christ … being in CHRIST JESUS….is.  It was God’s thoughts being given to Christ in prayer, which for Him became a constant grace note playing in the midst of every conversation.  (Like cultivating that ability described as in “livestreaming”  as we discovered in Ivan Filby’s experience and teaching.)

When we, through prayer, have made His thoughts (His principles and will) our thoughts, THEN our ways (our praxis and its impact)  will be His!