Johannes Kepler, the great astronomer and mathematician said that. And of all the thoughts that exist, God’s thoughts are the ones I want to think. However, the Bible says God’s thoughts are higher than ours,
My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the LORD. And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts. ~ Isaiah 55:8-9, NLT.
So God’s thoughts are higher than ours. One place where you can find a whole lot of God’s thoughts is in the Bible, which is why it’s such a good thing to read and study it.
If you think about it, Isaiah 55:8-9 is also talking about God’s sovereignty, though if you leave it in context with the verses following, it’s also talking about the fact that God’s Word never fails, and always comes to pass, and part and parcel with that is the fact that God always keeps His promises.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. ~ Isaiah 55:10-11, ESV.
The sovereignty of God is one of those mysterious aspects about God that I’ve had a hard time understanding, both with respect to my own life, and with regard to the way things have worked out in other people’s lives for whom I’ve spent time in prayer.
There have been a number of people over the years, who all had cancer of one kind or another, whom I prayed for to be healed. After the first one died, leaving a wife and a five year old daughter behind, I decided I wouldn’t pray for cancer patients to be healed any longer. It was too painful when they died, and I felt like too much of a spiritual failure.
I realize that was probably pretty selfish of me, but I don’t think I can be effective before God when I pray for people if I’m fighting my own feelings of insecurity while I’m trying to pray for someone’s healing. So, while I do pray for people to be healed of other illnesses, I don’t pray for people to be healed of cancer. I direct my prayers in other directions when I’m praying for people with cancer.
Part of the reason for this is that my sister died from colon cancer back in August of 2008. I watched her die ~ and it was horrible!! The cancer metastasized from her colon to her lungs, so ultimately, what killed her was lung cancer. The cancer in her lungs asphyxiated her. Her oncologist said one of her lungs was okay, but the other lung was so bad that he was surprised she could breathe at all. He said her bad lung was one huge mass of cancer and blood clots. It made me hurt just to hear him describe it like that.
In addition to just having cancer, she had problems with her chemo drugs. For some reason they caused her to have hallucinations and delusions, but she didn’t know that’s what they were, so she didn’t ask her oncologist about it, because she was afraid he wouldn’t believe her, but would refer her to a psychiatrist, who she was sure also wouldn’t believe her.
What she did instead was talk to me, because I have a background in psychiatric problems due to my own issues and experiences. It was actually kind of amazing that she talked to me at all, because throughout my life my sister and I never got along. So all of a sudden, we were talking and relating peaceably like friends, with no arguing or bickering. It felt like a miracle.
God used her cancer to heal our relationship, a small silver lining out of the horrors of her disease, and something for which I will always be grateful.
Ravi Zacharias is someone else who died of cancer. I’ve come to realize that he had a profound influence on me, and now that he’s gone I feel like an enormous hole has been ripped in the fabric of my life.
The Bible says that God has numbered our days, and that He knew everything that would happen to us before we were born,
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. ~ Psalm 139:16, NLT.
I understand that to mean that God knows everything, including when we’ll die ~ and I’m assuming that also means how we’ll die ~ before we’re born. And while I know we have to die from something ~ I mean they have to put something on your death certificate afterall, even if it’s nothing more than cardiac arrest.
However, I know from reading my mother’s death certificate that the immediate cause of death, for example, cardiac arrest, is just the beginning. There’s a secondary cause, and a tertiary cause as well. But if you think about it, cardiac arrest doesn’t mean anything for a cause of death. Everyone dies from cardiac arrest, because everyone’s heart stops when they die, and that’s all cardiac arrest is. So using cardiac arrest as a cause of death is meaningless as far as I’m concerned.
I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that I need to trust God. As hard as it is, I need to trust that He knows what’s best for me, He knows what He’s doing in my life.
His sovereignty is a good thing.
Let me repeat that. God’s sovereignty is a GOOD thing.
Even when I can’t see what’s up ahead, God can, and He always has my best interests at heart. He will always do and plan what’s best for me. I have to trust and believe that about Him.
I have to always remember that God and Harry are two diametrically opposed people and figures in my life. God is not Harry and never has been. And Harry was not God, thankfully, even though he tried hard to make me think he was.
These are truths that I must continually remind myself of until they are fully integrated into my very wiring, they are that much a part of who I am.
So, in closing, God’s sovereignty is a GOOD thing for me!!
Hallelujah!! Thank you, Jesus!! Thank you for birthing that truth in my heart! Please help me to keep it there, and please make it grow!!
God's Not Through With Me Yet 
Hi, Sarah there is something in your thoughts which has a my thoughts going around in a swirl. Its regarding God and Harry being diametrically opposed. Let me see if I can explain it without totally
putting my foot in my mouth or brain. (Ouch)
Harry can’t be diametrically opposed to God, just like Satan can’t be the opposite. There is no equal yet opposite power. If nothing else; Satan was the one cast out of Heaven, and he was giving a stopping point with Job, heck he couldn’t even say Job’s name without permission. He can’t fore tell the future, and Jesus called him a coward (James 4:7), and he doesn’t know our thoughts. Guessing we could go on and on, making it a game, the things he can’t do. Seems like Harry thought he was Satan not God. And Harry also delighted in evil and was a liar.
Satan had a beginning and he will have an end, God is THE beginning and THE end. Harry met his end, he met God and God dealt with him as He saw fit.
Since God told Moses, I AM WHO I AM, would that maybe mean only nothing can be the opposite of God? And sin isn’t it the walking away from what God deemed perfect? So is there anything to the thought -without the intervention of Christ, we sin our way into nothingness?
I think I am starting to blather, so will end also with this thought, do not let anything keep you from praying about anything you need to pray about. There is zero failure in prayer, you don’t have to work your way into God’s new clothes, its not like you get to knit your new Heavenly clothes ( 🙂 ) Loving God means we are never a Spiritual failure, no matter how much the otherside wants us to believe that lie.
You are the best bravest person I know and God made you that way via His Sovereign will.
Hopefully this doesn’t sound argumentative, totally don’t mean it that way, but rather building on what you said and rather how do we as physical beings, not let the enemy talk us into giving up some of what God freely gave us?
Love Ya
-K
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Hi Kim:
As always, thank you for your thoughtful and insightful comments. You always say things that make me think, and I really appreciate that.
I would never think of anyone as being equal in any way to God, and certainly not opposite but equal. No human could ever come even remotely close to God, and I would never want to suggest that.
I looked up the word diametrical in the dictionary, and it doesn’t have anything to do with being opposite yet equal. The dictionary says it’s an adjective used to emphasize how different two things are from each other, and that’s the point I was going for ~ that Harry is completely different from God.
The cult designed the rituals using me with the purpose of completely confusing me about who God was. They wanted me to come away from their abuse with the idea that God was evil, and therefore I could never trust Him, not that Satan was God. I don’t know that they necessarily wanted to turn me into a satanist, they just wanted to keep me from becoming a Christian. Thank God, they completely failed!
Harry didn’t think he was Satan, and I’m not sure he thought he was God, but he certainly wanted me to think he was God. During the cult rituals, there was a person in a white robe sitting on a throne telling the others what to do to me, and that person was supposed to be God ~ and sometimes he looked like Harry. But the point is that person was supposed to be God, not Satan.
You’re right, Satan had a beginning, and he’ll have an end. Harry also had a beginning, and he had an end. I’m not sure when his judgment day will come, but it WILL come. I’ve prayed for him, that God will temper His judgment with mercy. I certainly deserved judgment, however I don’t know what did with Jesus Christ before he died, and his decision there will determine everything else for him.
And most importantly, God had no beginning and will have no end. As you said so eloquently, He was THE beginning and will be THE end,
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. ~ Revelation 22:13, NLT.
When I read the passage in Exodus where God tells Moses His name for the first time (Exodus 3:14), I read it in the King James Version, and it’s a little different in the King James,
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. ~ Exodus 3:14, KJV.
In the King James it’s translated I AM THAT I AM. I always took that to mean, “Among all the other gods, Moses, I am THAT God. I am the ONLY God.” I could be wrong in my understanding of it, but that’s what I understood it to mean.
And don’t worry, I don’t think you were being argumentative. I love your comments. They always make me think, and I love to think! Hehehe!!
I love you lots!
Sarah
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Sarah, I want to apologize for making a mish mash of the post. Been thinking about evil lately as I keep getting hit over the head with it. The place I was heading was this idea that sometimes it is easy to let evil have too much power or rather power it doesnt have.
Love back or tag your it 🙂
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Oh my, Kim! I don’t think you made a mish mash of your comment at all! I love your comments to my posts, because they make me think, and if we disagree, well, so what. If you disagree with what I said, then that makes me have to clarify what I said, which is a good thing.
I think you’re right. It is easy to let evil have too much power. It’s also easy to give evil power that it shouldn’t have, as you said above.
I hope you don’t stop telling me your thoughts about my posts, exactly as you think them! I love your thoughts! There’s nothing at all wrong with disagreement, as long as we can dialogue about it. It helps me to sort out my thinking, and that’s always a good thing.
I love you lots and lots, and now we’re playing comment-tag. Hehehe!!
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You know Sarah, I had never thought about I AM THAT I AM in the terms you are describing, I always saw it in terms of I always have been and always will be. But in thinking about it, what if He is saying His name IS His nature? Which would embrace both concepts ooorrrrr back to your title of ‘Thinking God’s thoughts after Him’
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