My ways are not your ways…Which is it for you?

“My ways are not your ways”

Jeremiah 29:11-14

“For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, [NASB1995]

> “There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.”  Proverbs‬ ‭14‬:‭12‬

> “The mind of a man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps” Prov 16:9

SO WHICH IS IT??…Which is it for you?

Interesting that both these verses are in Psalms, and indeed, very close together.

Which is it with you? Let’s read these again.

God says to us in ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭55‬:‭8‬-‭9‬ ‭(NASB1995‬‬):

““For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor 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.”

That sounds great, but how do I know God‘s thoughts? And more than that, how do I differentiate God‘s voice from what I’m thinking up on my own?

The verse right before it says:

“Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts;”

Are we walking in unrighteousness? Are our desires worldly or carnal?

This verse goes on to say;

“And let him return to the Lord, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”

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James gives us this caution in ‭‭James‬ ‭4‬:‭2‬-‭3‬

“You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”

Here is what ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4‬:‭17‬-‭18‬ says:

“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;”

We pray, “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

Isaiah 53, Says this: in Isaiah 53:6-8 in the King James Version:

”All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;”

Jesus said. “I AM the Way the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” [John 14:6]

~ It is only by God’s power through the Holy Spirit in the “renewing of our mind” [Romas 12:2] that our perspective can and will change to see things, even personal issues in our daily lives, from God’s perspective, “and not be conformed to the pattern of this world", then you will be able to trestr and approve what God’s will is - His good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

~ Can you honestly say, as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane,  “Nonetheless, not my will but yours be done.”

If so, then “goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.” [Psalm 23:6]

AMEN