“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8, KJV). Accordingly, we need the Word of God to help us bring our thinking and ways in line with God’s. How receptive are you to allowing the Word of God to change your thinking?
Consider the lawyer who came to Jesus one day. He was called a lawyer because he was skilled in the Old Testament Law. During their conversation, Jesus asked the man a question regarding the Law. He replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27, NASB).
Jesus told the lawyer he had answered correctly and that he should go and do according to the Word of God. The lawyer had no problem with the first part of his own answer, which was to love God. It was God’s requirement to love your neighbor as yourself that concerned the man.
“Wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (verse 29).
Evidently, the man knew what God’s Word was saying, but he had a different definition of who his neighbor was than God did. He posed the question to Jesus, hoping to justify his meaning of “my neighbor.”
Accepting God’s Word
To help the man clearly see the answer to his question, Jesus taught a parable. The clear message in the parable was that our neighbor is not only the people in our immediate “neighborhood.” But also, our neighbor is the person whom we come in contact with and who needs a helping hand, and it is within our power to offer help.
When we meet someone in that condition, we should do to the person as we would have someone to do toward us if we were in that person’s shoes. That’s what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.
This was not what the lawyer wanted to hear. He wanted Jesus to justify his personal view. But the purpose of the Word of God is never to justify your wrong way of thinking but to challenge it. That’s why you need to read and hear the Word of God with an open heart. Its objective is to change your thinking to agree with God.
Some people who attend church are like the lawyer who came to Jesus. In some area or areas of their life, they don’t want to change their way of thinking. Rather, they want to justify their wrong way of thinking. This may be in the area of race relations, money, marriage, etc.
Some will even seek a local church with a preacher that will tell them what they want to hear and not what they need to hear. The purpose of the Word of God is always to do the exact opposite.
Are you readily willing to change your thinking when the Word of God exposes it to be wrong?
Copyright © 2023 by Frank King. All rights reserved.