How does God Think?

Imagine you have only one thought.  Choose a thought (make it a good one), close your eyes and focus on just the one thought....It seems like an odd exercise, but probably difficult to focus.  I realize how limited one thought for us is and how limited I am.

How does God think?

God’s thought is not sequential, it is eternal.  We could say that the thought of God is singular.  Imagine that! ONE THOUGHT; but unlike our thought, this one thought of God is HUGE, with an infinite number of levels and facets and dimensions.  It includes every thing, every one, every time, and every place.  There is nothing that he has not already considered and accounted for in His one thought.  I dare to add that God’s thought has a certain priority:  the highest of which is His love for and the salvation of His people.  It may surprise us, but God’s highest priority in our life is not our academic success, it’s not our financial stability, it’s not our health, our love life, or anything else UNLESS it is directly connected to our salvation.

How do I know this is his highest priority?  Because of the conversation Jesus has with Simon (Peter) and the disciples.  He explains that “he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  At the heart of suffering is love.  And Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of the love of God.  In this way, he won forgiveness for sin and restored the relationship of the human race with God.

In our lives and especially when we are suffering, our thoughts can be many and limited.  They are temporal and earthly; and Jesus basically says here, that our thoughts are vastly different than God’s.  Unless God reveals himself to us.  And this is why God sent us prophets like Jeremiah, and his only Son, so that our minds might be renewed by participation in the eternal thought, the eternal love of God, who has for our destiny, a heaven worth far much more than anything on earth.

Jeremiah
Today, our first example is Jeremiah, who prophesied the defeat of Judah by the Babylonians because they had abandoned God, committed idolatry, and forsaken morality.  His reward, as we heard, was derision ridicule and reproach.

In this context, he says he was duped by the Lord.  Being a prophet, telling the truth, proclaiming and living the word of God, did not bring him glory in this life, but suffering.  In his trials, he says that he will speak of God no longer, but alas, he cannot hold it in.

I want to impress upon you how Jeremiah’s knowledge of God is not primarily academic in nature, but relational.  Jeremiah did not study to be a prophet; God called him.  Together they had a relationship and from that relationship, Jeremiah’s knowledge and experience of God grew.  Because of this relationship he was open to God’s understanding of events even in these moments of trial.  If we read a little further in Jeremiah’s lament, we hear how he is renewed in his thinking:
“But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not prevail.”

We, like Jeremiah are called to know and proclaim the Word of God.  Each of us, baptized into the Body of Christ, share in the prophetic role of Christ in word and deed.  Perhaps your entire experience of God has been more academic (religious education classes) than relational, and you long for something more.  The good news is that God has already made the first move for you.

He sent His Son from Eternity into time so that everyone could be a prophet.  In baptism, each of us has received the Word made Flesh into our very souls.  Faithful to His promises, the eternal Triune God came to dwell in each of us.  Jeremiah received the word of God and could not hold it in.  Have you ever experienced the joy of that kind of relationship with God?  One in which you cannot contain the words or feelings or knowledge welling up within you?  Perhaps there is something holding us back.
How?

Epistle
I his letter to the Romans, St Paul states: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  His language implies that we have an active choice in allowing God to transform us.  He will not impose his will on us without his consent.

Such a transformation would be daunting if we had to rely on our human strength, but, again, God has already made the first move.  He has promised and delivered the grace we need to begin this renewal with an act of faith, of simple trust in God to accomplish His work in you.

Therefore, the renewal of our minds is not something we do blindly.
It is not devoid of reason,
does not eradicate prior knowledge,
does not deny previous experience;
rather God’s grace builds on our past and actually redeems it because all that we are and what we have experienced is of value to God.

In addition, renewal of the mind is
objective:  the goal is our salvation, (His highest priority), and
it is personal: each person experiences renewal in a manner particular to themselves for the good of all in the Body of Christ.
Moreover, Paul says, God’s will is “good, pleasing, and perfect”, which means that anything he has allowed us to experience, positive or negative, is part of His plan.

It is important to note that for God, His will and his thought are the same.  His eternal thought is his eternal will.  With this in mind, we come to the gospel passage where Jesus is confronted by Peter.

Gospel
Perhaps Simon Peter was feeling duped.  As we heard last week, he had just proclaimed Jesus to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God”, and now, Jesus is telling them he has to suffer and die.  Peter cannot accept this path for his Christ.   In his mind, Christ is to conquer the enemies of Israel and establish a kingdom on Earth.  Peter needed a renewal in his thinking; therefore, Christ rebuked him harshly and even tells him so.  “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

The words he spoke before were from the heavenly Father, but these words are contrary to God’s plan.  See how Jesus does not change to meet Simon’s expectations, but goes on to emphasize his point and call all his disciples to carry the cross.

Do we not feed duped from time to time, like Jeremiah or Simon Peter as we struggle to understand why God allows both good and evil to occur in our lives?  Some would have us believe that we are promised happiness in this life if we did all the right things, or did only what we wanted, or simply had enough faith in Jesus; but when we meditate on the cross, we realize the first thing we need is His grace to help us and sustain us every step of the way.  Grace to properly understand not just the sufferings of life, but even why we should have joy and success while others suffer.  Ultimately, we will not have an adequate understanding of our place in God’s eternal plan if we do not have a relationship with Him and through His Son.

Today, in your relationship with God, I encourage you to memorize the words of today's Psalm (63) and let them be your words:

O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
You are my help, and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
My soul clings fast to you;
your right hand upholds me.