Your Unlimited Life (16 page)

7

YOUR WILL
& GOD’S WILL

Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.

Isaiah 55:6

This Scripture infers that there will come a day when the Lord will not be found. Then verse 7 goes on to say:

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

Part of the process of seeking the Lord is to forsake thoughts that do not come from righteousness. We are to renew our thoughts with God’s Word to agree with what God says. In reality, you do
not return to the Lord
until you begin to forsake your own thoughts and change your thinking to agree with God’s thoughts.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says 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.

Isaiah 55:8-9

The Lord spoke to me years ago about this passage of Scripture. He said, “When you have My thoughts, you have My ways. If you don’t have My thoughts, you don’t have My ways.”

If we want God’s ways for our children, we need His thoughts about being a parent. If we want God’s ways, His blessing and His provision in our business, we must have His ways in our mind regarding business. When we have God’s thoughts, we will have His ways.

When I go into a situation, I ask God to reveal to me what He is thinking about the situation; how He would have me deal with the specific issue. If I am thinking what God is thinking, I can figure out how He is going to move. When I have His thoughts, I can have His ways.

Scripture says,
“He
[God]
made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel”
(Psalm 103:7). In other words, Moses knew more about God than just the miracles that He did. The people didn’t want to know, they didn’t plug in. Remember, the people said to Moses that they didn’t want God to talk to them. They wanted Moses to talk to God and then transfer the message. They didn’t want to hear God’s thoughts, so they didn’t know His ways.

You have to decide what kind of Christian you want to be. Do you want to see the acts of God occasionally, or are you going to be one who presses in to know His thoughts so you can know His ways? A successful Christian moves in God’s ways because he [she] knows God’s thoughts.

RENEWAL TRUTH

Because I know God’s thoughts and His ways

through the Holy Spirit, I am strong and I am doing

great exploits to bring glory to Him.

(Daniel 11:32)

Paul said,
“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”
(1 Corinthians 2:14).

The natural man cannot get hold of the thoughts of God. If you think like the average guy in the world, you will never understand what God is thinking, because to know the thoughts of God, you have to think spiritually. If this seems like a completely foreign concept, don’t lose heart but know that the more time spent listening and speaking with the Holy Spirit, the more you will learn to hear His guidance.

When you think in line with the Word, which is truth, you are spiritually minded and spiritually discerning. You will begin to hear, understand, and perceive the thoughts of God.

But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

As we become sensitive to the Spirit of God and become spiritually minded, we will begin to possess the mind of Christ. Our natural, carnal thoughts will be replaced with God’s thoughts.

Perhaps you are a young man who is looking for a wife. You begin a relationship with a girl and you question if this is the right person for you. If you are spiritually minded, God’s anointing will lead you and you will know. The anointing that abides in you will teach you all truth. If you are not thinking with your hormones (physical desires), like the average guy in the world, you will know whether the girl is right or not. You won’t have to go to fourteen counselors and twelve pastors and take a personality test. You will know.

A problem develops when your hormones are stronger than the mind of Christ in your life. You are thinking about her perfect hair and even convince yourself she must be perfect because she serves in church. She may be completely carnally minded, but she goes to church and she is pretty.

You can’t hear the anointing. You can’t hear the mind of Christ on the inside of you. The anointing is trying to lead you into all truth saying, “No, no, no! This is not the woman that will help you fulfill your destiny.”

RENEWAL TRUTH

The fruit of the Holy Spirit -

love, joy, peace, longsuffering,

kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,

and self-control – are maturing in my human spirit.

(Galatians 5:22-23)

You are trying to get what your natural man wants, and the natural man does not hear or receive the things of the Spirit of God because the things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned. You are not spiritually discerning, so you are missing the voice of Christ. Therefore, you don’t have the thoughts or the ways of God.

Six months down the road you go to your pastor seeking counsel, either because you have gotten into a worldly relationship and you have ended up in sin, or you are hurt, let down, and discouraged. You explain, in your state of destitution, that you don’t understand how this could possibly have happened to you. It happened because you didn’t forsake your own thoughts and plug into God’s thoughts so you could have His way in your relationship.

Each day we should seek for the higher thoughts (God’s thoughts) and the higher ways of thinking. If we will do that, then we will begin to have God’s way in our relationships, in our finances, in our ministry or careers, and in everything we do. Every day we are faced with a choice: Do I think the thoughts of the natural man, or do I think the thoughts of God?

The human soul is made up of the mind, will, and emotions. The things of the Spirit are eternal, and we are supernaturally affected when we are born of God. The things of the soul are naturally and gradually affected as we grow, learn, and renew the mind with the Word of God. So the will of a person must be renewed as part of the process of renewing the mind.

Paul prayed,
“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”
(1 Thessalonians 5:23). The “will” is part of the soul realm, and it must be renewed and developed.

The human will is almost like a muscle. When you practice anything with your physical muscles, they learn to do things better. Soon they will do things automatically. So it is with the human will. Whatever you do over and over will begin to become automatic.

G
OD
G
AVE MAN THE
A
BILITY
T
O
“C
HOOSE
”

We are going to look at the will and see how it works in the negative world and in the positive world, and how we need to use our will as we develop our spiritual mind.

Let’s go back to the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis. In chapter 1 God created the heavens and the earth, plant and animal life. He spoke the creation process into being. But when He came to man, He said,
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”
(Genesis 1:26). Something took place in the creation process that hadn’t happened before. God had been creating out of His mind, out of His infinite wisdom, and out of His infinite ability. But now He says, “We are going to create something that is like Us.”

“Let them [man] have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion.”

Genesis 1:26-28