…You Should Think Like Me?

S:

Isaiah 55:8

8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

 Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.

(NASB)

O: This verse comes toward the end of a passage that is revealing to us how much God cares for us and how far we can stray from God and His thinking and His care. It really is rather scary how derailed we can become when we start thinking and planning on our own. “Why do you spend money for what is not bread? (NASB) or does this make it more real for you in our season of fall fairs…”Why do you spend your money on junk food, your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?” (Message) The passage goes on to show and prove that God has only the best in mind for us, and that if we will only and continually feed on him and his advice and principles, we can only win in the end.

A: So what about your spouse. How often do you end up spending breath and words on trying to convince them that your way of doing something, your way of thinking, your reactions were the right, only and best way to do/think/react? What makes us…no, this is more about me than any of you will understand, with the exception of my wife…what make me so presumptuous as to think that I know best how to respond, how best to think, how best to react? I have read my devotion for this morning, and two other blog posts and they are all saying the same thing…we need to learn to let go of our own opinions and beliefs…maybe not let go, but at least loosen our grip, and consider the possibility that there might be another way, another position, another reaction that might be better than our own.

In this passage, God is trying to encourage us to get to know Him better, and understand his thinking, because in the end it is going to be the only right way…and there is just a good a chance as not, that it is your spouse that has the better way. After all, it is quite likely that this is the reason that God led you to each other in the first place, because they even you out and complete you.

When Genesis talks about “a helpmeet” for Adam, another and perhaps better way to translate the concept is “completer”, but the verb is not uni-directional, it is bi-directional, meaning that Adam completed Eve, just as much as Eve completed Adam. This whole pattern of thinking is further enhanced by the “one flesh” concept that is introduced a couple of verses later. So we would be correct in deducing that together they are better than apart, but they can be even greater if they will both yield to God as a leader and source of thinking, and what better place or way to do that than reading His Word and praying together on a regular basis.

P: Lord, help us as spouses to understand that as individuals we are an amazing creation; but that as a couple we become even greater; but as a couple yielded to You, we become our best. Amen.