Isaiah 55:8 is a popular and often-quoted verse in the Bible.  God said, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”  Most people interpret these words as simply stating a fact.  In other words, since God is so much greater than we are, common sense tells us that His thoughts and ways are higher than ours could ever be.  But God is doing more than just stating a fact in this passage.  He is rebuking those whose ways and thoughts do not align with His.  He states that it is the wicked who forsake His ways and the unrighteous His thoughts (ver. 7).

Are the ways and thoughts of God higher than ours?  Yes, of course (vers. 9), but that does not mean that our ways and thoughts cannot line up with His.   This should be the goal for all of us.  Paul encouraged us to have the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5), and since He is perfectly aligned with the Father (John 14:8-9; Hebrews 1:3), to have His mind is to have the mind of the Father as well, meaning we will think the way they do.

When we think the way God thinks, His ways will be our ways as well.  For example, God hates every false way.  The Bible teaches that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).  He hates sin, and He wants us to feel the same way.  When we sympathize with sin, we are not thinking the way God thinks.  Our thoughts are not His thoughts, and it most often leads to our ways not being His ways.  The Psalmist was aligned with God when it came to this.

Psalm 119:104 (ESV)
¹⁰⁴  Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.

God is a God of holiness, and He wants us to be holy as well.

1 Peter 1:14-16 (ESV)
¹⁴  As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, ¹⁵  but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, ¹⁶  since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

For our ways and thoughts to be like God’s, we must know what His ways and thoughts are, and there is only one place to find them—the Bible.  The Bible reveals to us the will of God, teaching us how He thinks and feels about things.  We can know the mind of God because the Spirit reveals it to us through the scriptures.

1 Corinthians 2:10-12 (ESV)
¹⁰  these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. ¹¹  For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹²  Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

It is a great blessing to be able to know the heart of God.  We know what He likes and does not like.  We know how God wants us to live and how He does not want us to live.  We know how He wants us to worship Him and how He doesn’t.  This information alone, however, is not enough.  We must decide to adopt God’s ways and emulate His thinking.  Only then will His thoughts be our thoughts, and His ways be our ways, and that should continue to be our aim.

As you wind down for the night, think about these things.