His ways (10-15-11)

Isaiah 55:8-9 - "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares 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."

God's ways are so much higher and so different than our ways. In fact God's ways are basically the exact opposite of mans ways. When we look at some of the stuff in the Word of God, humanly speaking, it doesn't make sense at all, and sometimes it seems to contradict. In Matthew 5:44 Jesus says - "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." This doesn't make any sense to the natural man. And, in fact, the verse before this says - "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’" the Jewish leaders would add their own commentaries into the Hebrew Scriptures, and one of the things that they commented about this command about loving your neighbor is that you were to hate your enemy. But Christ shows that His ways are higher than our ways by telling us to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
There are other examples of this that don't make sense to us, and really that we can only accept knowing that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts.
Jesus says in Matthew 20:16 - "So the last shall be first, and the first last." And in Matthew 23:12 - "Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted." In Mark 8:35 He says - "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it." And we read in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 - "And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong." Humanly speaking, none of this makes any sense at all. How can the first be last? How can we save our lives by losing them? How can God's strength be perfected in my weakness? I don't know, but I simply believe it, because His ways are higher than my ways.

1 Corinthians 1:18-25 - "For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."