Pro 10:29 The way of the LORD is strength to the upright: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity.
Php 2:13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
Exo 33:12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight.
Exo 33:13 Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.
Exo 33:14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
Exo 33:15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence
Moses had the task of leading a congregation, more than three million people, through the wilderness and into the land of Canaan and Moses knew that he was not able, not fit for the task. So his prayer is this, 0 God if you love me, and if you have called me, and if you have this job for me to do, then dear God show me your way. Show me your way. I want to understand the ways of God. Was this prayer answered?
Did God show Moses His way? Indeed He did. In Ps.103:7 we read this and it is very significant. "And he made known his ways unto Moses and His ways unto the children of Israel."' God made known his ways unto Moses and then God made know His acts unto the children of Israel. There are two levels of the knowledge of God. You can know God's ways and you can know God's acts. Moses knew God's ways but Israel knew God's works. There are a lot of people that know the ways of God, and others know but of the works of God. Some know God so much differently than others know God. There's two levels of the knowledge of God.
What is the difference between knowing the ways of God and the works of God? When you know the works of God you know what God does, but when you The ways of God you know God more deeply.. One is to know God simply by observation. The other is to know God personally and intimately. To Know God's character Moses was saying, God I don't want you just to show me what You do. I want you to show me why you do it. I want to understand what makes you operate as you operate To understand the ways of God will transform your life.
Isaiah 2:2-3, (KJV)
"And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths."
To really appreciate what Isaiah is saying in these verses, we must understand what conditions were like at the time that he prophesied these words. There was only one nation in the whole world that had any idea of God at all. That nation was Israel, and even their knowledge had become corrupted and polluted. All other nations of that day were bound by satanic power and were blinded spiritually by the God of this world.
In the midst of this condition, Isaiah stands up and with prophetic anointing burning in his soul and declares that there would come a day in the future when peoples from every nation were going to come into the house of God to be instructed in his ways and that they would walk in his paths.
To even begin to think of learning God's ways there is a challenging Scripture we must first come to grips with. We must consider Psalms 119:128, and make a decision about it.
Do we believe it or do we not? "I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right." Place a high value
Here is something to remember that will help us when we are making that decision.
-God's ways always work.
-You can prove His ways by putting them to the
test.
-God's ways will always stand the test.
-If we will believe and obey what God says for us to do, we will eat the fruit of all He has promised.
-If we refuse to believe and obey, we will eat the fruit of our own way. I have experienced both and I can tell you that His fruit tastes so much sweeter.
2. We need to know that as we learn the ways of God, divine precepts and principles of a heavenly origin are being brought into our lives. To our great joy, we discover that those precepts and principles are workable in the 'here and now' where they are needed and not in 'the sky when I die.' It's to the point that we receive, believe and obey them that we will find ourselves....
- Enjoying peace - where there is no peace.
- Enjoying joy - where there is no joy.
- Enjoying direction - where there is confusion all around us.
- Having deep, growing relationships - where so many around us are being polarized.
- Seeing our families being drawn together - where others are disintegrating.
- Becoming at peace in our heart - coming together on the inside - when everyone else seems to be flying apart.
3. We need to know that as we learn His ways, God begins a work in us that starts to produce some wonderful changes in our life. Philippians 2:13, "For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him."
I might add this encouraging word with this verse. Philippians 1:6, (NIV) "And I am sure that God who began the good work within you, will continue his work, until it is finally finished on that day when Christ Jesus comes back again."
It is as though God is the potter and we are the clay upon the potter's wheel. The potter is busy working out of us all the impurities that would hinder us being made into the vessel of the potter's choosing. As we are instructed in God's ways, we are being changed day by day, mentally - emotionally and spiritually. Our motives, - our values - our ambitions and our priorities are being examined by the Holy Spirit on a daily basis and brought into line with the Word of God. We are being transformed by the renewing of the mind as the Holy Spirit re-educates us with the truths of God's Word.
"Romans 12:2, And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, they ye nay prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
I like the way the New Living Translation says it.
"Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is."
Part of Satan's strategy is to encourage us to continue to walk in our own ways. He knows that as long as we keep doing our thing - we won't be doing God's thing. We will never embrace the will of God nor walk in it. Trying to live the Christian life outside the will of God produces miserable, frustrated, and unhappy people. It is only as we walk in the will of God that we find his presence, his purpose, his provisions and his power. If Satan can keep us from exchanging our ways for God's ways, he can keep us directionless, quickly discouraged, and easily defeated in our Christian walk. I, ask you! Doesn't it really make sense for us to trade in our ways for his ways?
Our ignorance of his ways requires it of us.
We were not born into this world knowing God's ways, much less understanding anything about them. They were not included in our DNA. They are completely alien to man's thinking. God says this about it in Isaiah's writings.
Isaiah 55:8-9, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith 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."
When we come to Christ we come knowing a lot of things. The ways of God are not one of them.
But here is how God does instruct us in his ways. He brings it into our lives as Isaiah said, "precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a little. He wants us to know. He gives truth to us as we are able to assimilate it. The more we desire to know, the more he opens up to us.
We need to learn the ways of God because when we come into the church as new believers,
we bear a striking similarity to the Children of Israel when they came out of Egyptian bondage. The Book of Exodus tells the story of Israel's deliverance from 400 years of bondage and slavery In Egypt. God had set them free and had taken them unto himself as his people, but they were a people with a major problem that God was going to have to deal with. All the Israelites had been born in Egypt. Egypt's lifestyle had molded their lives. They had learned Egypt's ways of life, their language, their patterns of thinking. They thought like Egyptians, they ate like Egyptians and they acted like Egyptians. They had an Egypt mentality and a slave mind set. God had delivered them out of Egypt, now he was going to take Egypt out of them. The people of Israel needed their thinking changed. God was going to have to retrain and reeducate them from Egypt's ways to his ways. Israel must learn that they are what God says they are now and not what Egypt said they were then. It was important that they be introduced to the laws and principles of God that he expected them to live by as his people in Canaan.
We need to learn his ways because we come into his house like little children that need training and discipline in the ways of God. Hebrews 12:5-6, (NLT) "And have you entirely forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you, his children? He said, "My child, don't ignore it when the Lord disciplines you, and don't be discouraged when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes those he accepts as his children."
