Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV) “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

One of the things that I've learned in following Jesus is that He is so different than we all naturally are. Jesus does things in ways that wouldn't even cross our minds. You just have to read a little bit of the Sermon on the Mount to get a quick idea of how different He is from us. God's ways are not like our ways at all and to be able to live powerfully and effectively as followers of Christ, we have to learn the ways of the Kingdom of God. In addition to learning God's ways, we need His power to help us live according to His different ways, which leads to blessings.

First, we need to know that because of our sinful nature, our whole system of right and wrong is skewed. It is obvious from what is going on in the world today that what God warned against in Isaiah 5:20 has come to pass in today's society. People are calling good evil and evil good. We all have some of that DNA in us, having had our wires crossed because of sin. That's why God's ways seem so foreign to us.

So let's take a look at a few of God's ways. In God's Kingdom, you let go so that you can have. As a matter of fact, the more that you let go, the more you will have. It's a Biblical principle. In our own thinking, the more you horde, the more you have but the spiritual truth is that the more you try to keep, the more you will lose. This and all of God's ways are spiritual truths that our carnal minds cannot comprehend. Another way of God that confuses us is that it's in surrendering that you overcome. In our own thinking, surrendering means defeat but in God's economy, it's when you surrender your life to Him that you become an overcomer.

Let's take a look at one last one of the ways of the Kingdom: in order to live, you must die. God wants you to live. Sin leads to death. That's why it's only in dying to your sinful nature that you can truly live. This condition is so severe that it took Jesus coming to this earth to take on our sins and have them nailed to the Cross through His crucifixion so that we can be free from its power. So it's in dying to our self-life, which is our sinful nature, that we not only find life, but will have it abundantly.

Be sure that you learn the ways of the Kingdom so that you can live life on this earth to full measure until you are safely home with Jesus for all of eternity. God's ways may not be our ways, but they are The Way that leads to life.

Pastor Joey Vazquez