by Rev Douglas Brauner

Telling God how to do his job usually doesn’t work.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“Who can know the LORD’s thoughts? Who knows enough to teach him?” But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.”
1 Corinthians 2:16 New Living Translation

I would love to know what our youngest grandson was thinking as he played in our backyard.

Nolan loves anything to do with pirates. We have a wooden pirate ship with cannons, masts, and yes even pirates. Using his gift of creativity, Nolan pulled out the pirate flag and paraded around barefoot on the brown grass. Sometimes he waved the flag only to quickly throw the flag to the ground, pick it up, and wave it around again.

Was he thinking he was giving orders to his pirate crew?

Was he thinking his ship was about to be attacked?

I didn’t know what Nolan was thinking, but it was fun watching him.

We don’t know all of God’s thoughts and more importantly we can’t tell him how to be God. However, that doesn’t stop us from trying. We don’t like the circumstances of our lives and we tell God how he could be a better God, which most often means God would be better at his job if he kept us from suffering.

It’s comical how we think we can tell God how to do his job, when it is God who has created this planet and the vastness of the universe. His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8), which means he doesn’t have to listen to us tell him how to do his job better.

More important than our need to instruct God is the fact that we have the mind of Christ. It is a gift that God has given us when he brought us to faith in Jesus. We now have Christ’s mind. So instead of trying to tell God how to do his job, we have God gifting us with the ability to think the way Jesus thinks about our lives.

And guess what!? Many people won’t understand what we’re thinking either.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado