Last night we continued our study in how we can know God’s will for our lives. Here are the notes:
Finding God’s Will, Study 2 : Wisdom and the Renewed Mind
Knowing God’s will by learning to think like God. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Wisdom
Wisdom: Knowing how to live and think in God’s world.
Proverbs 3:19 — Wisdom is the way of God in the world. It’s in the very fabric of our reality. “The only wisdom by which you can handle everyday things in conformity with their nature is the wisdom by which they were divinely made and ordered.” (Derek Kidner) See also Proverbs 8:22-31.
Proverbs 2:1-9 — A large part of knowing God’s will is to begin to let him get our thoughts straight: He’s offering us the chance to start to think like Him, in order to understand the world as it truly is, and our place in it, and how it all relates to Him. This is a life-long process of letting God work in our thoughts.
1 Corinthians 1:18, 1:30, 2:6-16 — We have the mind of Christ, because the Spirit has been given to us. See also Romans 8:4-7 to look at the carnal mind vs. spiritual mind. God’s wisdom is totally opposite than the world’s way of thinking. And now, something has happened which lets us begin to have wisdom from God.
The Renewed Mind
Romans 12:1-2 — The renewing of the mind. The continual process of letting the Holy Spirit do His work. See also Ephesians 4:17-24.
How does this actually work? We find ourselves growing in wisdom and having our minds renewed by the Holy Spirit as we daily pursue these three things:
- Scripture: see 2 Tim 3:14-17. God’s word is the scriptures, which make you wise.
- Godly counsel: Proverbs 19:20
- Prayer: James 1:5
Challenge: We’re called to a life-long pursuit of God in order to know His thoughts, and to yield to His work within us to renew our minds so that we think and act as we were created to—like God Himself! Let’s press in to this! Learning to think like God thinks is a key part of beginning to know what God’s will is for our lives.