You’ll never know God better if you don’t recognize how different he is from you.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 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.” —Isaiah 55:8–9 (ESV)

God’s ways are not our ways. Think about that. Fix it in your mind. Let it sink in deeply because knowing and believing that is critical for anyone who wants to know God and his ways.

God’s ways are not your ways. That is the default human condition according to God.

It is critical to recognize that because most people assume the opposite. People think they know what God is like, so they don’t press in to know more about him. They don’t exert themselves to learn if they have wrong beliefs about him. They are satisfied with what they already believe.

Our default beliefs come from our own reasonings about what we have grown up seeing, hearing, and reading from family, movies and shows and music lyrics, ads, school, friends, religious background, teachers, writers.

These are influences that may or may not be right. But how can we know? There are thousands of various, contradictory beliefs on God and his ways. How can you confirm your beliefs are correct or discover your beliefs are wrong?

I believe that the only authoritative source for knowing God and his ways is the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I’ll explain why in a future article. But my starting point is the belief that I cannot figure out God and his ways on my own, nor can humanity, and that in love God has revealed the inspired, inerrant words of the Bible so we can know and walk with him.

How to close the gap between your ways and God’s ways

Since the Bible says, as we saw above, that the default human condition is ignorance about God and his ways, how should that shape our pursuit of God?

1. We should read the Bible daily with an open, curious mind. Regular reading of the Bible is necessary because the influences we experience most tend to shape our thinking most.
2. We should read the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments, because we need to form our beliefs on everything the Bible says on a subject, not on isolated verses. This is necessary because we can find an isolated phrase in the Bible, take it out of context, and adopt almost any wrong belief or practice.
3. When we read something that contradicts our beliefs, we should confirm it with the full context of the Bible, and then believe the correct interpretation of the Bible instead of ourselves. For Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” And Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
4. We should be humble, teachable, and obedient to God. The uniform testimony of the Bible is that pride and stubbornness lead us astray. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
5. We should know that God relates to us on his terms, not ours. God is infinitely merciful and kind to reach down to us and meet us where we are, but when we turn to him, he never leaves us as we are, and he never changes. He says, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).
6. We should know that the more we have been submerged in our world’s way of thinking, and the less we have been exposed to the full message of the Bible, the more foreign and shocking God’s words in the Bible will seem to us. Western culture has veered farther and farther from its Judeo-Christian roots. The verses from Isaiah above are becoming increasingly true. To paraphrase: Your ways are way not my ways.

Some would label this approach to faith fundamentalism, using the word in its pejorative sense. But anyone who believes that a document has divine authority and takes it seriously will be labeled a fundamentalist by those who do not agree.

But this is the only rational approach given what the Bible says and what human experience shows.

Not to take this approach is relativism in its full, pejorative sense. It is putting trust in limited human perspective and experience and even majority opinion, all of which the Bible says are deeply flawed. It is putting our trust in contemporary trends in thinking, which history shows always change and thus cannot be absolutely true and reliable.

Life principle: If you want to grow in your knowledge of God, you begin by recognizing that your ways are not God’s ways.

What does God require?

This post is the beginning of a series on what God requires of us if we are to know him and walk according to his ways. Don’t miss the next post, which is on the necessity of faith.

Let’s conclude with a typically spicy and forthright assessment of the situation from God’s perspective: Proverbs 28:26 says, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool.”