Today's thought is based on Chapter 17 of Dane Ortlund's book "Gentle and Lowly".

"Seek the Lord while he may be found;  call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way,  and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For 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" (Isa. 55:7-9).

What comes to mind when we hear "my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts"?  Does it have anything to do with us not being able to understand God's sovereignty in certain situations, or that he is too high and lofty for us to fathom his ways and thoughts? The context should be our guide as to how we interpret these words.

What does the first sentence speak about? God's compassionate heart and God's abundant pardon. His compassion towards us is infinitely greater than we could imagine, and his pardon of our sin infinitely more abundant. We can show a measure of compassion and grant forgiveness to others and to ourselves in a limited way, but we are not remotely like him. If we try to understand God by how we go about things and feel about things ourselves – even in our very best moments – our thinking and understanding will always be woefully inadequate; our God will always be far too small.

I felt God say to me: "Your compassion, mercy and forgiveness towards others and towards yourself may fill a room; it might even fill an Olympic stadium, but my compassion, mercy and forgiveness towards you and others fills the whole universe."

God tells us to seek him and to call on him when we fall into sin and fail to do the things that please him. What does he say will happen when we do this? He will have infinite compassion on us and abundantly pardon us. And it brings him great joy to do this for us. When we return to God in fresh contrition, however ashamed and disgusted we might feel about ourselves, we will not find tepid pardon. He will abundantly pardon! He does not merely accept us. He sweeps us up in his arms! 

The first sentence of our passage tells us what God does; but the second two tell us who he is. God knows that even when we hear of his compassionate pardon, we latch onto that promise with a diminished view of the heart from which that compassionate pardon flows. Our capacity to understand the heart of God has gone into meltdown due to our ruinous fall into sin.

The word used for God's 'thoughts' does not mean 'passing mental reflection' but 'plans, devices, intentions and purposes'. God's ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts in that his thoughts of love for his children, and his ways of compassion towards them, stretch to a degree beyond our mental horizon. They are 'as far as the heavens are higher than the earth'. We think small thoughts of God's heart concerning his love, compassion and forgiveness towards us, but it is set unchangeably, expansively and invincibly on us in order to remove all fear from our minds.

God is not like us. Even the most intense human love is but the faintest echo of heaven's cascading abundance. His heartfelt thoughts for us outstrip anything we can conceive. He intends to restore us into the radiant splendour for which we were created. And that is not dependent on us keeping ourselves clean, but on us constantly taking the ruin, mess and wreckage of our lives to him. "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him" (Ps. 103:11).