A Counter-Cultural Decision
“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.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
When the week of triumph and spiritual success started when Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, we see that we must choose what matters to God over and against what matters to man. This idea suggests that the trajectory of our lives does not depend upon the signs and symbols of success offered by the world.
Think about it. Success by human standards would have meant Jesus making a grand, royal entrance, declaring His power and authority over all, and exercising that power as the King of Kings. But Jesus didn’t take that approach. Instead, He humbly rode into the city on a donkey, knowing He would be facing a gruesome, yet necessary, death in order to save all of the people He loved so dearly.
It was this counter-cultural choice made by the Lord that went against the grain and put Him on the path to fulfill His God-given destiny. This is not what other kings had done. This is now how other kings would have done it, but Jesus was showing them then and teaching us now that the demand of discipleship and the call of Christ requires us to walk a different path in life.
It’s why Paul says in Romans 12 that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. It’s why the prophet Isaiah says that the Lord’s thoughts and ways are so much higher than ours. What this means on a practical level is that you can’t let the world dictate your dreams and determine your happiness, because if you allow them to, you’ll get what the world says you should have, and then realize you don’t want it once you get it. Instead, walk the path the Lord has laid out for you and wait and see what He has in store when you follow His guidance instead of the world’s.
When the week of triumph and spiritual success started when Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, we see that we must choose what matters to God over and against what matters to man. This idea suggests that the trajectory of our lives does not depend upon the signs and symbols of success offered by the world.
Think about it. Success by human standards would have meant Jesus making a grand, royal entrance, declaring His power and authority over all, and exercising that power as the King of Kings. But Jesus didn’t take that approach. Instead, He humbly rode into the city on a donkey, knowing He would be facing a gruesome, yet necessary, death in order to save all of the people He loved so dearly.
It was this counter-cultural choice made by the Lord that went against the grain and put Him on the path to fulfill His God-given destiny. This is not what other kings had done. This is now how other kings would have done it, but Jesus was showing them then and teaching us now that the demand of discipleship and the call of Christ requires us to walk a different path in life.
It’s why Paul says in Romans 12 that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. It’s why the prophet Isaiah says that the Lord’s thoughts and ways are so much higher than ours. What this means on a practical level is that you can’t let the world dictate your dreams and determine your happiness, because if you allow them to, you’ll get what the world says you should have, and then realize you don’t want it once you get it. Instead, walk the path the Lord has laid out for you and wait and see what He has in store when you follow His guidance instead of the world’s.
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