What Does God Think?

If you are in a situation where you don't know what to do, you don't know where to go, you don't know where to turn, you don't know how it's going to work out, you can't really get your mind around it, and the Enemy is tormenting you, you don't have to wait for the Word of the Lord to come to you. You can come to the Word of the Lord. Lately, I've been saying things in rooms full of people who are younger than me, and they don't know what I'm talking about, and it's making me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Just the other day, I walked into a songwriting session with some of our very own in-house songwriters, and I said, Last night I took Holly to a concert. We went to see Counting Crows. They all just looked at me. I realized something very sad in that moment. They had not heard of the Counting Crows. How do you not hear of the Counting Crows? How many of you have not heard of the Counting Crows? See, now I just feel ostracized, abandoned, betrayed. I've never heard of the Counting Crows. I had to tell them about Mr. Jones and around here, and they didn't want to know about Counting Crows, so we just wrote a song. The other day, I was riding in the car with Abby. Now, she's 14, right? So, she was kind of quiet, kind of doing that 14-year-old thing that 14-year-old girls can sometimes do, unless she's talking 60 miles a minute. She's totally quiet, and she was totally quiet. I looked over at her and said something I thought she would understand. I said, A penny for your thoughts. Well, she looked at me just as confused as the Counting Crows just walked in the room. She said, A what? I said, A penny for your thoughts. She said, What's that? I said, It's a colloquialism. It's an idiom. I think it has its roots somewhere in British origins, but it's just a way of saying, Tell me what you're thinking. You're kind of quiet. I can tell you're thinking about something. The wheels seem to be turning. A penny for your thoughts. She goes, That's weird. She's quiet for about 10 more seconds, and then she goes, A penny? That's all? I thought, Yeah, you're right. That's kind of cheap, isn't it? A penny for your thoughts. She's like, You at least have to adjust this for inflation if I'm going to give you a whole thought or plural thoughts, multiple thoughts. It needs to be multiple pennies, at least a dime for your thoughts. It probably needs to be about $5 for your thoughts. Just to set it up as an illustration, and not to be silly… I knew God wanted me to use this

illustration because I thought of it last minute, and there was a penny sitting by my door today. So, I want to hold it up and talk about how sometimes we think too cheap, and sometimes we undervalue our thoughts because we live in a world that values things more than thoughts. So, if you have a nice pair of sneakers, you would not dare wear them to a dirty Love Week event. You would never wear your clean sneakers through a dirty atmosphere. But let's talk about where your mind goes on a daily basis. The fact of the matter is some of the places we take our minds are places we would never take our shoes because we value things over thoughts. I did have a small victory the other day. Usually, I'm a catastrophizer. I think of the worst scenarios, and this is why I wanted to preach a series called That's What I Thought, because God has helped me so much to begin to label and identify the ways of thinking that don't come from him. I'm still a work in progress, but I try to share with you every time I get it wrong so that I can occasionally share with you when I get it right. I lead mostly by failing forward, but the other day I was proud. I had ordered a new guitar online. I went to the post office to pick it up. It didn't quite fit in the back seat. I put it in my Jeep with the roof down. I was talking to Abby because she was in the front seat, and she had Bo on her lap. Bo was kind of hanging out the window because he enjoys that, and I had this vision right as we were pulling down the driveway of Bo tumbling out the window. I didn't want him to, so I've come a long way since we first got the dog. I didn't want him to. I said, Have you got him securely? She said, "'I got him.'" But just something about the fact of me thinking about him falling out the window and then pulling in the garage with the guitar still sticking out the top of the Jeep and hearing the crunch of a very expensive guitar, and hearing the crunch and not cussing was a victory. I didn't cuss. I didn't cuss. Tell your neighbor I didn't cuss. Now, I didn't speak in tongues. I didn't praise the Lord. I just didn't cuss because I had a thought, and here was the thought. It wasn't the dog. It was just a guitar. I can get another one of those. It's just a thing. Tell your neighbor, because they might be stressed out, whatever they're stressed about, tell them it's just a thing. When it's just a thing, it's just a thing. If it's a Boston Terrier, it's a Boston Terrier. If my Boston Terrier falls out of the window of my Jeep on my

watch, I might be divorced. No, she loves me more than she loves the dog. She would never do that to me. But there was something about the contrast. It wasn't Bo. It wasn't Abby. I can't get another Abby. Abby didn't go decapitated through the garage, and the Lord is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him, because there was bubble wrap at the top of the box, and the guitar was fine. Thank you, Jesus. Then I did start praising God after I opened the box and didn't cuss, and we were all fine. But there have been so many times in my life, no matter how much of your time I waste telling you what seem to be random stories about guitars and dogs falling out of windows hypothetically or even telling you about old sayings and old rock stars as I start my sermon… There are times where we do not value God's thoughts enough. David, in Psalm 139, gives a different perspective. He helps us to understand two things. One, the value of a God thought. I want to talk to you about that for a few moments today. You may want to write some of this down, buddy. God might give you a thought today, and you won't remember it. You'll be thinking about your order at the Pizza Hut. Write it down. The value of a God thought. But I also want to talk to you about what Abbey said. She said, Just a penny? That's all? I want to talk to you about the cost of a wrong thought. So, he begins by saying, I can't escape your presence, God, even if I try. I can take wings or scuba gear. Either way I go, you're there. After framing us in with that kind of poetic language, which is very different than what we read last week in Psalm 77, which was a psalm of lament where he thought God had abandoned him… This psalm is the complete opposite. He's saying, I can't abandon God. He keeps showing up. How many have that testimony in your life that God keeps showing up in ways you didn't even ask him to? Sometimes God shows up and spoils your whole party. In this psalm, particularly verse 17, listen to what he says. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast are some of them. So, he gives us two distinctions. One, God's thoughts are valuable. A God thought is valuable. That's why I keep paper all around my house, because a God thought is valuable. Y'all, what I do with my life for my calling is preach God's Word to you. So, I can go from thinking I have nothing to say and I don't feel the Holy Spirit and how am I going to preach Sunday to, can we gather them together even though it's already Friday? I've got to tell them right now this thing is on fire and I don't have a back burner. Can they come over right now?

There are times where I wish I could bat-signal you or Bible-signal you and call all of us together to fight the Devil, because the Word comes through a thought, and it can happen that quickly. Therefore, I've learned that the thoughts of God are valuable. How valuable is a God thought to you? Is it something that if a Bible verse comes into your feed you might read it, or is it something you seek out in your life? Because if the God thoughts are just right there in your scrolling beside all of the other thoughts, they're not very set apart. If the only way I ever hear from God is if I trip over something he says on my way to going somewhere else, I'm missing out on some very valuable God thoughts. God can give you one thought that will help you parent that special needs child differently. God can give you that one thought that can help you parent that child that isn't. diagnosed with special needs differently, because we all have special needs. God knows what that child needs more than he knows what you want that child to be. One God-thought can show you something about your child. One God-thought can show you somebody to reach out to who has already been through what you're going through, and they know stuff they can download on Bluetooth in two minutes that would have taken you two years. I'm telling you the power of what I know. God can flip something on you so fast you will wonder, "'Why didn't I think of that sooner?' It's a God-thought. I did not come to church today to have a pep rally. I did not come to church today to have a pep talk. I did not come to church today for a social occasion. I did not come to church today like it's a country club. I did not come to church today for a concert. I did not come to church today for a hand clap. I did not come to church today to show off. I did not come to church today in hopes I might get a date, although, Lord, if you want to do that too, you can throw it in. I won't turn anything away for free. Lord, you may pray if you're single, but what I came here for more than a person I might meet is a God who will meet with me, and in one meeting, one moment, one second, I'm telling you, you can think a thought, which is what happened to the sons of Asaph last week when he said, "'I thought that it was through, and then I thought it through.'" Because a God-thought is valuable. Not only is it valuable, LJ, but it's vast. He says, "'How precious are your thoughts to me, O God?' Then put the verse up again.

How vast is the sum of them." That means God doesn't just think things about church things. God doesn't just have thoughts to offer you about your spiritual life. His thoughts are vast. God is very well-connected. God is very integrated. God is very well-versed. God is very multifaceted. God is very multilingual. He can help you in areas you haven't even thought to pray to him about. He can help you with parts of you that the therapist can dig at for five years. I'm saying get the therapist, but take God to the couch with you, because God can whisper something the therapist said in a way that only he could say it, because he knows the inward parts. So, it's vast. He can speak to me about a situation. He can speak to me about a change. He can speak to me about a physical decision. I do not believe God has to help you pick out every outfit when you get dressed in the morning. I think people who pray about which kind of toothpaste to use are kind of weird personally, but I want to say God's thoughts are vast. They are valuable, and they are vast. How much do you value the God thought? When he gives you a word, will you sit with it for a minute? Will you seek out a word for him rather than waiting for him to bring you one? Will you have a place you go to get a word from God, or are you going to think the thoughts that are automatic and miss the promises that are attached to the thoughts of God which the psalmist has already said are precious? To illustrate this for you today about the value of a God thought and the cost of a wrong thought, I want to use a person in the Bible who I bet you've heard of before. His name is Jonah, the most unfairly villainized person in the Bible. The Lord told the boy to go preach to terrorists, and he didn't want to do that. We preached to him, like, what's wrong with you, Jonah? Obey God. If God says go, you have to go, Jonah. Go, Jonah. Go, Jonah. Be obedient. Go, Jonah. This is actually in the Bible, I think, one of the easiest to read stories and the hardest to understand as it pertains to us. In this story is prejudice. In this story is revenge. In this story is self-pity. In this story is assumption. In this story is resentment. In this story is regret. All of that is in the story. But there's one thing I want to show you today in this book of the Bible that you could probably read in eight minutes when you went home. In Jonah, chapter 1, the Bible gives us a frame… Please try to pretend like you don't know that Jonah gets swallowed by a fish and spit out and preaches to Nineveh, and they have a revival. But even after they have a revival, he's not happy, because he didn't want God to forgive him,

and he secretly knew God was merciful, and he didn't want God to have mercy on them. He only wanted God's mercy for him. Pretend like you don't know any of that and look with me for a moment at Jonah, chapter 1. It's coming up on the screen. This first phrase is really important. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah. Stop. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah. What did that look like? What did that sound like? Was it a dream he had? Because God is about to give him an assignment. God is about to give him a thought. God is about to plant something in Jonah's mind that is relative to his purpose, and not only his purpose, but it was beyond Jonah's scope. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah. Was it a vision he saw while he was awake? Was it an audible voice? We don't know. One thing I'm glad we have that Jonah didn't have is this. I have good news for you if you feel like God isn't speaking to you right now and you're like, I don't have any God thoughts. I just have all the worry thoughts and the fear thoughts and the how-am-I-going-to-pay-for-this thoughts and I-wish-they-would-just-leave-me-alone thoughts and when-is-this-ever-going-to-change thoughts. I don't have any God thoughts. The Bible says the word of the Lord came to Jonah, but because we have God's word, you don't have to wait for the word of the Lord to come to you. You can come to the word of the Lord. Isn't that powerful? I'll try it again. If you are in a situation where you don't know what to do, you don't know where to go, you don't know where to turn, you don't know how it's going to work out, you can't really get your mind around it, and the Enemy is tormenting you, you don't have to wait for the word of the Lord to come to you. You can come to the word of the Lord. Everybody in church this morning, clap, because that's what you did when you came. Come on. Clap. You have to celebrate sometimes. I didn't cuss, and I came to church, because I'm not going to wait for the word of the Lord to come to me. I'm not going to wait for a goose bump. I came to church today because I value the thoughts of God. I value what God thinks about my relationships. I value what God thinks about my possessions. I value what God thinks about my identity. I value what God thinks about my career. I value what God thinks about my emotions. I value the thoughts of God.