Thought #8 The Job of thinking

Don’t you understand that I am not talking to you about bread? — Matthew 16.11

One of the greatest difficulties faced by Jesus while He was here was to be understood. And believe me, He tried hard. One of the reasons He spoke through stories was to make it easier for His listeners to understand the lessons. At times, Jesus lost His cool. “You are a teacher in Israel and do not understand these things?” He said to Nicodemus, when he questioned if a person would have to go back into his mother’s womb to be born again.

I also encounter this difficulty in my job and even during this 40 Thoughts challenge. If I say, “Be involved in the affairs of the Father, and He will help you discover your purpose in this life.” Inevitably, someone will ask, “But what are the affairs of the Father? If we tell the women, “You need to value yourself”; the question will come, “but how can I value myself?”

Fine, it is the teacher’s duty to make it easier for the lesson to be understood. But the student has to think. And what we find everywhere is laziness of thought. People want the puzzle already solved. They want us to solve their problems for them. They do not want to do the job of stopping and thinking about the teaching.

If you stop and think about what are the affairs of the Father, you will quickly find out. If you stop and think how you can value yourself, ideas in that regard will soon come. You are intelligent, but someone does not want you to think (If you cannot figure out who it is, you are not thinking).

He who does not think is a slave to him who thinks. To learn the thoughts of Jesus is to learn how to think.

Application: Put your brain to work. It was wonderfully made to solve problems.

When you run into something you don’t understand, what do you do? Do you have a hard time understanding the things of God? What is better: to play the fool and ask or not ask and play the fool?​