Abandon Your Assumptions

2021-11-13

Have you ever had a problem that you were stuck in for hours, days, or longer, where you were at a complete impasse? You were assuming that the problem had to do with one thing, but in reality, it turned out to be completely different than what you expected? In software development, it is like that, where I have been emerged in lines of code, sometimes for days, thinking the problem was with one file, and it turned out to be something entirely different and unrelated to my assumptions.

What happened? When I moved past my assumptions about what was wrong, a whole new world of investigation opened.

The Christian life is a series of these. Before you are a Christian, you think that Christianity is a bunch of dos and don’ts. You assumed that if you did good works, you were okay with God. Then you can come to God, like he’s Santa Claus, to get the things you want.

But then you realize that you have offended a holy God, and His wrath is being held back by a thread. You realize that you cannot stop the full force of His destruction that is coming upon this world, with you included. But you also understand that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, bore the full force of that wrath on your behalf, so that if you trust in His provision, you can be saved from the wrath that is coming upon the world. Jesus rose from the dead; the Son’s sacrifice was accepted by the Father. By believing, you were saved into an entirely new world of wonders, away from sin and hopelessness. The way you viewed everything in life changed. You assumed that salvation worked one way, but it turned out to be something entirely different.

Abandon your assumptions on how you think God works. Even after much learning in the Scriptures, you can find that assumptions you held for years were not true.

For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. (Isaiah 64:4)