“But as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
– 1 Corinthians 2:9
This is one awesome verse. It’s a quotation allusion back to Isaiah 64:4, but just let this soak in and think about the context. If you listen to the podcast episode from right before this, we walked through verses seven and eight in first Corinthians chapter two where we saw the difference between man’s wisdom and God’s wisdom and the fact that we are so prone to look at this world the way the world thinks and according to the world’s preferences and the world’s desires.
Living According to God’s Word
Lord help us to live according to Your ways. We want the high life, not according to the world, but according to Your Word.
There’s another way to look at our lives. That’s through the lens of how God thinks and through the ways of God and the desires of God. We want to look at the world through the lens of God’s wisdom because, and that’s where verse nine says “It’s written what no eye has seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
In other words, when you are deciding between living according to the wisdom of this world and living according to the wisdom of God, just know the wisdom of God is higher, greater, more wonderful than anything your eye has seen or your ear has heard or your heart has even imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.
1 Corinthians 2:9 Focuses Attention on God’s Ways
Doesn’t that just make you want to live according to the wisdom of God, meditate on the word of God? Focus all your attention on God, His ways, His thoughts, His desires because you know His design for you is better than your heart can even imagine. What He has prepared for you is greater than what your eyes see and your ears heard.
1 Corinthians 2:9 just beckons us to lift our eyes from the ways and the thoughts and the patterns of this world “to be “transformed,” to use language from Romans 12, “by the renewing of our minds and to say, ‘God, help us to live according to your wisdom.'”
We pray that now: God, please, please, please, please, change our thoughts. Change our way of thinking, our desires, our plans. Change us so that we are not living according to the ways, the thoughts, the desires, the plans of this world, what this world says is what’s most important. God, help us. Help us to meditate on Your word and to receive Your wisdom. We want, we need Your wisdom to live according to Your ways and Your thoughts and Your truth, what You value, what You desire.
1 Corinthians 2:9 Prays for a High Life with God
God, we want all of those things to be true of us. Please, help us because we trust. We trust that in Your wisdom there are things that our eyes have not seen, our ears have not heard, our hearts have not even imagined that You have prepared for us as we trust in You, as we love You with all our hearts, soul, mind, and strength as we walk with You.
God, please, may it be so. We want to experience the high life in this sense, not the high life according to this world, but the high life according to Your word, living according to Your wisdom. Change our thinking, change our desiring, change our acting, change our deciding, change everything about our lives to align with Your word and Your wisdom.
We pray and we trust that as we do, we will experience that which is far beyond what we can even imagine in this world. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
