Slideshow image

"O LORD, you have searched me and known me!...Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! See if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!"

~ Psalm 139:1,23-24

 

This psalm is very well known and dearly loved by many believers over the years and perhaps by you as well.  I pray that familiarity and affection has not become an enemy to the poignant and heavy truths of this psalm.  Yes, this is an appropriate and powerful portion of God’s Word to use in the defense of human life as it pertains to matters like abortion and suicide and euthanasia (v.13-16).  Yes, it is a thorough and clear portion of God’s Word to bring comfort and calm as it relates to God’s sovereignty/providence and his omniscience and omnipresence (v.2-5,7-12).

But have you too quickly glazed over verses like verse 6? “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”  Or verse 17?  “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!”  Have you let the sections on God’s intimate knowledge and awareness of you, and his intentional and personal design of you, lead you to think too highly of yourself?

What about the opening and closing verses, verses 1 and 23-24?  I believe this is David’s focus and should be ours as well.  The LORD God has searched us and knows us.  Are you willing to open your heart and mind fully to him?  He has full access and knowledge even if you don’t.  But how much more is he pleased and praised, and how much more are you blessed, when you humbly present yourself before him in this way to be examined through and through?

As well as you think you know the dark recesses of your own heart and mind, there is much you do not know and only your loving Heavenly Father can make them known to you and provide the means by which to be cleansed from them.  To be forgiven…to be made new.  You and I must lay ourselves bare (spiritually) before the LORD God, genuinely asking that he search and try and know and see our hearts and thoughts and ways.  We must then be willing to learn from him what is there and accept what he offers as the double cure.  The blood of Jesus Christ has both removed the guilt and power of sin and made us free and righteous in him.

I pray you can reflect on this familiar psalm afresh this day.