Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23-24 (KJV)
Our family has a funny story (well, it’s funny to us) about my sister, when she was little, hiding a hamburger in the bathroom trash can. She didn’t want to eat it so she asked to go to the bathroom, somehow sneaked the hamburger in there with her, and hid it underneath the trash in the waste bin. That fooled my parents for about 60 seconds.
One of my grown daughters tells me that when she was little and I instructed her to neatly fold all the clothes that had been carelessly crammed into her dresser, she neatly folded the ones on top and used those to conceal the rest of the mess. Apparently I was fooled by this for 20 years. Okaaaaay…you got me on that one, kid.
Sometimes we don’t want others to notice us or our actions.
And sometimes we do. In fact, simply feeling seen and understood is one of THE great longings in every human heart. Yet, when our failings become known, we often become defensive. I guess what we really want is for the good parts to be known and the bad parts to remain unknown.
I believe that in psalm 139 David is exulting in God the Creator’s perfect knowledge of him, the created being. But that is not necessarily clear from the beginning. The first four verses read thus:
O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
Me: Wait a second, Lord. Did You say You’re acquainted with all my ways?
Verse 7 says:
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
Me: Oh. I guess those are rhetorical questions. (gulp)
Also Me: I wonder if Jonah was familiar with this psalm.
Verses 11-12:
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
Homer Simpson: Doh!
Though much of psalm 139 is positive, the verses quoted above could be perceived either in a negative or a positive light, depending on… depending on what? On whether we’ve been up to good or no good, and we typically know which of those is the case. Even little kids know! They know to hide things- in order to get their way, to get out of work, and to get out of trouble.
But trying to hide our faults from God is futile. He sees the jumbled clothes under the neat ones on top, even if others don’t. Trying to hide from God only limits our closeness with Him, not His knowledge. David recognized that a good relationship with God means humbly and joyfully embracing the vulnerability of being fully known. In that relationship, rather than being condemned for our sins, we can be delivered from them.
To think that God knows me as well as David describes in psalm 139 is both frightening and comforting. I’m glad for Him to see the good motives in my heart when my words come out wrong, or when my sincere efforts don’t produce the desired results. But my instinct is to be afraid when I think of God seeing the bitterness, envy, pride, and other evils that sometimes well up in that same heart. Yet the psalm teaches me that it’s not a thing to be feared, but really to be desired, because who besides God can help me purge wickedness from my heart? If I really want to be pure of heart, then let my prayer be the psalmist’s prayer in the last two verses:
Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
by Christie Cole Atkins
Walk Worthy 