Search Me and Know Me

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24 ESV)

In a world that indulges in hiding behind phones and screens while fleeing from vulnerability, it is unpopular and foreign to desire to be searched and known. Even in marriage it is hard and selfless work to allow yourself to be known and to pursue knowing your spouse.

It’s biblical passages like that of David’s Psalm 139 that pursue the Believer’s heart to submit to God’s good omniscience as He continuously searches us and knows us.

It’s the searching part that makes me pause. When I read David’s words, knowing that God’s Word is active and alive, the searching is ever present, ongoing, and continuous. The search of our hearts never ends in this life. It’s a beautiful fact. But it is also extremely invasive.

When we come to faith and repentance our life is not our own. Not that our lives were ever ours to begin with. But now we belong to Christ, and we are to shed the fight of clinging to anything that does not honor the Lord. This includes our thoughts, our motives, and our heart sins.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24 ESV).

David is laying it bare before the Lord—pleading with the Lord to search his heart.

This should be the practice of our own life as we desire to be made more into the image of Christ.

We know from other passages like Jeremiah 17:9-10 that our heart cannot be trusted. The Lord said the following:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”

Of course, our Creator understands the deep humanness of our hearts and motives. This alone points to God’s great care, love, grace, mercy, and glorious goodness as He had His redemption plan established in eternity past before the creation account in Genesis. He knew the wickedness we’d be capable of left to our own freewill, so His plan always included our humanness, and our deceitful and wicked hearts.

What a miracle gifted by God it is for the Gospel to take root in the heart of the Believer. These gospel roots transform our hearts from deceitful to dedicated, from sick to saved, from wicked to worshipful.

This transformation is an active happening. The Lord is actively transforming the Believer through His active salvation over the life of the Believer. This transformation process cuts straight to our hearts. We must love this transformation process as we love the Lord above all else as the great and first commandment requires of us.

As Believer’s, our praise to the Lord should be magnified in comprehending that the Lord knows us, deeply, intimately, and yet still chose us and continues to choose us in His salvation covenant. With this glorious choosing, He doesn’t depart from us, His presence is ever-present for the Believer.

I encourage you to ponder on Psalm 139. Worship the Lord through the Holy Spirit inspired words of this Psalm. The cry of “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts,” should be every one of our prayers to our good and Holy God.

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them,” (Psalm 139:1-16 ESV)

I Trust my God, I Trust my God, I Trust my God

Ardently His,

Jess D

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