TerryLema

Ps 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns [anxieties]. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way” [HCSB]

I find it interesting that in Psalm 139, after David has sung about God’s making him a marvelous work, God knowing every day of David’s life and what it would hold, and David’s rejoicing in God’s specific thoughts for him, that David would pray this prayer … search me, know my heart, test me, know my anxieties, see if there is anything offensive in me.

 Hasn’t David been saying throughout his song that God already knows these things?  Certainly, God knows everything in David.  God knows everything in each of us. But David’s prayer is not about God understanding what is in David, it is about David understanding what is in David.

When God searches us, He reveals what is in our hearts to us … all our anxieties, all our offensive ways.  He does that so that we might come to a true, humble, right opinion of who we are.  He does that so that we might allow Him to then lead us in the way everlasting through His mercy and grace.

Without a true, humble, right knowledge of self, we will not be led.  We will continue to lead, to live our lives in the way we want, according to our own anxious thoughts and offensive ways.

When we pray search me O God … we need to remember one thing … God will more than likely find something! So be prepared when you pray as David prayed!

Ps 139:17-18: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.” [NIV]

Let’s all go down to the beach. Get into your swimsuit, grab a beach towel and a picnic lunch and head to the ocean.  Don’t forget your pail and shovel.  Let’s scoop up a pail full of sand and bring it home with us.

Take the sand and spread it out on a large tarp. Start to count the grains, each grain individually.  One, two, three. Perhaps one million, two million, or more!  Now think about what David wrote … “Your thoughts, O God … would outnumber the grains of sand.”

 Not just the grains of sand in your meager bucket.  Not even just the grains of sand on your beach.  But the grains of sand on every beach and in every desert.  Endless grains of sand.  Innumerable thoughts of God that would outnumber even the endless grains of sands.

And the implication is that the thoughts of God that David found precious are not random thoughts, but thoughts God has specifically for David.

We can’t always put ourselves into a passage of Scripture and claim its promises and intent.  Some are aimed at others besides us … after all you wouldn’t want to insert yourselves into the promises God has for the enemy of our soul.  But in this instance, we can insert ourselves into the passage.

God’s endless, wonderful, awesome thoughts are for us.  They are precious, specific to us, and without number.

Rejoice, child of God!

The words and thoughts expressed by David in Psalm 139 are probably familiar to us.  Still, I want to touch on a couple of them again.  Ps 139:16:  Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began. [HCSB]

I turned 75 years old in December.  That’s a lot of days.  As of this date, it’s actually 27,487 days. Some of them have been great days, some have been bad days.  Many have been mediocre, common days where I can hardly notice the passing of one to another. As I look around me, I also notice that some people have many more good days than bad ones, while others are exactly the opposite.  They have had hard, difficult days most of their lives.

As we read this passage, how are we to understand what it means that all our days have been planned for us “before a single one of them began?” (Boy, are we getting into some sticky, deep, theological issues here.  Why did I even start this conversation?)

I am going to be very clear … I don’t understand truly what it means that all my days have been planned.  I also don’t fully understand how free will and my bad/good days interact with God’s sovereignty and bring eternal results for my soul.

What I do understand is that God cares about me, He loves me.  I understand that God has walked through every day of my life with me, even before I knew Him.  I understand that He rejoiced with me in my delights; and wept with me in my sorrows.  I understand that while the forces of evil were aimed against me, He was with me sharing the pain.

I may not be able to understand the deep theological concept of all my days planned for me, but Hallelujah, I am able to experience His love in each and every one of them.

A young pastor that I really like gave me a book when I visited him recently. In the book was a question that startled me, and then had me thinking. The question was “Who am I now?”

That question is especially relevant to me since I have recently stopped being what I was for many years—a pastor.  I realized as I pondered it that I have to really think about who I am now and what I am or should be. Whose opinion should I buy into?  Well, only one opinion really counts – that is the opinion of God Himself.

David wrote in Psalm 139 a phrase that always strikes me with amazement. “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.  I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.”  [Ps 139:13-14 NKJV]

That psalm is probably very familiar to most of us.  I hear people use the phrase “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” all the time. They go on and talk about our bodies and how wonderfully formed they are.  A truth we take for granted—until something goes wrong in them.

That is not, however, the thought that always leaves me amazed.  It is the one that follows it … “Marvelous are your works.”

 I am a work of God … so are you.  I am a marvelous work of God … so are you.  Too often our view of ourselves is obscured by what the world thinks we are or should be.  Too often it is clouded by the accusations of the enemy of our soul.  Too often it falls victim to our own insecurities and anxieties, to our life experiences, or our life failures.  Yet none of that changes the fact, the truth, that we are a marvelous work of God.

We need to stop listening to the voices around us or in us and start listening to the only Voice that counts!

“I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” [Ephesians 3:17b-19 HCSB]

Paul’s prayer for his beloved Ephesians was that they would become rooted in love, and that they would be able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.  

 If there was ever a prayer we should pray, it is this one.  If there was ever a prayer God desires to answer, it is this one.  Help me Father to know this love of Christ that surpasses everything. 

Praying this prayer is dangerous, however.  It will cause us to see ourselves as we are apart from grace, and that is not a pretty sight.  It will cause us to sense the unworthiness of our lives and the shallowness of our love.  It will cause us to ponder our commitment to truly loving God with our entire soul, mind, and being.  It will drive us to a choice – do we really want to grasp how wide and long and high and deep Christ’s love is? If so, it must become our passion.

Passion.  We speak of the Passion of Christ, a phrase you will often hear in this Easter Season.  It means the hunger and thirst present in Jesus that made the Father’s will greater than His own.  Christ’s passion for God’s will drove Him to the cross, to execution, to death, to the grave.  It consumed everything He was, it prejudiced everything He did.

It is that kind of passion that we are choosing when we pray, “Help me Father to know this love of Christ that surpasses everything.”

I was on my way to McDonald’s Monday night. The last Monday of each month Bob goes to a dinner and meeting at the American Legion. I take that opportunity to grab a fast-food meal, usually at a place that Bob is not fond of. Last Monday it was McDonald’s.

As I was driving God popped a memory of a prayer I prayed around three years ago, and even brought back what prompted that prayer!

At the time I noted three people who consistently walked their dogs around our neighborhood.  Each day a man walked two large, powerful dogs. They pulled him along, leashes taunt in front of him, as he strained to keep them from dragging him down the sidewalk.

There was also a woman who was walking a puppy. That puppy stopped all the time, sniffing everything, exploring at the end of the leash as the woman kept pulling him along trying to get him to keep up with her as she walked.

The third person I saw each day was an older man walking an old dog. The dog walked next to the man without a leash. He never ran ahead nor trailed behind. He was just pleased to walk beside his master.

As I watched them, I was moved to pray, “LORD, I want to be like that old dog, simply walking alongside you anywhere you go. I don’t want to run ahead, nor lag behind. I just want to walk with You.”

Remembering that prayer last Monday brought tears. I still want to be like that old dog. If that is where I am in life now, I will be pleased to simply walk alongside my LORD. Amen.