UPI Newsletter Nov/Dec 2020

Psalm 139:23–24 ESV

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!

A time for introspection

Psalm 139 is one of the most beautiful and mature communications of faith in the Old Testament. David understands God’s loving care, His intimate knowledge, and is also keenly aware of God’s presence and guidance. He has an intimate friendship with God, God knows him, and has known him from his beginning.

David also acknowledges that God is all knowing and everywhere, which brings him great comfort. This understanding gives David the desire to know God and His thoughts and His ways.

For David, and possibly for us, as we grow to know God and His ways more and more, we realize how broken and wicked the world in which we live is. It stirs in him and us a disdain, even a hatred for that wickedness and a hatred for those who commit the wickedness. How we wish God would just blot out all the wickedness and evil doers in the world, then how great a place this would be.

But then David comes to this realization, and we should stop and take notice, David realizes wickedness can very easily reside within himself as well. It’s not only out there, in the world and others, but also in ourselves. If God were to blot out wickedness and evil doers, then he would blot out David, and He would blot out us.

So, David prays, the most humble and God-honoring of prayers.

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 of everlasting!

We all need to stop pray this pray, but we also need to sit in silence and wait for the answer. As we enter the official off-season, it is the perfect time to pray this and wait on God’s response.

Growing in Christ is about maturing and part of our maturation is dealing with stuff about ourselves that is not Christlike. Maybe some of these things are obvious, to others and hopefully to ourselves, but quite possibly, some of these issues might not be. We need to stop, give God and the Holy Spirit permission to search our minds and our hearts and reveal to us what is off. But we also need to have a desire to change, to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus, and this can only happen as admit we might not have it all perfect, and we need to do some work to change that.

Are we willing to pray this prayer and even more importantly, are we willing to listen for God’s answer and then do something about it?