I recently re encountered a familiar passage in the Psalms and, although most of you have probably read it many times, I’d love to revisit it with you. Each time I study this beautiful song of David, I gain a new and deeper understanding of God’s character, complete reassurance of His love, such great encouragement and strength. I hope you come away with a fresh and personal blessing of your own.
Psalm 139 (NIV) (Italics my own)
‘O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
‘You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
‘Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
‘If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
‘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. When I awake, I am still with you.
‘If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’
David is in complete awe… and with perfect reason! Not only did God specially and uniquely create each of us, knowing us completely even before our parents knew us, He freed us to make our own choices, however far from His will they might take us. He truly knows our very hearts, our deepest desires, our darkest places – far better than we could ever know of ourselves – and yet, in spite of all this, Romans 8:38, 39 assures us that ‘…neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
He is very familiar with all our ways, even those traits and tendencies we are ashamed of and don’t completely understand ourselves – and He loves us. There is no place that we can go that He will not come with us – He will not desert us. He loves us the way we are, yet He is not content to let us stay that way, because He loves us so deeply.
What a God we serve!