Be bold with your God. David was. He asked the Lord to rip him open, examine his motives, riffle though this thought-life, rummage around in his mind, scratch through his worries, unravel his sins, uncover everything.
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts” (Psalm 139:23).
Saying things like this is scary. But it’s good and we need to pray this way.
God has already searched us (Psalm 139:1 from last week’s Pastor’s Heart). This prayer ends where it begins. The Lord already knows everything. But David ends his prayer by telling God to keep going. Since you have already searched me, keep searching. Since we cannot hide anything from God’s all-searching eye, why not just open up to him completely?
Search me. Not just my comings and goings, my plans and my health. But search me.
Know my heart. Not just my size and shape, my career and my family. Know the innermost me. The me that no one else knows.
And then we pray, “Test me.” Just like our teachers in school, the Lord’s exams (trials, frustrations) reveal two things – how much we know and how much we don’t know. Likely, most of us think we are godlier than we really are. Tests show us that we are not who we thought we were, which is good for us. Positively, God’s tests also confirm that we are on the right track when we think we can’t get anything right.
And this is the best – know my anxious thoughts. Not just my thoughts but my anxious thoughts. David was anxious. So are we. We shouldn’t be anxious about anything (Phil 4:6), but we are. And God knows those anxieties. He not only knows our good stuff. He knows our bad stuff. Often, we don’t know why we are feeling anxious. But he knows because he searches us.
Opening up fully to God frees us, lightens us, unmasks any hypocrisy. And it brings him experientially close. In our isolated and lonely world, we need a God who is closer than our deepest worry.
“Search me, 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” (Psalm 139:23-24).