Psalm 139:23-24, “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.”
Short Thoughts:
And if we are in Christ, we have nothing to fear from the searching eyes of our Lord….let Him find the darkest places in us and flood them with the light of blood-bought mercy.
Long Thoughts:
I know that I am a mess inside….deformed desires, faithless fears, Christ-belittling anxieties, ingrown selfishness, and the list could go on and on. But while I am aware of these things to some degree, I have very little idea of how to ferret them all out. In fact, I could spend all my time morbidily introspecting and trying to “deal with” what is inside……bear in mind, I’m not talking about specific, known sins….I’m talking about that lingering sense of “I’m a broken creature.”
It is for this situation that I find the prayer of Psalm 139:23-24 so helpful. What could be more refreshing, more vitalizing, more “safe”—spiritually speaking—than to (as sincerely as we are able) throw ourselves open to the sin-searing eyes of our Lord and God? Of course, if we are standing on our own merit, if we are “representing ourselves,” as it were, we will not survive this encounter. We—like Nadab and Abihu, will be consumed by the radiant purity of our God.
But, in Christ, we have nothing to fear, because—in Christ—every deformity of soul that the eyes of our God discover is a deformity borne away and healed by the crucified and risen Son. If we are afraid to do this, if we are afraid to show our whole self to the Lord, if we are keeping some doors shut to Him, some corridors hidden from Him….then we are forgetting what depths of grace and heights of love have been poured out over us by God Himself at the cross. If we are Christ’s, then there is nothing for Him to find in us that He has not already borne and died for in Himself.
So, may we, with blood-bought boldness, join the Psalmist in daily inviting the purifying gaze of our All Holy God—before whom we stand perfected in Christ, even as we are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:14).
