Why Have You Searched Me?
Aug20
“Oh Lord, You have searched me— and you know me.” –Psalm 139:1
Maybe this is what it looks like when God searches someone?
This is just one sentence and very few words, yet the implications of this one sentence are huge. What this sentence says about God is astounding. This psalm begins by telling us that the nature of our God is not passive. He does not sit on the sidelines and watch the story unfold. He doesn’t create with His hands and then let go to see what happens. He is active in His zeal for His people and is intimately acquainted with those whom He has created.
Out of the entire universe, God has searched me. The maker of all that is and ever was is not just aware of me. He isn’t just aware that humans exist. He has looked down from wherever He resides and found me. He didn’t just glance either. He didn’t do a cursory inspection. He thoroughly examined every part of my life.
It says in this passage that God has searched us so completely that He knows us, and the next few verses will tell us just how deeply.
This is a God who knows His people even better than they know themselves.
I cannot begin to tell you how comforting that is. I don’t know about you, but I struggle to truly know myself. Half of the time, I can’t even tell you why I’m feeling the way I am. I question my motives, I don’t understand my desires. I don’t know why the thoughts that come to my head show up there or where they came from. I wonder, as the Apostle Paul did, why I do the things I don’t want to do.
There is an ocean in my soul separating who I am from who I want to be, and I’m sure there’s an even bigger chasm between who I think I am and who I truly am. But God knows not only who I am in reality, not only who I think I am, and not just who I want to be. He knows all of those more intimately than I do, but He also knows who He created me to be.
He doesn’t question my motives because He knows them completely. He doesn’t have to ask why I do things I don’t want to do, because He knows that. He’s the only being in all of creation that truly “gets” me. Sometimes when I can’t put my feelings into words, it helps to know that my Father in Heaven knows and understands those feelings.
It begs the question, why would God have any desire to search someone so completely, and the only conclusion I can come to I don’t understand. The only reason someone would search the depths of another’s soul and would want to know everything about them is because they love them.
The Creator of the universe loves me that much… and when I think that, I crumble. I can’t take the gravity of such a thought. I don’t see anything in me that is worthy even of the love of another human being, let alone my maker. I have dark places and if God knows me completely, He knows where each of those places are. And somehow, in spite of shining a huge light into that darkness, He still loves me? I can’t grasp that kind of love.
