Search Me, O God

            How do you respond when you pick up the phone and someone wants your opinion? Since this often happens during supper, if you’re like me you say you’re sorry… not interested… not available at the moment, or some such thing. You may find it easy just to hang up on the person. Or you may find it hard to say no, and do it so as to not disappoint your caller. My typical response with such calls is, “How long will it take?” I do not want to get hung up answering questions “forever”, so I like to check first.

            One of the things we may not necessarily like to do, yet is a very helpful thing in life, is to take time to evaluate. Job evaluations, personal evaluations, medical evaluations, product or service evaluations, church health evaluations… this list can get quite large. Socrates is credited with the statement, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In other words, life has greater value if it is examined… or shall we say, evaluated (surveyed, inspected, scrutinized… however you want to put it).

            If my life is going to be examined, then an important question is, “By whom?” Who would you allow to examine your life? Who do you trust enough to go beyond the surface into the depths of who you are? Do you trust yourself? Most of us would not want to subject ourselves to the examination of just anyone. It might be too painful. We might not listen as carefully to the results. Allowing others to evaluate us can be extremely difficult, but when it is done in good faith by people we know to care about us and our well-being… and even love us… it can be so helpful, and great gains in life can be realized.

            Another important question is, “What does a person do with the examination?”… How do I decide to use it? Do I change anything? What do I change? What will happen if I change? This question helps us be intentional. What good do surveys do if nothing comes out of them? Our church completed a survey in February. It hasn’t been forgotten, but we are just getting around to using it to ask these kinds of questions. Whether personal or corporate, no one wants to do any kind of evaluating that adds up to a waste of time.

            In Psalm 139, David affirms that his life is constantly under God’s scrutiny. This brings some fear into his life. He is overwhelmed at the scope of God’s personal knowledge of him. But it also inspires him with great awe. To think that the Creator of the universe knew him with such detail and care. He concludes the psalm with a request for God to examine him: (Psalm 139:23-24 NIV) - “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.” He knows God can be trusted, that God knows him truly, and that God loves him. To put himself in the hands of God might be intimidating, but it was the most necessary thing if God’s way was to become his way. And “the way everlasting” was what he longed for. When we seek Him out as David did, God will never waste our time. But He will change us… for His glory and our good.

Proverbs 27:6 (NIV)  Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

Psalm 139:1-7 (NIV) ¹  O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. ²  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. ³  You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. ⁴  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. ⁵  You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. ⁶  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. ⁷  Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV) ¹³  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. ¹⁴  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. ¹⁵  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, ¹⁶  your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Jeremiah 17:10 (NIV)  "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

PRAYER:  Father, soften my heart that I may willingly come under your examination, and may out of that search come the person Christ died to make possible. In His name, AMEN.”

Jesus Christ is Lord!    

Scott