You have searched me, Lord, 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, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay 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, 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, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. 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
The level of God's intimate knowledge of us can either be scary, disconcerting or comforting. What's amazing is that God's level of knowledge about us exceeds our own knowledge of ourselves. Our sleeping time and our future are outside the realm of our self-knowledge but they are within the scope of God's knowledge. Out knowledge lacks the perception of the "hemming behind and before" because our vision does not extend into the spiritual spectrum normally. Our knowledge also does not reach into the thoughts of God--"how vast is the sum of them"
But those are not the most amazing part--the most amazing part is that God can know what makes me tick--"you know my thoughts from afar". The writer invites God into the land of motivations. "...know my heart. Test me..." Am I willing to let God see the messy part of my internal thoughts, where good and bad motives are mixed together in some sort of volatile cocktail? What if God sees what I'm thinking right before I pray? What if God sees how grateful I really am or am not? What if God knows the limited percentage of my thoughts that actually consider what He thinks? Am I willing to invite God into that? It is one thing to state that God knows everything, but another to really believe that God does know everything and afterwards to trust what he said: that he loves me. That is amazing and if I think about it for more than 10 seconds, it blows me away and then I go back to thinking about what's for lunch. Such is the life of Tim.
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