SUNDAY CHOICE – What does Psalm 139:23 mean? – By Charles Schokman
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We see the evidence of the depth of David’s relationship with God in this Psalm. He certainly was a person after God’s own heart, as Scripture says (1 Samuel 13:14).
In this prayer David invites God to test his thoughts. And the focus here is directly on what is within him. He wants God to look inside of him, his inner person, so that he is assured that God knows what is in his heart.
In Psalm 26:2 he says: “Test me, Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.” Every child of God should urge the Holy Spirit to probe deep within their heart to see if they are abiding in the Word of God and doing His will for their life.
What David is concerned with and wants God to look for is “any offensive way.” Or “God look for anything in me that causes pain.” David wants God to show him any offensive way, so that it can be dealt with. The phrase, “lead me in the way everlasting” is talking in ‘the way of God,’ or ‘the way of righteousness.’ So the request is that God help him not to walk in an offensive way, but in the way of God.
As Christians we should be requesting the same thing David was asking of God: “Are there sinful thoughts, bad intentions, brokenness or failings that cause you pain Lord? Am I hurting others?
Are we willing to pray as David did? It takes a humble heart to invite God to show us our weaknesses and our sins. Because of pride we usually want to hide all our failures and sins. Most of us do not want to think about them or deal with them. We don’t want others to see our faults and often we respond by living in denial, although God knows everything. Most of the time when someone brings something up, we get defensive and refuse to deal with the situation and to admit our mistake.
It takes humility to pray like David did, because when we do, we are inviting God to correct our issues, so that we can once again have fellowship with the Lord, because sin separates us from our heavenly Father. When we humbly admit and confess our sins to God is when we grow in our Christian life. It is only when we are completely honest with God that He can help us with our problems and shows us things that very often we are too blind to see. We need to realize that God already knows all our “offensive ways,” and probably other people do as well. So instead of living in denial and being defensive, we need to ask God for help. As believers we should not run away from God with our struggles, we should run to God for help and a renewed relationship with Him.
If you have not trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you can do this right now because God loves us and wants us to be saved by His grace and be made alive with Christ because it is by His rich mercy and grace that we are saved. (Ephesians 2:4-5)
We need to be aware that God gives us a choice and the consequences are ours to bear because we “are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). As the Lord told Jeremiah: “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:10)– Courtesy of Mission Venture Ministries.
PS In asking God to search us, we are inviting him also to open our hearts so that we might receive the conviction of his Spirit. We are saying, “Point out anything in us that offends you, and we will listen to you!”
