Search Me and Know My Heart
Psalm 139 has long been a favorite passage of mine. When my children were born, I wrote Psalm 139 out on paper, replacing the pronouns with their names, and prayed it over them. In 2020, I adopted the psalm as my anthem, and I read it daily for more than a year, trying to understand my own belovedness. But when I read the book Sacred Rhythms, I started to think about & understand it in a new way. Ruth Haley Barton presents Psalm 139 as a lens for self examination. Let me explain this idea to you.
The psalm begins by acknowledging that God has already searched us completely. Listen to the first 4 verses:
1 O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do.
4 You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.
In self examination, the real issue is not inviting God to see us - God already sees us and knows us fully - the issue is that I am inviting God to help me know the real me.
When children are small, they love hide and seek - only their hiding places aren’t exactly hidden. Small children will cover their eyes and believe that of they cannot see, no one can see them either! We are prone to the same thinking - maybe if I don’t acknowledge what is true about my weakness, God won’t notice either. But in reality God has already seen us and loves us infinitely more than we can fathom. When we learn to believe this truth, the presence of God becomes a safe space for us to know ourselves and be known more honestly.
Ruth Haley Barton says there are 3 crucial beliefs we must come to hold as we examine our lives and how we encounter God. The first is the belief in the goodness of God. We are in church, so we may “know” the right answer here, but it is possible (and even probable) that somewhere along the way, we began to doubt God’s goodness toward us personally. Heartache, trauma, spiritual abuse, manipulation by the church - they all get in the way of trusting that God will not pull the football away from us the way Lucy always did to Charlie Brown. The second absolute belief we must hold is that love is our primary calling. Love can be inconvenient and hard. Love requires us to move away from our natural tendency toward self-centeredness. Love is risky and scary and has no guarantees. All of those are true AND love is the highest and deepest calling for us as Christ-followers. The third belief that is foundational is that God communicates with us through the Holy Spirit and it is Spirit who enables us to love. Jesus showed us what love looks like, and when he left this earth, Spirit was sent to help us interpret love in our right-now life. These three beliefs - God is good - Love is our calling - Spirit teaches us and enables us to listen and to love - are the foundation of how we live in this life. They are also the lens we look through as we examine ourselves in the presence of God.
So I want to share with you a practice called examen. Examen is a regular practice, taught by St Ignatius of Loyola, of reflecting on our lives to understand God’s movement and calling.
The first part of examen is to simply recognize and trust God’s love and presence. We have to begin to integrate the truth that God is loving and trustworthy. Then we have to begin to notice God in our lives. These 2 things go hand in hand, and one of the easiest ways to do this is by spending just a few minutes at the end of each day in quiet reflection.
Get still and invite God to help you notice the ways God has been present to you in this day. It might be as simple as noticing the sunrise or the changing of the leaves. Did someone show you compassion? Did you hold your tongue instead of lashing out to your partner? Did you practice patience with your kid or with your parent or your coworker? Ask yourself - where did I most clearly experience God today?
Next ask God to help you look honestly at the opportunities you missed to receive and share God’s love. Did you rush through your prayer time because you were in a hurry? Did you lose your temper? Did you hide your true self because you were afraid of rejection? Did you allow yourself to get lost in self-criticism? Ask yourself, where did I miss experiencing God today?
Healthy self-examination leads us to transformation, and it includes joyfully accepting Gods love and believing in our identity as image-bearers. Transformational self examination also must include a courageous and honest look at the darker places within our soul.
David wrote Psalm 139. David, through his writing, gives us an intimate peek at the inner parts of his journey of transformation. We see David as a youth, bravely facing a giant-of-a-soldier that everyone else was too afraid to fight. We see David, anointed as king before the former king was even off the throne. We see David fleeing for his life, hiding in caves, and we see David, dancing in the streets worshipping God. We see David, the fallen hero - the king who stayed home when he should have been leading his troops in war, the royal who abused his power and lustfully took what he wanted from a woman and got her pregnant, the battle commander who orchestrated a man’s death to cover up the sexual assault of Bathsheba. We see David at the depths of human depravity. And yet, David is called a man after God’s own heart. Why? This is hard stuff that religious culture usually tries to cover up and twist language and make excuses to explain away David’s choices. But I think making David a hero without looking truthfully at his darker choices sets us up in a dangerous place - we have seen enough corrupt leaders held up as flawless. I think maybe what kept David the hero and king that he was - is his constant willingness to admit his mistakes, live with the consequences of his actions, and turn repeatedly to God in prayer. David wrote Psalm 51 that says
Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love.
For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night.
Remove the stain of my guilt.
Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me.
Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.
And David also wrote these words in Psalm 139, knowing that his God knew him completely and loved him unconditionally - no matter what was in his past:
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
David was a man that chased after God despite, or maybe because of, his failings and bent to sinning. There is light and dark within us all. We are both image-bearers and dark-dwellers. AND in the arms of God is a safe place to examine both.
God loves us as we are and God loves us enough to not leave us there. As we are willing to name our failure and weakness and also name what is good inside us, God can peel away the layers of our false self. This is transformation - God at work in us and through us. It is evidence of God’s grace and tender love for us.