“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.” Psalm 139:23, 24
These verses are the conclusion of one of my favorite psalms. I find the whole chapter to be so encouraging! Just think of it: God knew you before He made you, He created you in detail, he had each one of your days planned before the beginning of time. That’s an incomprehensible love! I find great comfort in knowing my God loves me and cares for me that much! It’s in the context of that love that the psalmist asked God to search his heart and mind. Even knowing how much God loves me, I still find that I am hesitant to ask God to search me that deeply. What if He finds something He doesn’t like? Of course, that’s a ridiculous question, because earlier in the chapter He has told us that He knows our thoughts before we do. So the real problem isn’t if God finds out.The real issue is if I’m willing to admit to those thoughts and attitudes that are buried deep inside.
I’ve known for a long time that God doesn’t want us to be anxious. We’re to trust in Him and lay our cares at His feet. But I find it interesting that in these verses, God ties anxious thoughts with offensive ways. The Hebrew word translated “offensive” could also be translated “pain.” In other words, when we harbor anxious thoughts, we give God pain. It makes me wonder how I would feel about a loved one who treats me the way I sometimes treat God. I promise them I’ll do something, something that is a simple task for me, but they don’t believe that I’ll actually do it. They say they do, but they worry and fret about it. They ask me over and over again if I actually will. They even get others to ask me for them. They keep telling me how it should be done, giving me detailed instructions and even then, they don’t believe I really understand them. They may even try to find another way to get the job done, because I just might not come through. How would you feel in that situation? I would feel hurt, frustrated, troubled, and, well, offended.
Isn’t that exactly what we do to God? We ask God to take care of a situation, then continue to fret. We ask others to also pray about it, then continue to fret.We check in with God to make sure He heard us, then continue to fret. And it goes on and on. But what is this “way everlasting?” If it’s everlasting, that means it is a way that is from ancient times and a way that will last throughout all eternity. That way is trust. Trust in the one and only God, trust in His provision for forgiveness of our sins, trust in who He is and what He has done and will do for us. When you realize these verses are in the same psalm as the verses about God planning our days before one of them came to be, I think it’s saying that He created us to walk in this kind of trust. We knew this kind of trust before the first sin in the Garden of Eden, and we will know it again when we are with Him in heaven for eternity.