Search-me-O-God-sincere
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
- Psalm 139:23-24(KJV)
How many times in conversation, have you heard or used the words “search me” or “you know me” or “see my heart” as a way of trying to get someone to believe that you are sincere or speaking the truth in a matter? This attempt at self-acquittal seeks moral justification from the other party, but many times desperate and dishonest people have used this same words to feign openness and an assurance that if the content of their heart could be investigated, they would come out clean, Of course, merely capitalizing on the fact that indeed no man can tell or see into the content of another fellow’s heart ordinarily.
However, it’s a different thing if you say “Search me, O God!” like the psalmist. This isn’t a statement of self-justification; it is the desperate cry of a person who knows that the heart of man is desperate and deceitful; the urgent request of a person who seeks true freedom from a false conscience. Such personal concern should never be despised by any child of God.
3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself.
4 For I know nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord.
- I Cor 4:3-4(NKJV)
This is Paul the Apostle’s testimony, he stated that human’s judgement or evaluation of himself and his stewardship, was by no means a reliable yardstick. In essence, he did not solicit the approval of self-appointed judges of men, neither did he try to justify himself. He told us why: God was his judge (His only necessary justifier or critic). How could such a man who sacrificed so much more than most men would even scarcely do, then say that his sense of personal justification did not matter; that his natural pride of achievement couldn’t translate into an evidence that he had fulfilled his calling, but that he had to press toward a divinely defined mark.
Clearly, its not about you or me or how we feel or about how we want to live our lives; God is greater than our hearts. The Lord has not justified and declared us righteous merely so that we can feel good about ourselves, but so that we can have the liberty of devoting our lives to him without a sense of condemnation. If you’ld never be out of God’s will and desire always to be doing his pleasing, check up in God’s mirror daily, not being a forgetful hearer but a doer of the word.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
- James 1:22-25(NKJV)
Devotional Prayer
Lord Jesus I praise you for your work in my life as a believer and follower of you. I’ve been justified in the spirit and declared the righteousness of God in your holy word. As I keep looking into your word it washes me, I’m being renewed in my mind to conform to that glorious image everyday. Amen.
