Test me, O Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.
King David wrote this Psalm, and asked God to be his examiner. David really wanted to do things God's way, and he knew that he didn't always do that. So he wanted God to judge him now, so he could change his ways when he needed to.
This is like a seed that David thought on for a long time. He later wrote Psalm 139, which is all about God's greatness, and he ends it with this more familiar and more complete thought:
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: 23-24.)I understand David's thinking here, and this is also my prayer. I would much rather God judge me now, showing me what I'm doing wrong, so that I can change my thinking processes in renewing my mind (Romans 12:2) so that the words and actions that come out of my heart will be according to God's way for me, not what I want to do.
Like David, I realize that I also make mistakes. I also am vulnerable to taking things into my own hands and making a mess of it. And how much better it is all around to just cooperate with how God designed this World to work, and do things His way in the first place.
But to know how to do all that, I need to know God. He is the Source. He is the Life I need to live, He is the Light that gave light to the Sun. He is the Love that put the order into the Universe. He is our standard for Beauty and Right.
But we live in a broken World. Our environment has been polluted, being cursed by sin, and our DNA has been corrupted, and our enemy the Devil is also trying to destroy us.
So we must defend ourselves from the World's ways, the enemy's ways, and our own flesh body we live in. It seems like everything's against us.
That's why we're all desperate for God, whether we realize it or not. We all need to know Him to know that we can trust Him to be our kind, gentle, compassionate Father and Teacher and Mentor. The better we know Him, the more we are able to trust Him with our deepest selves.
So I want God to examine me. I want Him to see my deepest secrets that I'm hiding from myself; to expose them so I can know myself, and confess and forsake every thought, every attitude, every passion that is not in alignment with His ways for me.
Then I will be able to live my life according to the way He wants me to, and He will be pleased, just like a good parent is pleased with their successful child. I want Him to smile upon me, and take pleasure in what I do.
So I depend on His Holy Spirit in me to lead me, to guide me into the footsteps of Jesus, not turning to the right or to the left, not running ahead or lagging behind, not pulling away or wandering off. That straight, hemmed in path that leads to everlasting enjoyments (see Matthew 7:14).
Then I will spend eternity with Him, with the Source of all that is good and desirable and enjoyable. Without Him there is no light, only darkness; no truth, only deception; no pleasantries, only hardships. No order, only chaos; no love, only hatred; no pleasure, only pain.
God wants to be good to all He has made, but He will not force Himself on anyone. Whoever would rather be deceived, God will allow them to believe lies. Whoever wants to do his own will, God will let him. He gave us a freedom of will, to choose for ourselves, and He will not interfere with that. (See Romans 1:18-32.)
But to all who want to know the Truth, He will teach them. All who want to know a better way, He will lead them. He is not willing that any would perish, but that all would come to repentance, to realize that their own way is not really what they want after all, and that they deserve death for their rebellion against what is right. (See II Peter 3:9.) To repent is to turn around.
When I realized that the religion I grew up in was not "working" for me, I went on a search for the "Truth." It didn't matter to me what that "Truth" would be, I just wanted to know it so I could believe it and not be deceived.
God honored that by letting me investigate several "truth systems," knowing how seductive they could be, but none of them convinced me. Then He brought me back to the "hub of the wheel," and to Himself. He showed me that Jesus took my death sentence for me, in my place; and He freed me from the chains of an addiction I was not able to shake off myself.
And I learned more of Him as time went on. Jesus is the Truth I had been seeking, and He is the Life I could never live until then. And He is the only Way to the Father, the only path that leads to Him. That is the path I am walking on now.
God has been so good to me; the more I run to Him, the more I curl up in His lap and let Him love me, then the more He reveals Himself and His ways to me.
So I want Him to clean out from my heart everything that interferes with His perfect, pure ways. This process is called Sanctification, and it will continue until Jesus returns (see Romans 8:23). That's when our carnal bodies will be changed into spiritual bodies, and we will be adults in God's family, fully responsible for helping Him run His Family Business, the Kingdom.
Until then we still live in our mortal flesh, so we need to watch out for all the things we are vulnerable to here. And continually ask Him to test and try us to reveal whatever else is still lurking in the recesses of our beings.
O my Father, try me, examine my heart and my mind. Expose anything there that needs to be cleansed and healed.
Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and a right mind; renew my thinking that I may think Your thoughts, not mine.
O my Father, Your ways are not our ways, nor are Your thoughts our thoughts. Teach me Your ways, my Father, and Your thoughts. Keep my feet on Your straight path, not turning to the right or to the left.
And may I forever give You all the praise, all the glory, all the honor, all the blessings, forever and ever, Amen!
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
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