NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
› Engagement
This week as we continue our series on Dangerous Prayers we’re going to look at a prayer that is not only dangerous - it’s kind of crazy, too.
I want you to imagine for a moment that you’re David. God calls you a man after His heart, but you’re also an immensely prideful person who is guilty of causing thousands of deaths because you trusted in your army instead of God. You committed adultery, a murder and a cover-up of that murder. It seems to me that the very last thing you would pray to God is “Search me”. That seems like a prayer that would be both dangerous and crazy. Would you really want God to look at every detail of your life, under every nook and cranny, in every closet? Wouldn’t you rather just keep your secrets hidden away?
› Tension
Now I want you to think about your own life. Is that a prayer that you’re willing to pray? Are you willing to open your life up to God’s scrutiny and allow Him to uncover your deepest darkest secrets?
› Truth
We began our series last week by defining dangerous prayer:
Dangerous prayers ask God to bless us by first breaking us.
That is undoubtedly true of the prayer we will look at today - Search me.
Go ahead and turn with me to Psalm 139. Although I’ll be referring to other parts of this Psalm this morning, we’re just going to focus on the last two verses. Would you read these verses out loud with me:
Psalm 139:23–24 ESV
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Before we look at this prayer in more detail, let me begin by telling you why we need to pray this prayer:
I need to pray “Search me” because I have blind spots
For the most part, most of us are very good at seeing the sin in the lives of others, but we’re not nearly as good at spotting the sin in our own lives. That is because we all have blind spots.
› Application
There are actually four different elements of this prayer to “search me”. And each element of the prayer is useful in helping us to identify those blind spots and, with God’s help, do something about them.
FOUR ELEMENTS OF PRAYING FOR GOD TO “SEARCH ME”
• Search my heart
Why do you think David would ask God to search his heart? After all, in the very first verse in this Psalm, David acknowledges that God has already searched him and much of the Psalm is spent focusing on the fact that God already knows David’s heart. So David is not asking God to search his heart for God’s benefit, but rather for his own.
It’s one thing to know and even acknowledge that God knows everything about me. It’s another thing altogether to ask God to bring those things to my attention. That is why this is a dangerous prayer. We’re asking God to reveal to us some things that frankly we’d rather not see.
So what exactly is David asking here? In the Old Testament, the word translated “heart” is used to describe a person’s inner being. It is the seat of our mind, will, and emotions. So David is asking God to go beneath the surface and to dig deep inside his life.
The verb “search” is a military term that described scouting out enemy territory. It is used to describe digging for the truth. Here it is used to ask God to open up the recesses of my heart and reveal the secret stuff that is hiding there.
I know what some of you are probably thinking right now. “Why should I ask God to search my heart? I’ve got a good heart. In fact, people often tell me that I have a good heart”. If you’re thinking that, then let me tell you what the Bible says about your heart:
Go ahead and read this verse out loud with me:
Jeremiah 17:9 ESV
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
You might think you have a good heart, but God says that your heart is deceitful - that is why we all have blind spots. And He also says that your heart is desperately sick. The adjective translated “sick” here literally means “incurable”. So that means you can’t find and remove those blind spots on your own. You need God to help you do that and the first step in that process is to identify those blind spots.
• Reveal my worries
In the second part of verse 23, David asks God to try him and know his thoughts. This is one of only two places in the Old Testament where the word translated “thoughts” is used. If you’re using the ESV, you have a footnote that reads “or cares”, but even that doesn’t really capture the essence of this word. It literally means “disquieting thoughts”. The NIV does a good job of translating this as “anxious thoughts” and the NKJV renders it “anxieties”.
So David isn’t just asking God to reveal his thoughts in general, but rather those things that he worries about. And he asks God to reveal those thoughts by “trying” him. That verb means “to put to the test for the purpose of proving something genuine”. It was used to describe how precious metals were tested by fire in order to prove their authenticity.
And here is why it’s important for us to ask God to reveal our fears. I’m not sure exactly where this statement originated. I wish I could take credit. But I think it is one of the most important things that we can take away from this message today:
What we worry about the most reveals where we trust God the least
So what do you worry about? What makes you anxious?
• Are you worried about losing your job?
• Are worried about being stuck in a lousy marriage that isn’t getting any better?
• Are worried about failing in school or in your job or in some other activity in life?
• Are you worried that you might not have enough money to live on when you retire?
• Are you worried about your health or the health of someone you love?
• Are you worried about contracting COVID?
You need to ask God to reveal those things that you worry about deep inside because often you are unaware that you’re even anxious about those things. And until you bring them to the surface, you’re not going to be able to address those worries in a healthy way by giving them over to God and learning to trust Him in those areas.
• Uncover my sins
In verse 24, David prays and asks God to uncover anything in his life that grieves Him. He says, “God, show me anything in my life that is inconsistent with your purposes, plans and ways. Show me anything that is displeasing to you”.
As we talked about earlier, we all have blind spots. And that is particularly true when it comes to our sins. Most of us are really good at discerning the sins of others, but frankly we tend to be blind to our own. No wonder Jesus spoke this word of warning to His disciples - and to us:
Matthew 7:5 ESV
5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
We all have a tendency to excuse our own sins in some way. We’ll even do what Adam did and blame someone else. “That’s the way God made me”. Or we’ll become very defensive and tell people that it’s none of their business. We’ll even misuse Scripture and tell them “Judge not, lest you be judged”. We don’t have time to delve into that verse in detail, but what I will say is that it is clear that Jesus never intended it to be used in that way.
As we saw just a bit ago, our hearts are wicked and they are deceitful and so we are often blind to our own sins. That is why we need to pray and ask God to reveal them to us.
• Lead me
This last step is absolutely critical, but unfortunately it’s the one we’re most prone to ignore. After God has searched David’s heart and revealed his worries, and uncovered his sins, David understands that all of that won’t matter unless he actually does something as a result of what God had revealed. So he prays and asks God to show him what to do about what he has just learned from God.
I am reminded here of what James wrote:
James 1:22–25 ESV
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 who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.
24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Let’s suppose that some morning I get up and eat huevos rancheros for breakfast. That is one of my favorite breakfasts. But while I’m eating, I get some salsa and melted cheese in my mustache. So I go in to brush my teeth and I look in the mirror and I see that. Now I have two choices. I can either just leave it there in case I get hungry later, or I can wash it off. Obviously I’m only kidding about leaving it there for later. But if I did that, it would look horrible, it would gross out others, and I guarantee that Mary is not going to kiss me as long as it’s there.
Unfortunately, that is how many of us approach our wicked hearts and our worries and our sins when God reveals them. We are aware that they are there, but we don’t take any action to actually do something about them.
› Action
Obviously, I can’t list all the possible actions that we might need to take once we’ve prayed “Search me” and God has revealed all the yuck in our lives. But here are a few that are probably a good starting place.
ACTIONS TO CONSIDER
• Read the Bible
While God can search me any way that He wants, the most common way that He does that is through His Word. That is where He has revealed His purposes, plans and ways. And if you’re reading the Bible on a consistent basis, then I can promise you that God is going to use His Word to show you where you’ve gotten off His path and violated the principles that He has revealed there.
So you really can’t genuinely pray “search me” without also being in the Word consistently. In fact, every time I open the Bible, it would be appropriate to pray “God use your Word to search me today”.
• Confession
Confession is always appropriate whenever I become aware of sin in my life. I obviously need to begin by confessing that sin to God. And if I’ve committed my life to Jesus, I can claim this promise:
1 John 1:9 ESV
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
John is writing here to those who are disciples of Jesus, so this is not a universal promise to all people, but only to those who have put their faith in Jesus. But if you’ve done that, you can have confidence that God will forgive your sins - no matter how bad they might be - if you confess them to Him. As we’ve talked about before the word “confess” means to agree with God that your sin is sin. It is not merely a “lapse in judgement”, or a “mistake”. You didn’t just “misspeak”, you lied.
Much of the time, our sin has also impacted others. And when that happens, it is also appropriate to seek,,,
• Restoration
Sin obviously impacts my relationship with God. But in many cases, it also impacts my relationship with others. So when my sin impacts another individual or group, then I must also confess that sin to the appropriate person or persons and ask for their forgiveness.
That is what James was writing about when he wrote these words:
James 5:16 (ESV)
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
The key here is to limit this confession to those who have been impacted by my sin. If I get angry at my wife or kids, I need only confess that to them. I don’t have to come confess that to my small group or to the entire church. On the other hand if I stole money from the church, it would be appropriate to confess that to the entire body and ask for their forgiveness.
In many cases, when my sin has impacted others, it may also require some kind of restoration or restitution - to return the item I’ve stolen, repair or replace the item I damaged, or make a public statement to restore someone’s reputation.
• Accountability
You’ll notice that I haven’t used the word repentance yet, although confession and restoration are often crucial elements in the process of repentance. The word repentance literally means “a change of mind”. It means that I change my mind about sin. I no longer excuse it or ignore it. But it is the kind of change of mind that results in a change in behavior. It means that I don’t allow that sin to become a lifestyle.
And often I need to have someone who I can trust to hold me accountable for that. If you’re a man who is struggling with pornography, then there are some tools out there that allow someone you trust to monitor your internet activity. If you’re a woman who is struggling with the sin of gossip, then you may need to find another woman who can probe your life on a regular basis to help you avoid falling into that sin. If you’re a student at school and you’re tempted to cheat on a test or lie to your teacher, then find some good Christian friends who love you enough to call you out when you do that.
› Inspiration
A lot of people think that as they grow in their relationship with Jesus that there will be a lot less need for them to confess their sin to God because they will sin less. The reality is that the more mature we become, the more aware we become of our sin. We begin to understand that things we would not have considered to be sin years ago really do grieve God. And so as we mature, we often find that we spend even more time in confession than we did as an immature disciple.
If that is not true in your life, then I can say confidently that you need to be praying this dangerous prayer every day. And I can also say confidently that this is a prayer that God will answer - probably in ways that are painful and ways that you won’t like. But the good news is that, as is true with all the dangerous prayers we’re looking at in this series, you will undoubtedly grow closer to God.
I understand that this entire series is kind of a heavy topic. So I want to end this morning with another look at these two verses - one that approaches it with a bit more humor, but which nonetheless drives home the importance of praying “search me”.
[Skit Guys video]
