a hard verse to swallow

I was about to read a little devotion for today, I opened my Bible app, and the verse of the day appears:

"Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: 
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Psalms 139:23-24

Wow, that's a hard one. I don't know about you, but when I read that, this feeling of unworthiness came into my heart. David is asking God to search him, to look into his heart and read all of the pages of that book. Pages that are filled with good, sweet stories, and pages that are filled with bitterness and sin. Then David asks God to know his thoughts. To look into his brain and see all the thoughts, pure and impure, loving and hateful, angry and peaceful. On top of all that (as if that wasn't hard enough to do), David asks God to see if there is any wickedness in him. 


Why did the feeling of unworthiness come into my heart? 

Because I know my thoughts and my heart are not as pleasing to God as they could be. There is wickedness in me. It is so shameful to ask such a perfect, sinless God to look into my filthy, cluttered heart, filled with so much sin and bitterness. I am not worthy of all He gives me, and to invite Him to see why I am not, hurts. 

That's a hard prayer to pray. It calls us to be completely open and uncovered before God, to let Him see all of our flaws, sins, passions, desires, to see our bitterness, hurt, shame. 

That sure ain't easy. 

(What we so easily forget is that God already knows our hearts and our thoughts, but inviting Him to know them tells Him that we are humbled enough to let Him grow us and change us to be more like Him.)

But that last phrase of the verse is my favorite:

"...lead me in the way everlasting."

All of that shame, and sin we carry around in us, when we reveal it to God, He is gracious and merciful to us. He doesn't look down on us in anger and disappointment because we didn't meet up to His expectations. Instead, He takes our shame and sin, and throws it into the deepest of oceans so that He never sees it or thinks about it again, He forgives us once and for all, and leads us in the Way that will never fail us. 

It's so relieving to know that He forgets our sins, to know that when He searches us, He cleans us out, and keeps on loving.