Mother's Day and it's exciting to see everybody here.
The relationship of a mom to her kids is potentially
one of the most influential any of us have.
The only one I think that even competes with that
would be maybe the relationship a kid
has with his father.
And I'm often concerned about using my own family
as an example or an illustration in my sermons.
But I don't have that much caution about it.
I do it all the time.
But I know what it means to be a mom
because I live with a mom.
I live with my wife and she is a great mom
and she does amazing stuff.
It's amazing how she loves our kids
and she loves our kids when our kids are not always
lovable, any moms in here feel that way ever?
Are your kids always lovable?
I see some nasi naa, okay.
But with, I've seen an influence a mom can have
on our kids and it's amazing how my wife loves our kids
and mom's sacrifice, what do you sacrifice?
She sacrifice time, energy, emotion, even your own bodies
to do what it takes to be a good wife and mother
and so many men in here, you know what that looks like
because you watch it too, you watch it in your own families
and that's an important thing.
So I have some advice for you men.
If today, any married men here, married men,
raise your hand married men, okay.
Okay, if you are tempted today to think it's mothers
day, not wife day, okay.
And I'm not gonna get my wife anything
because she's my wife, not my mother.
That is a bad thought.
Don't think that, okay.
Let me help you, don't say that out loud, okay.
That's a bad plan.
And number two, you still have time after the service
you can go get her something like vacuums, crock pots,
drying wax for the dishes, anything like that.
They love that stuff, okay.
It's really good.
And so, so happy Mother's Day.
But I say that and just having already given my wife a gift.
So, but I said it in just, but really truthfully,
we ought to honor our moms, right.
And moms, it's Mother's Day.
And I think in particular that we ought to do that.
And in Psalm 139, that's where we're gonna be today.
We find a Psalm and we chose this Psalm for today
because it includes a reference to what makes women mothers.
God gave all of us an incredible gift
when he gave us parents.
And that certainly includes mom, a good parent,
a good mom ought to be, a good mom knows her kids.
I don't mean that they're just acquainted with them.
Moms know how their kids tick.
If you have more than one child,
you realize not any two kids are the same.
Has anybody noticed this?
Kids are different.
Some kids act a certain way.
Birth order matters, all of that.
And if you have more than one child, you know that.
And while they may be similar,
they have unique disabilities and challenges.
And I've done things before and my wife said,
you can't do that with her.
I'm like, well, I did it with her, this other one.
She goes, yeah, but she's not her, she's her, right?
And you definitely can't do that with him, you know?
And so good moms know their kids.
Good moms spend time with their kids, right?
While moms are very busy today,
moms often have the advantage of being the parent
that has the most opportunity to spend time with their kids.
And I think that's an important thing.
That's not just true day to day,
it's also true over the years.
They get a privilege of experiencing life with them,
doing life together, spending time together.
Good moms not only do that, they nurture their kids.
This means they're concerned with their growth
in every area of life.
They want them to mature physically and intellectually
and emotionally and relationally and spiritually.
They steward the conditions that help them do that.
And fundamentally, here's what we know,
a good mom loves her kids.
A good mom loves her kids and her kids know
that their mom loves them.
Kids respond to the love and care
that they receive from their parents.
And so human relationships depend on both sides, right?
To have a good relationship with someone,
they've got to invest in the relationship
and you have to invest in relationship.
It's not, good relationships typically aren't one sided.
Who agrees with me?
That's how human relationships are.
Sometimes mothers maybe feel that way
because kids don't always respond in a mature way.
But over time, you can have a good relationship
when you have a mom that's loving and a child
that responds to that love.
And in Psalm 139, where we find ourselves today,
this particular passage helps us understand
that our relationship with God
and our closeness to God, our intimacy with God,
sometimes I don't know if I want to use that word
because all the men in the room check out necessarily,
but you can have a relationship with God.
You can have a close relationship with God.
In fact, I think God wants you
to have a close relationship with him.
God doesn't change.
We call God, there's actually a word
that God calls himself.
He calls himself a father, right?
And that's a parent.
He is a good parent.
All things that are true of a good mom
and are true of a good dad,
when you know Jesus as savior,
when you know God is savior,
even before you know him as savior,
there's some things that are also true.
I said a good mom knows her kids
and spent times with her kids and loves her kids
and all those things, the same is true of God.
God knows us.
God is with us.
God desires and acts to nurture and to grow us.
And here's what I want you to know today.
God loves us.
God loves you.
Aren't you glad for God's love?
We sang about it today for God to love the world
that he gave us his one and only son.
You know, the love of God, how rich and pure.
This is what he is and what he does for us.
And today I want you to know that the God who created you
wants to have a relationship with you.
He wants to be close to you.
That starts through being born again.
You can be saved in an inter to a relationship
with God through salvation,
through the reconciliation that happens there.
He created you and he wants to save you
and make you one of his kids.
And so if you're saved today,
I want you to know that you can be as close to God
as you wanna be.
Why?
Because God has done what it takes for you us to have
an incredibly close relationship with him.
You can be close to God.
The God who breathed out the stars, you can talk to him.
The God who created everything, you can know him.
He knows you.
In fact, that's what we're gonna learn today.
We can have an incredibly close relationship with God
when we acknowledge four realities of God's relationship
to us that leads us to submit to him.
And we'll see that in Psalm 139.
I wanna give you four realities about God's relationship
to you that are so important for you
to have a relationship with him.
Here's the first one, ready?
This is not a big deal.
This is not a new thing, but I want you to think through it.
Number one, God knows us.
God knows us.
That means God is omniscient.
He knows everything, but he knows us.
Let's read these first six verses in Psalm 139.
You guys have your Bibles?
You have them on an app or in your lap.
Come on, Psalm 139.
Verse number one, here's what it says.
Oh Lord, thou hast searched me and known me.
Now, there are some, you guys see this on the screen?
You see some words I underlined?
I underlined some words for a reason.
Pay attention to them.
Here's what it says.
Oh Lord, thou hast searched me and known me.
Thou knowest my down-sitting and my uprising.
Thou understandest my thought afar off.
Thou compass my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word in my tongue,
but Lord, oh Lord, below, oh Lord,
thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before
and laid thine hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
It is high.
I cannot attain it.
What David is saying here is that he is so intrigued.
Why is he so intrigued?
Because God knows him.
God knows everything about him.
In the first verse we see verbs in the past tense.
Thou hast searched me and known me.
It's already done.
He already knows you.
God knows everything about you.
Some of you are scared right now.
Everything?
Yes, he knows everything about you.
This is not unique to David.
Everything in this Psalm that David says about God
is true of our relationship with God too.
God knows you.
He knows you better than you know you.
He knows as an omniscient person, he knows,
and here's something to think through,
and knowing here that all these knowing words,
this isn't just knowing data about you.
There's a personal intimacy.
He knows you.
He knows what makes you tick.
He knows why you do what you do.
Good and bad.
He knows you.
It's more than just raw data.
He is personal.
He knows everything about you as a person.
Look at all he knows.
Verse 2.
Now notice my down-sitting, my uprising, now understandeth my
thought, a far off.
This means when you sit down and when you rise up.
It includes all the mundane, everyday moments of life.
He knows where you are.
He knows what you're doing.
He knows what you're thinking.
Did you see that?
Verse 2.
Aren't you glad nobody else knows what you're thinking?
Some of you are thinking right now, it's hot.
I want to get out of here.
You got to stay.
He knows everything you're thinking.
He understands why you're thinking it.
You don't even understand all the things you think.
Have you ever thought like, where did that come from?
Have you ever thought of that thought?
Why did I say that?
Have you ever thought of something that you haven't
thought about in a long time?
Maybe you smell a smell or you go, you hear a song comes on the
radio and it transports you back to 1985 and the cassette tapes
remember that?
And you know, like where did that come from?
I haven't thought about that in forever.
God knows why that happened.
God knows how your brain works.
You don't even know how your brain works.
God knows everything.
Look at verse 3.
He says, thou compass my path and my lying down and are
acquainted with all my ways.
You know that word compasses?
It's an old English word.
It means you're spread over everything.
And he says, you're my compass.
You're my path and my lying down are acquainted with all my
ways.
You know what he's saying?
God is ahead of you knowing where you're going to be this
week.
God knows what you're going to face.
Aren't you glad that you don't always know what you're going
to face?
There are certain things I'm glad I don't know.
They're on the calendar but they're on the calendar in the
past.
I don't know what's going to come up.
But God knows what's going to happen to you.
He knows where you're going and what you're doing.
He knows what you're going to face.
The Bible says man looks on the outward appearance but God
looks at the heart.
This doesn't mean that God causes you to do what you do.
He's given us a free will.
His knowing and His causing are two different things.
He's already at your work.
He's already at your job.
He's already at your school.
He's acquainted with all your ways.
I've been here at the church for just right under four years.
I've been here for four years.
I've been at the church for four years.
And over time, you begin to see how people act in certain
situations.
You see how people talk.
You see how people walk.
Dave Curtis cracked me up today.
I've seen Dave, sometimes you see Dave a long way off and
before you know that's Dave.
The way he walks, the way he talks.
We know certain people, people here know that George
Right, we all know that about him, isn't that cool?
We know how he is.
His wife really knows how he is, right?
That's all of us.
Some people talk a lot, some people are really quiet,
some people are really happy all the time,
others carry a heavy load,
and to be something more melancholy,
and some people are just grumpy.
And in human relationships, what we've learned about people,
I say this all the time, people are icebergs.
There's a part that you see above the surface,
and then there's a part that you do not see.
And God knows all of it.
God knows the whole thing.
Verse four, there's not a word, this is scary.
For there's not a word in my tongue,
but oh Lord, below oh Lord, thou knowest it all together.
God knows what you're gonna say.
God knows what you're saying.
He knows what you have said.
Sometimes I start sentences,
and I don't even know how they're gonna end up
when I start them.
Anybody ever do that?
You just start a sentence like, where am I going?
I don't know, here we go, okay.
But he says, there's not a word on my tongue
you don't already know.
When you said, why you said it, what it meant,
what your motivations were.
God knows our words.
And then it says, in verse five,
thou hast beset me behind him before
and laid thine hand upon me.
This is an amazing verse because the word beset
means closed in or a hedge.
You ever heard maybe an old senior saint pray,
and when they pray they say,
and God I would pray a hedge of protection around somebody.
How many of you guys ever heard of that?
And I always used to think as a kid,
like why is Satan worried about greenery?
Like bushes, but that's not the idea,
the hedge, are you guys with me?
I thought that was funnier than what you guys responded,
but anyway, the idea is that he's surrounding us
with protection.
He's saying, in front of me, behind me,
you've laid your hand upon me,
nothing happens to me that you don't allow to happen to me.
Because you know where I'm going, you know where I've been,
you know what I think, you know what I say,
God is all knowing.
And what's amazing is, think about this,
he knows all of that and he loves us.
He knows all of that and he loves us.
He blesses us and uses us.
And that's why David says in verse six,
such knowledge is too wonderful.
Wonderful means it's immense, it's huge,
I don't understand it, I can't even comprehend it.
God knows how many hairs are on our head.
He knew how many hairs were on our head in 1985,
on Thursday in August.
He knows a lot, who agrees, he knows a lot.
We don't know like God knows, he knows completely.
The implication of what he's saying,
even just by saying it, is that God knows all of this
and still loves him and it's incredible.
Paul expressed something similar in Romans 11.
Oh, the depth of the riches,
both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God,
how insurchable are his judgments
and his ways past finding out,
for who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?
Or who has first given to him
and it should be recompensed unto him again?
For of him and through him and to him
are all things to whom be glory forever, amen.
Do you get the point?
God knows you.
Here's the next point, this is so cool.
Number two, God is with us.
Not only is he omniscient, he's omnipresent.
All knowing, all present.
Look at what it says, verse seven.
"'Whether shall I go from thy spirit
"'or whether shall I free from thy presence?'
"'What's the answer to this question?
"'Where can I go?'
"'Everywhere I go, there you're gonna be.'
"'What's the answer?'
"'There's nowhere I can flee to.
"'I can't go anywhere to get away from God.
"'Who knows everything about me?'
"'Look at verse eight, he gives contrasting places here.'
"'Versate.
"'If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there.
"'If I make my bed in hell, or the word there is she-lo,
"'the place of the dead, thou art there, she-o,
"'thou art there, even there.'
"'The best places and the worth places
"'are both inhabited by God.'"
He even says in nine,
"'If I take the wings of the morning,
"'if I could put wings on and fly anywhere,
"'anywhere I would go, even the chaos
"'of the midst of the sea.'"
Verse nine.
"'If I could fly away and even go out to the ocean,
"'to the ends of the earth, you're gonna be with me.'"
Verse 10, "'Even there, thy hand will lead me,
"'that right hand shall hold me.'"
Is that protection?
Is that provision?
You can't get away from God.
He's with you.
God doesn't just know where David is,
he's with David.
He's leading David.
He's sustaining David.
And I wanna tell you today, God knows where you are.
Everybody ready?
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
God gave you that breath.
You couldn't breathe unless God allowed you to.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.
And God is with you.
He is sustaining you.
He says in verse 11,
"'If I say surely the darkness shall cover me,
"'even the night shall be light unto me,
"'the day the darkness highteth not from me,
"'but the night shoneeth as the day,
"'the darkness and light are both alike unto me.'"
What he's saying is,
there's nothing that can cover David from God's knowledge.
There's nothing that can keep God's presence away from David,
God doesn't just know where David is,
he's with David and the same thing is true for us.
There is never a time or place where we need God
and he's incapable of getting to us.
Did you hear what I just said?
There's never a place or a time
where you cannot turn back to God
and he is there waiting for you.
He's with you.
Again, I wanna point to something David's,
or to what Paul said, look at Acts chapter 17.
This is amazing.
This is Paul and he's preaching to a bunch of Greeks
who don't believe in God.
He's a Jewish guy, he's on a mission, he's on a trip,
he's going around, he's in Athens, Greece,
and there's this place called Martys Hill
where people would go and just publicly speak
and not everybody that's there agrees with him.
And this is what he says.
He says, when I was in town today in Athens,
I saw all these statues and idols to all these gods,
and I saw one that says to the unknown God,
they were so religious that they had put one up,
and just in case we missed one, here's one we wanna honor.
And Paul saw that and he goes,
this is an opportunity for me to tell them
about the true God.
Here's what he says, verse 24 of Acts chapter 17.
God that made the world and all the things therein,
sing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not
in temples made with hands, neither has he worshiped
with men's hands as though he needed anything.
Does God need anything?
Anything we can give to God
that he's like waiting on us to give him?
No, he give it to all life and breath and all things,
and it's made of one blood, all nations of men
for to dwell on the face of the earth.
Hey, sidetrack, there aren't really any races.
There's one race, the human race.
Right?
Just thought I'd throw that in there, it's in the Bible.
And had determined the times before appointed
and the bounds of their habitation.
What is he saying?
He's saying God chose all these people he created
to be where they are and to be when they are.
Why did God choose for Dustin to live in Finlay, Ohio in 2024?
Cause of Lindsay.
At least in part, he gives us the answer, look at this.
Back to 26, it has determined the times before appointed
and the bounds of their habitation.
Why, verse 27, that they should seek the Lord.
Who thinks that's cool?
He put you where you are and when you are
so that you would seek him.
Now notice this, if happily they might feel after him
and find them, though he be not far from every one of us.
You know what that means?
God wants to be found.
He's not far, he's with you.
He's not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
He wants, he knows you, he knows where you are,
he's with you and he wants you to come to him.
He put you where you are and when you are,
that you would do that.
For in him, verse 28, we live and move
and have our being as certain also of your poets have said,
for we are all also his offspring.
If you know Christ as your savior,
the truth is that God is in you.
His Holy Spirit lives inside of you.
And if you don't know Christ, Paul tells us
that God decided where you would be
and put you where you would be and when you would be
so that you would seek the Lord.
He's not far from any of us, he is with us,
he's available to you, so my suggestion to you today is this,
call out to him.
Call out to him, recognize his presence and go to him.
Here's a third reality that helps us to have a close,
you guys wanna have a close relationship with God?
Okay, he knows you, he's with you, number three,
he made you, he made you.
This is the mom part.
Omnipotence, look at what he says in verse 13.
For thou hast possessed my reigns,
thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
David gives us this truth about God.
David says that he belongs to God
because God made him.
David was covered by God in his mother's womb,
the same's true for you, God owns you and he made you.
You might say, I thought that was just a natural process,
that's not theology, that's biology.
Nothing happens in this creative world
that was not designed by God and is not allowed by God.
God made you and you didn't start becoming you
when you came out of the womb.
God made you, you in the womb.
He goes on to say in verse 14,
I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully,
what does it say?
Made, marvelous are thy works
and thou soul know right well.
My substance was not hid from thee
when I was made in secret
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Thine eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect,
meaning not complete yet in utero.
Before you were fully developed, he knew you
and he's making you and then notice this,
this is a crazy phrase for David to say
and for what we know now, check this out.
And in thy book, all my members were, what is it?
Written, which in continuance were fashioned
when there was none of them.
The moment you were conceived in your mother's womb,
all of the resources to make you, you were there.
Verse 16 says in thy book, all my members were written.
Now I'm not sure that David was referring to DNA,
but that's not a bad description of what DNA actually is.
Have you guys ever heard of DNA?
In almost every cell of your body is found DNA.
Two guys named Watson and Crick discovered
in the last 50, 60 years, the structure of the DNA.
They also discovered that DNA stores information
in the form of a four character alphabetic code.
Strings of previously sequenced chemicals
called nucleotide bases, store and transmit
the assembly instructions, the information,
the data for building the crucial protein molecules
and protein machines the cell needs to survive.
Crick later developed this idea
with his famous sequence hypothesis,
according to which the chemical parts of the DNA
or the nucleotide bases function,
here's how they function, like letters in a written language
or symbols in a computer code.
Just as letters in an English sentence
or digital characters in a computer program
may convey information depending on their arrangement,
so too do certain sequences of chemical bases
along the spine of the DNA molecule
convey precise instructions for building proteins,
but not just proteins, everything about us.
The chances of this happening by random chance
are infinitesimally small.
In his book, Signature of the Cell, Steven C. Meyer
performs updated calculations of the probability
of the origin of even a single functional protein
or corresponding functional gene,
which is the section of a DNA molecule
that directs the construction of a particular protein
by chance alone.
So he figured out what's the probability
that just sheer chance would make this one protein,
which is just one part of one cell by chance.
It would be like a million monkeys
and a million top writers,
and somehow coming up with the collected works of Shakespeare.
Okay, who thinks that's gonna happen?
Never.
The question is, how many chances
are there for that to happen?
This is what he said.
His calculations are based upon recent experiments
in molecular biology, establishing the extreme rarity
of functional proteins in relation to the total number
of possible arrangements of amino acids
corresponding to a protein's given length.
He shows that the probability, here it is,
of producing even a single functional protein,
which is just part of what it takes to make you,
with a modest length of 150 amino acids by chance alone,
what are the chances?
One in one times 10 to the 164th power.
That's one with 164 zeros behind it.
Who agrees that's a big number?
Like one in a million are a million times better
than that number, okay?
My point is, you didn't just happen by accident
for something that specific to happen.
Someone had to write, who thinks that when you see a hymnal,
you guys look in the, we still have hymns, okay?
Would anybody ever say, you know that hymnal,
it's amazing how the ink just fell from heaven?
Write to that little open page,
an amazing grace got written.
Who agrees, that's stupid.
Yeah, that stuff doesn't happen.
Whenever you see information like that, you go,
if there's a hymn, there must be a hymn writer.
There's a book in every cell of your body
that is all the information that it takes to make you.
And what he says, David says,
before he even understood what a DNA was,
he says in your book, all my members are written
when they weren't even made yet.
You guys are not excited.
God did it, God did it.
And then he made a process through which your mother
carried you for nine months
and they became your lifelong caretaker.
We didn't arrive on the planet out of the ground
unattached to anybody else like a tree.
Right?
We were born to a family, to a mom
who loved us and cared for us.
One of God's very first gifts to us.
He gave us life, he gave us life through a mom.
Who's grateful here for mom?
We are so grateful for her.
Why did he do it?
Last one, he loves us.
God loves us.
He's omnibenevolent.
Look at verse 17.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God.
How great is the sum of them.
If I should count them, they are more in number
than the sand.
When I awake, I am still with thee.
God knows everything about me.
God's with me all the time.
Anybody do something this week
that you would be ashamed for God to know you did?
You don't have to raise your hand.
I'm there.
How many ever thought something,
maybe a little bit of shame God knows you thought.
Anybody here say something this week?
Maybe a little bit of shame that God knows that you said it.
This God created us.
He knows us.
He made us.
And when you woke up this morning,
you did because he loves you.
Another chance to know him.
Another chance to love him.
And if you're not saved, another chance to be redeemed.
He's not saying in this verse, please don't misunderstand me.
This is not saying that all God thinks about is you.
You are not the center of the universe.
I am not the center of the universe.
What it's saying is God's gigantic.
God is keeping everything going.
He knows everything.
He sustains everything.
And yet he cares for us.
And gives us the ability to wake up.
We don't always do what he wants.
We don't always live as he wills.
And yet in his mercy and grace,
he makes salvation available to us.
He's merciful.
He does forgive.
And though he knows everything is everywhere
and is all powerful,
yet he shows mercy and grace to us.
Why?
Because he loves us.
He loves you.
So here's what I wanna tell you this morning.
Did you get the outline?
Relationships are two-sided, right?
If you're gonna have a good relationship with your kids,
at some point they gotta reciprocate back, right?
If you want a good relationship with your mom,
you can't slap or remove away.
Never talk to her again.
You gotta have a good, don't do that by the way.
You gotta have, it's two ways.
And what you just learned this morning is this.
God's done all that it takes
for you to have a close relationship with him.
Why?
He knows us.
He's omniscient.
He's with us.
He's omnipresent.
He made us.
He's omnipotent.
And he loves us.
He's omnibenevolent.
So how should we respond?
How should we respond?
If he knows us, we should seek to know him.
We should seek to know him.
If he's with us, we should spend time with him.
If he made us, we should be grateful.
We should thank him.
We should serve him.
We should submit to him.
And if he loves us, how unworthy are we?
If he loves us, we ought to love him back.
What's the greatest of all the commandments?
Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind,
and strength, the seconds like to it Jesus said,
to love your neighbor as yourself.
When we love this way the right way,
then we'll love this way the right way.
And God's done everything possible for that to happen.
So what's our part?
Well, if you're not saved, the Bible talks about salvation.
There's a knowing God knows you, but do you know God?
And it starts with this.
The first thing you need to know about God,
not just that he knows you and he's with you
and he loves you and he wants you to be saved.
That's cool, but also you need to know that he has a will.
It's called his law and we've broken his law.
We haven't recognized him as God in every area of our life.
We haven't always said what we should say
or think what we should think or do what we should do.
In fact, every day, multiple times a day,
we don't do what he wants.
We don't recognize him as God.
God knew that if you were to be just and holy with us,
that that means we would face his wrath for eternity.
But God being holy can't let's then go
and God being loving, he can't let's then go,
but he doesn't want us to spend eternity separated from him.
So what did he do?
God became flesh and dwelt among us.
He became sin, who knew no sin,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Christ came, he lived a perfect life,
he died on the cross for our sins,
he was buried and he rose again the third day for our sins.
And the Bible says if anyone received him,
to them gave he power to become the sons
and the daughters of God.
He knows you, he made you,
but he also wants you to recognize
that you're a sinner in what he did for you on the cross.
So how do you come to know God?
You come through salvation.
You believe in Jesus Christ.
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus
and believe in that heart that God has raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved.
And if you're here and you've already been saved,
then you need not, there's salvation,
but there's sanctification.
We grow in Christ as we get to know him.
We spend time with him in his word, we abide in him.
He empowers us to do his will and to love him
and to love him as he grows us.
So he knows us, we should seek to know him
through salvation and sanctification.
He is with us, we should develop our relationship with him.
He loves us, he made us, we should be thankful to him
and love him in return.
And when we do that, then we can say the last two verses
of this Psalm.
When we believe that God knows us and is with us
and made us and loves us and we believe that God is in charge
and we submit to him as God, then we have the chance
to get close to God by saying to him, search me, oh God,
and know my heart.
Now that's a weird thing to pray, isn't it?
He just spent six verses telling us, God already knows our
heart, but you know what the difference is?
Whenever, when someone knows everything about you
and still loves you, you know what that's called?
Intimacy.
You can have a good relationship with God when he knows
everything about you and loves you.
And when you're honest and transparent with him,
transparency leads to intimacy.
Search me, oh God, and know my heart.
Try me and know my thoughts and see if there'll be any wicked
way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
God loves you.
Point to who God loves.
God loves you.
Would you pray with me?