Have you ever contemplated just how our Eternal Father comprehends our daily experiences and total life-span from the perspective beyond Time? God is involved with us and wherever we allow God to direct our lives, God is not only THERE but making a difference. And if we learn to respond with integrity and enthusiasm to our Eternal Father, His perspective can become our perspective such that it shrinks our everyday problems and increases our potential for the future, both in Time and with Him in eternity.
I truly believe that this is an important concept and will affect the way we relate to our Holy Father. Since I believe we relate to the Father in prayer, and since I believe that it is most eloquent to pray the Bible in our prayer lives, I feel led to look at this question from the perspective of a famous prayer. In fact, I hope it will help us to pray more effectively ourselves.
In fact, I’m going to ask you to do something unusual. I’m going to ask you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 139 and follow along with eyes wide open, praying quietly to God as I lead us in prayer following the boundaries of the Psalm. After all, many of the psalms (including this one) were actually prayers prompted by and preserved by the Holy Spirit. So, I don’t see how we can go wrong by praying them.
Father,
I need you to assess and appraise me according to Your knowledge of me, [You see, I can’t be objective, but You know more about me than I do…] (v. 1)
You know where I’m comfortable and where I’m willing to take a stand And You can understand my intentions before I even get around to acting. (v. 2)
You know the boundaries of what I can do and the limits of my endurance; You know all the little things about my habits and my intentions. (v. 3)
I can’t even say what I’m thinking before You know where I’m going. (v. 4)
You protect me on all sides (though some think I’m sheltered) and You give me guidance. (v. 5)
I simply cannot comprehend all You are and do; I can’t storm the fortress of Your Presence. (v. 6)
[On the other hand, You come to me…] Is there any place I could go where Your Spirit couldn’t bless? And is there any place where You are incapable of demonstrating Your Presence? [Of course not!] (v. 7)
If I could reach beyond nature and find myself in divine space, I would find You. If I were as helpless as a ghost of myself, You would be there for me. (v. 8)
If I were powerful enough to bring the dawn [each morning] And I could live where the sun sets, (v. 9)
I would still need You to guide me and to hang onto me. (v. 10)
Even when I want to be hidden, to sink deep in the shadows of depression, (v. 11)
The light of Your Presence guarantees that even night must be as day. (v. 12)
That must be because You made me the thinking being I am, weaving together my twisting DNA code in the womb of my mother. (v. 13)
I’m really thankful that You are as awesome as You are. Your actions all around me make me feel low and properly worshipful. You know my essence, inside and out. (v. 14)
You know everything about my body from the skeleton out; Since You sculpted me out of the available elements (v. 15)
You “signed off” on my zygote, even though You could see my entire future on the scroll of history; You’ve known what I was going to go through, before the circumstances occurred. (v. 16)
Thinking about all of this [and still considering the miracle of “free will”] is mind-boggling.
It should make me feel secure that You are aware of everything from the start. (v. 17)
Considering the things that You know would be as hopeless as counting grains of sand for me. But knowing that You know the final chapter in my life helps me quite worrying. (v. 18)
Of course, I would be thrilled if You would remove certain unscrupulous people from my life so that their presence wouldn’t be a constant impediment and danger to me. (v. 19)
I know You can see that these people are devious; They are serving “emptiness” or “worthlessness” instead of You. (v. 20)
I refuse to partner with those dedicated to worthlessness; I pledge to stand up for Truth when they attack You. (v. 21)
I just won’t stand for it. I don’t trust them. (v. 22)
So, Lord, I’m asking You to assess and appraise me to know my real motives. Find any causes of anxiety within [so I can depend more fully upon You]. (v. 23)
Help me stay away from depending on the false and undependable, so I can live life according to Your Reality that doesn’t dissipate with Time and Space. (v. 24)
[And I pray this with the advantage the original psalmist didn’t have, the name and authority of my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.]
Now, one reason people hesitate to pray prayers like this (or sometimes, even pray at all) is because they have an inadequate understanding of God’s omniscience. They figure that since God already knows everything they are going through, it isn’t worth mentioning in prayer. But I think that’s a cop-out and I’ll tell you why. God wants to spend quality time with us. God wants to share His perspective with us. In order to get beyond the prayer time equivalent of “Good food, good meat, Good God, let’s eat!” we need to be willing to discuss specifics with God. In order to get beyond the prayer time equivalent of just feeling warm and fuzzy, we need to take the risk of opening ourselves up to God.
Now, God (as we shall soon see in the text) already knows our perspective, but He graciously allows us to discover His perspective as we communicate honestly with Him. And don’t you think it pleases our heavenly Father to know that we recognize God at work in our lives, just as I love it when I discover that my actions meant something in my children’s lives?
Are we near God or are we far away? We really can’t know by ourselves. It requires God’s revelation to help us see our situation objectively. We don’t have all of the facts. We don’t see all of the potential.
Some people don’t like praying to an omniscient God because it makes them feel constricted, hemmed in, deprived of possibilities for personal potential. In fact, one way of translating the verb I’ve written as “bundled up” can be translated as “bound” or “tied up.” It can have a negative way of viewing God as being too restrictive in our lives. It can be the opposite of trust—that feeling expressed by many teenagers when they yell at their parents that parental restrictions are keeping them from growing up, from becoming more adult.
Verse 5 tells us that God is both behind and in front of us. It might mean that God is both to the west and the east so the psalmist (and Israel as a whole) could be protected from both sides (from the sea and from the desert).
Martin Luther once pictured the condition of the believer. He pictured us as being like infants bound in a blanket. We’re being held in God’s arms and we’re safe in them. However, we occasionally let our bare feet peek out from under the blanket and that is when our enemy and his minions try to bite our exposed toes. In short, we have a tendency to put ourselves at risk whenever we try to wriggle out of the safety of God’s plan and provision for our lives. We have a tendency to act like God’s hand is heavy on us, oppressively holding us down, even though we know God wants what is best for us. We resent being in God’s “arms,” so to speak. We foolishly and rebelliously slap at God’s guiding hand.
Does the theology of God’s omniscience make a difference in my prayer life? You’d better believe it. I can put myself in God’s hands, knowing that God not only understands my feelings but also knows all the circumstances surrounding the decisions I need to make, the desperation I might be feeling, and the direction I need to go. Prayer isn’t a matter of briefing God on my problems. It often involves talking out those problems in order to see more clearly where God wants to work in my life.
The God of the entire universe is with us in whatever we have to do. God is in charge whether one is where the source of life was presumed to be or in the place of the dead. There is no avoiding God’s authority. Even if he had the power to carry the sun like a god, we would still be under God’s command and subject to God’s Presence.
In the Psalm, the psalmist recognizes God as the creator of his kidneys—the center of conscience according to the ancient world. So, the psalmist appeals to God as the source of his information about right and wrong. We have an advantage over the psalmist. We can depend upon the Holy Spirit rather than some physical portion of our bodies. But the point is, the psalmist like you and I can appeal to God as the arbiter of right and wrong in our lives.
We can also echo the thoughts of the psalmist that God wove us together in our mother’s wombs. What great imagery! I like the imagery because it suggests that those strands of DNA that are woven together in my chemical make-up did not happen by accident. My very genetic structure is a fabulous tapestry from God.
We cannot comprehend God’s thoughts because they are too numerous and complex for us. It would be as absurd as trying to count the grains of sand on the beach. BUT, the reason the psalmist affirms all of this is because he wants to claim God’s power and God’s purpose for himself. So, I ask you, does the theology of God’s omnipotence affect your life? It ought to. God’s power and presence in our lives means—No Fear.
The last six verses make us quite uncomfortable. Does hating the enemies of God mean that we have to be priggish and self-righteous? Does it mean that we have to go on a crusade against those who do not trust in God?
Here’s the question. Do we really want to get rid of all the devious, carnal, and despicable people around us? C. S. Lewis suggested in his Reflections on the Psalms that we are really only opposed to the enemies of God when they cease to amuse us, flatter us, and serve some utility for us. In reflecting on this Psalm and others like it, Lewis interpreted a phrase from the Model Prayer to reflect how we should understand this.
“’Lead us not into temptation,’ often means, among other things, ‘Deny me those gratifying invitations, those highly interesting contacts, that participation in the brilliant movements of our age, which I so often, at such risk, desire.’” Isn’t that what this last section of the Psalm is all about? The psalmist asks God to keep him aligned with God and not dependent upon idols. And when we refuse to align ourselves with those who oppose God, are we not also avoiding the idols of power, prestige, and privilege? And I, for one, need to keep on praying that.
~Bits and Pieces of Sermon by Johnny Wilson
