Search me. Know my Anxious Thoughts.

There is a fear in all of us. It’s been there seemingly forever. The Psalmist sings ‘Search me, Know my Anxious Thoughts.’ Can God be that good?

I was watching a TV program about border control in the U.S.A.

The officers had a tip that someone coming through immigration was potentially carrying drugs.

As they approached him and asked him to come to the counter, he immediately got a little panicky. You could see he was worried and anxious.

They talked to him for a while and he denied having any drugs, but they were unconvinced.

They questioned him, and his story didn’t hold up to be true.

So they decided they would take him to the hospital and do an X-ray of his body.

When they got to the hospital, he duly went to the toilet and out came some condoms filled with cocaine.

He was afraid. He was concealing something. Hiding it from view.

Have you ever wanted to conceal something? Hide it from view?

This has been our human condition ever since Adam and Eve hid themselves from God.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Genesis 3:8

We fear discovery.

We fear being found out.

There is a longing to be known, but only as much as we have within our control.

So we cover ourselves in fig leaves and make pretense.

They realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Genesis 3:7

I wonder how much anxiety coursed through the veins of these first dressmakers as they heard God walking in the garden.

Search me and know me

Enter a writer of songs.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends you,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life. Psalm 139: 23-24

At the end of a beautiful psalm that talks about God knowing everything about us for all eternity, it settles down on to the feelings that Adam and Eve, the Psalm writer, and of you and me.

My anxious thoughts.

The Psalmist wants God to know his anxious thoughts.

That he has fear in his life.

He has worries, anxieties, tribulations.

More so, he wants God to take a long, deep examination. A search, even deeper than those of border control officers.

But this isn’t a search that will cause imprisonment, punishment, and banishment from the garden of God’s presence.

This is more a search for the cancer that could be killing the God life in him.

I want the Examination

I want the examination.

Be gentle with me. Be a fellow traveller with flaws.

I’m anxious and fearful that if you find something you don’t like, you’ll reject me.

I will be abandoned to the outer darkness.

I will be a leper living outside the city. 2 Kings 7:3

In the past, I have had a view that God is like this.

That God is going to examine me and find hidden contraband (sin) enclosed within me and that I would be sent off to a lost eternity.

That I should be afraid of God.

As a child, God was presented to me like this. A judge, full of justice, anger, wrath.

And I suppose God has the capability and capacity to be like this.

But is that the dominant facet of God’s personality?

Is that what Jesus was like? Is it love to reject and abandon?

I felt for that guy at immigration. I knew his panic, fear, and anxiety.

But I want an examination by a wise counsellor who will bring me into all truth.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.
He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard.
He will tell you about the future. He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me. John 16:12-14

Soul cancer is never pretty. It needs to be revealed to be healed.

Know me and I will be known

Would you know me?

Would you, human flesh as much as I, reach out and offer some peace to the anxiety I am feeling?

Anxiety comes in many forms, but at the root of it all is the belief that I am alone.

Psalm 139 sings peace to our fears.

If you are anxious and fearful, read the Psalms of people like us.

Psalm 139 and Psalm 23

Search me

Search me

I want the cancer cut out
Search me
Explore me
Great surgeon of the soul

Weight is the enemy
I need to know
What am I carrying?
Yeast in risen dough

Purify soil
Wash out all the dirt
Expose the pure gold
Cleanse away the hurt

I need not be frightened
Of your gentle care
Deep dirt is between me and you
In you there’s nothing to fear

You wash my feet
You bathe my hair
You salve the soul
You wipe the tear

Come gentle shepherd
Anoint my head with oil
May it soak into my brain
Messes to uncoil

Closer to you Lord
That’s where I want to be
Search me and know me
Clean before thee

Questions?
Comments?
Email me 🙂📨
barry@turningthepage.co.nz

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Quotes to consider

One of the deepest sources of my own loneliness is that so few people seem to have much of an interest in exploring my interior world. Larry Crabb
The people who are going to be most controlled by their fears are the ones who don’t admit them and deal with them. Richard Rohr -Job and the Mystery of Suffering
Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. D.T. Niles
The men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence. Brennan Manning Location: 133 The Furious Longing of God
God is a lover, not a rapist. God cannot walk past an empty heart and do nothing. Larry Crabb
It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. The danger is that of coming to love the prison. C.S. Lewis
Have Thine own way, Lord,
  Have Thine own way;
Search me and try me,
  Master, today.
Whiter than snow, Lord,
  Wash me just now,
As in Thy presence
  Humbly I bow.

Questions to answer

Have you been in the situation of being examined? Maybe a school exam, a medical exam, an airport examination. What feelings were generated?
Hiding something on purpose, a secret, takes energy. Being vulnerable takes courage. What type of person helps you to move from fear to being safely vulnerable?
What version or facet of God has dominated your thinking? How has this shaped your faith journey?

Formation exercise

Write down a secret on a piece of paper. You don’t need to share it with anyone, but what happens in you as you see this secret written out? ‘Know my anxious thoughts, meet me in them Lord’