“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!” (ESV)

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” (NIV)

What’s the one thing you’ll never tell anyone about? The thing you’ve decided you’ll take to your grave.

I hope you don’t have an answer. Most of us do. I know I did for years.

We all have “things to hide.” Intrusive thoughts. Crippling anxieties. Our past.

We’re comfortable saying, “God knows my heart,” but it can often just be a defense mechanism to keep others far from “our business.” But David? He says, “search me.” to the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-good God, he says, “Search me, oh God.” Talk about vulnerability.

Does David claim to have nothing to hide? Was he testing God? Claiming to be innocent? 

Not. At. All. David knew his own thoughts to be desperately anxious and overwhelmingly impure. He knew very well what it was like to sin grievously and attempt to hide it from the Lord. But in the end, David learned there was no hiding from God. His judgment or His mercy. 

David isn’t saying, “Look at me, I know I’m clean.” He’s saying, “Look at me. I trust you. If something is wrong, I want you to find it.” In the very next verse he says, to “point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” He wants God to search him because he wants God to lead him.

An innocent man is said to have “nothing to hide.” But, a man of integrity, chooses not to hide the things he “probably should.” Psalm 139 isn’t a prayer of an innocent man, it’s a prayer of someone who knows God’s heart toward him and doesn’t want to hide his own from him. 

David knew his thoughts weren’t always precious, but he knew God’s thoughts toward him were. Not only precious, but innumerously precious. (v 17-18) That gave him the courage to open every hidden place of his heart to God. And the man after God’s own heart wanted to have a heart that was known by Him. Deeply known. 

So, you can cover your sin that is “worth hiding” and, in the end, God will reveal it, or like David, you can reveal your sin and let God cover it. Because when you know the heart of God toward you, you don’t have to be afraid to let Him search and lead yours.

Written by Blake Stanley