What is the significance that God knows our anxious thoughts (Psalm 139:23)?

Can we pray this practical prayer from our heart? "How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand — Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Ps. 139:17-18, 23-24).

The godly man welcomes the searchings of God into the inmost recesses of his heart, desiring that he may be delivered from every evil way and led “in the way everlasting.”

In the experience of the psalmist the consciousness of the omniscience of God at first plunges his soul into the deepest distress as he thinks of his own broken responsibilities towards God. When, at length, he realizes that God's “works” and God's “thoughts” are toward him in grace, the omniscience of God becomes the source of his deepest comfort.

Beloved friends, we ought to feel continually that we have to do with One Who knows us altogether. And if we really feel that this is so, we shall take up the language of the last two verses of this psalm, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me." Is there anything within that would grieve Thee, anything contrary to Thee? Perhaps I am hugging something selfish, something may be deceiving me, I may have wrong thoughts about myself, therefore I need that God should search me and try me, "and lead me in the way everlasting".

David's earnest outcry to God is "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts." The fact is, of course, that God knows all about me at all times, whether I am sleeping or waking, whether I am conscious that His eyes are upon me or not. But when I apprehend the truth of God's omniscience in the way that the psalmist had done, I shall, like him, desire to walk in the consciousness of it continually. My heart will cry out to God that day by day I may ever walk with the light of His face shining upon me. Then I shall have the happy assurance, in all I do and say, that God Himself is before me and round about me every step of the way I am taking.

How awful, then; the condition of the wicked: strangers and enemies to Him who made them; necessarily devoted to death by the very Author of their life. The psalmist is in perfect accord with the divine sentence, and counts the enemies of God as enemies to himself. But he is not unconscious of his own malady; and the sanctity of God's presence is not a refuge merely for him from the wickedness around. He seeks it as a refuge from himself also, and welcomes the light of it, as where sin cannot be hid. Search me," he cries, "O Mighty One,and know my heart; try me, and know my diverse" — literally, "branching" — "thoughts": all those to him perplexing entanglements of thought which God alone could unravel; "and see if there be any grievous way in me," — anything which is grievous to Thee: "and lead me in the way everlasting."

If in evil I see myself (and this I always shall whilst here, in the root, even if it be not manifested in its fruit), and if I think that God will be against me because of it, I shall have no strength for conflict, but be utterly cast down, groaning as to my acceptance. But if certain that God is for me, the consciousness of this will give me courage and victory, nay, even enable me to say, "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." In the confidence of the love and grace of God I can ask Him to search out all my evil - what I otherwise dare not do, lest it should overwhelm me with despair. God is my friend - for me, against my own evil.

There is a present restraint, under God's hand, on man's evil. Once for a moment God removed it - "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." Again He will remove it, and men will be given over to "strong delusion, to believe a lie, that they all may be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." The present moment is a solemn one, popery and semi-popery spreading on the one hand, rationalism and infidelity on the other. Of our own selves we must judge righteous judgment. "Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God" (v. 19). If He is sifting His own people, He will judge all this proud Christianity, whether sacerdotal or sacramental efficacy, or despising lordship and government. But is the knowledge of being delivered from the wrath to come to settle us in self-complacency? By no means - but under the sheltering certainty, that God has searched and known us (as expressed in the first verse of this Psalm), we can turn this truth into a prayer, and say, in the words of the concluding verses, "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" (v. 23, 24). None but he who knows the shelter of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the mercy-seat of God, and is conscious that God has already searched him, and known him, could put up such a prayer. God must be acknowledged as omniscient. We need Him to help us in searching ourselves, because we are partial in self-judgment. The beam is in our own eye, the mote in our brother's eye, and nothing but the Spirit of God can enable us to get the beam out. It is He who searches the reins and hearts, who has said, "Your sins and iniquities will I remember no more," and it is because He remembers them no more, that we can ask Him to shew us what debtors we are to His grace.

122 Is it not a comfort to the soul that really loves holiness to know that God will come and sweep the house, lest there should be a single thing left there to offend His eye, or hinder us from walking in the light in which He dwells? Grace emboldens the saint to say, "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." What amazing confidence! And God does search us, and that by the light of the word. He shews us the evil by the word. This is the use the Spirit makes of the word: "For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow; and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," v. 12. We are brought into God's presence; we have, as it were, God speaking to us. He searches my heart even in the sweetest testimonies of His grace: and then, having discovered to me the evil, does He speak about it in judgment, as that which is imputed to me as sin? No! He says, Here is something not in accordance with My love, something that does not satisfy My love.

1893 338 David's last meeting with Saul evidently affected him greatly; and it is probable that, as he set before him in feeling terms his condition as a partridge hunted on the mountains, and his insignificance, compared with the strength and resources of the king, as a flea, that he realized his danger in a way he had never done before, and felt that his enemies would eventually hunt him to death. The exceeding peril of yielding to anxious thoughts he at one time expressed in language which many since have adopted for their blessing, but which at this moment he failed to realize. In Psalm 139, which brings the soul in all its internal workings under the eye of the Lord, he expresses the fervent desire to be delivered from every thought which would discourage his heart and lead to departure from God. 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."

Not only are the will and the passions to be bridled and silenced, but anxieties also. We are in relationship with God; in all things He is our refuge; and events do not disturb Him. He knows the end from the beginning. He knows everything, He knows it beforehand; events shake neither His throne, nor His heart; they always accomplish His purposes. But to us He is love; we are through grace the objects of His tender care. He listens to us and bows down His ear to hear us. In all things therefore, instead of disquieting ourselves and weighing everything in our own hearts, we ought to present our requests to God with prayer, with supplication, with a heart that makes itself known (for we are human beings) but with the knowledge of the heart of God (for He loves us perfectly); so that, even while making our petition to Him, we can already give thanks, because we are sure of the answer of His grace, be it what it may; and it is our requests that we are to present to Him. Nor is it a cold commandment to find out His will and then come: we are to go with our requests. Hence it does not say, you will have what you ask; but God's peace will keep your hearts. This is trust; and His peace, the peace of God Himself, shall keep our hearts. It does not say that our hearts shall keep the peace of God; but, having cast our burden on Him whose peace nothing can disturb, His peace keeps our hearts. Our trouble is before Him, and the constant peace of the God of love, who takes charge of everything and knows all beforehand, quiets our disburdened hearts, and imparts to us the peace which is in Himself and which is above all understanding (or at least keeps our hearts by it), even as He Himself is above all the circumstances that can disquiet us, and above the poor human heart that is troubled by them. Oh, what grace! that even our anxieties are a means of our being filled with this marvellous peace, if we know how to bring them to God, and true He is. May we learn indeed how to maintain this intercourse with God and its reality, in order that we may converse with Him and understand His ways with believers!