Psalm 139:1-18
The All-Knowing, Ever-Present God
For the choir director. A psalm of David.
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1. Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2. You know when I sit down and when I stand up;
you understand my thoughts from far away.
3. You observe my travels and my rest;
you are aware of all my ways.
4. Before a word is on my tongue,
you know all about it, Lord.
5. You have encircled me;
you have placed your hand on me.
6. This wondrous knowledge is beyond me.
It is lofty; I am unable to reach it.
7. Where can I go to escape your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8. If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9. If I fly on the wings of the dawn
and settle down on the western horizon,
10. even there your hand will lead me;
your right hand will hold on to me.
11. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me,
and the light around me will be night”—
12. even the darkness is not dark to you.
The night shines like the day;
darkness and light are alike to you.
13. For it was you who created my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14. I will praise you
because I have been remarkably and wondrously
made.
Your works are wondrous,
and I know this very well.
15. My bones were not hidden from you
when I was made in secret,
when I was formed in the depths of the earth.
16. Your eyes saw me when I was formless;
all my days were written in your book and planned
before a single one of them began.
17. God, how precious your thoughts are to me;
how vast their sum is!
18. If I counted them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand;
when I wake up, I am still with you.
In a time of crisis, a few God-centered people introduced me to Psalm 139, where I found so much Hope. We first focused on verses 13-14, which proclaim and confirm three life-changing facts:
1. God did in fact knowingly and purposefully plan and create each of us in our mother’s womb.
2. Because God’s works (creations) are full of awe and wonder—and we are one of those works—we were created with awe and wonder too.
3. Verse 14 states that God’s works are wondrous, which means we were created wondrously. Wondrous is defined as inspiring a feeling of wonder or delight; extremely good, marvelous, extraordinary.
Wow! How good does it feel to know you were created to be extraordinary? This confirms that not one of us was created “bad” or for bad purposes, which I believed I had been. I believed I deserved bad things, because I was just born bad. I lived my life that way, accepting bad things when they happened, as part of what I deserved. I learned through these verses, though, that each of us – without exception - has been created with the potential in us to be extremely good! We just have to choose this goodness for ourselves and ask God to show us how to live it out in our daily lives. How life-changing this is!
The overall message of verses 1-18 is the praiseworthiness of an unbelievably great and loving God, who,
• has searched you, inside and out. He knows you, who you are, what you think, what you like and don’t like, what you want and don’t want. He knows you, all of you, even better than you know yourself. And yet, despite all this, he still loves you dearly. 😊
• He sees you, wherever you are, wherever you go, whatever you are doing, and surrounds you with his presence, when you believe and trust in him. He has planned our days for us and fills our thoughts with the right things and the right way to go.
• And even with all the thoughts and things God must take care of, when you wake from sleep, you can rest assured that you are still on God’s mind. He doesn’t forget you. He’s never too busy for any of us, at any time.
Dear Beloved of God, place it in your mind and heart right now that you were purposefully created for good things. Believe that God is truly always there for you, for love, for guidance, for protection, for whatever you need. Just call on him and he will be right there.
• King David confirms this with his words in this Psalm.
• If it were not true, God would not have divinely inspired these words to be documented and written as part of the Holy Bible. You can trust them.
This is God’s beautiful, trustworthy, Love Letter to you. Take it deeply into your heart and cherish it as your very own. For you are truly God’s Beloved 💜
Do you have questions?
I’d love to answer them.
Please leave them in the comments or feel free to contact me here. 💗