O Lord, You have searched me and known me!

Psalm 139:1

Do you remember the excitement of new love?! Do you remember how it felt in the discovery stage of one another…when you began to realize that this new person in your life might possibly be “the one” that you’ve been waiting for and praying for? You begin to spend time together and all you want to do is be around this person. You both do everything you can to be together…when you’re apart the minutes feel like days…when you’re together it doesn’t matter what you do, and you spend countless minutes…hours…just wanting to look at each other and learn about each other and study one another’s faces, the way that they smile, the way that they laugh…what they’re favorite activities are…what their favorite kind of donuts are…do they like donuts? Do they like sushi? Moments of new discovery and “me too!!” moments make you giddy as you learn more and more about one another.

This beautiful earthly love is only a sliver, merely a glimpse, of the crazy love that our heavenly Father has for us. It’s true. He’s crazy about us. He wants us to share everything about us with Him!!

Only His perfect love…it stays on fire like this eternally. His crazy love for us, His crazy interest in us…it doesn’t dwindle with time. His crazy love for us doesn’t lose intensity or gain intensity based on our performance or our failure. It’s steadfast. It doesn’t need to be rekindled or renewed. His love for us is an “eternal flame”. (Throwback to The Bangles…it was a great 80’s favorite of mine!!!).

As I was diving into the depths of two words in Psalm 139:1, “search” and “know”, I began to see the intensity of the Father’s pursuit of us at a deeper level. It began to feel again like that feeling of new love, like the feeling of being wanted and pursued and discovered and explored. Not just the feeling of it…but the truth of it.

“O Lord You have searched me…” Here are a few other ways to say this phrase…

“O Lord You have intimately and thoroughly examined me…O Lord You have investigated me…O Lord You have explored me…O Lord You have been seeking me out…

Doesn’t this remind you a little of the “new love” phase? The giddy, euphoric “I-want-to-know-everything-there-is-about-you-phase?” Or, even better, for the fortunate and wise couples who have learned the secret of success in relationships (modeled by our perfect Father)…it’s that continued and consistent love and pursuit of their spouse, the continual discovery and exploration of their heart and mind.

Isn’t that what we all want?? To be pursued…discovered…known…seen…explored…and then still fully loved?! Not left by the wayside after baring our souls…even with all of the junk that gets exposed. There is nothing like being fully loved, even after you’ve been fully seen. There’s nothing like the feeling of being able to fully be yourself and fully show yourself and know that the intimacy will only go deeper and the walls will fall down.

It’s hard for me to fathom all of this. Because our Father…He sees all of us. The things that we’re able to hide in our hearts from other people are laid bare in front of Him. Psalm 44:21 says that He “knows the secrets of the heart.” Psalm 17:3 says “You probe my heart”. Even after all of the probing and exposed “secrets of the heart” He loves us and continues to seek us out anyway. Knowing that He probes our hearts, and knowing that He sees the hidden secrets of our hearts and continues to seek us out and explore us and pursue us…it’s another level. One that we can’t wrap our heads around…we can only sit in awe and wonder of it, or, we can hit our knees, humbled and honored that the Creator of the universe would intimately pursue us in all of our messiness.

The second word that I dove deep down into is “known”.

This is one of my favorite Hebrew words. “Yada”. It’s a fun and easy one to remember, and the meaning is just beautiful. It means “to know by experience”…“to be acquainted with”…“to be revealed”…“to make oneself known”.

We “yada”, or, “know” more about the people we love by living life alongside of them. By hanging out in the trenches with them. The “new love” phase is beautiful…the discovery phase is fun and exciting…but there’s another level, a deeper level. There’s the doing life together, the long conversations, the walking through struggles together, or the years of simply walking out life together and sharing experiences together. All of the fun and messy and hard and silly and sad. That’s how we know each other…yada each other…by experience. That’s when our true selves are revealed to one another. In the real life-stuff. In the trials and trenches and storms.

This is the way we get to deepen our relationship with our heavenly Father. We can remember how wonderful it felt when we first ran into His grace, and how on fire we were with this new discovery of what it looks like to have a relationship with Perfect Love Himself. Discovering Him…finding freedom in exposing all of us and knowing that He sees us and loves us…understanding the true meaning of grace. I remember it. When that word grace came alive for me.

But oh, the beauty of walking years with Him and knowing Him by experience and allowing Him to “come in” and know us by experience. He can already see all of us, but it’s the inviting Him in to those deeper spaces that deepens our relationship with Him. It’s telling Him that we want a true and intimate relationship with Him. It’s when we invite Him in and expose the hidden places that we are humbled…knowing and seeing that He loves us deeply and unconditionally, despite it all. It’s the walking through life and stumbling and reaching for His hand and Him pulling us up, time and time again. It’s the times that we walk close with Him on the Narrow and wander off of the path, and Him in all of His grace and mercy, showing us the way back to the path of Life. Those are the times that we see and know Him experientially and we allow Him to probe us again and again and shine light on the areas that we need Him to refine in us.

And then, we start to look like Him. We start to think like Him. Act like Him. The longer and closer we walk with Him, the more we resemble the image of our Father. Like the beautiful weathered couple who has been married for 40…50…60 years, wrinkles and gray telling stories of hardships and sadness and joys that they’ve walked together. When you listen to them telling stories of days gone by, their conversation flows back and forth, one speaking, another continuing or finishing the sentence and they look at each other and smile. Knowing. Yada. They know one another by experience. They know by a lifetime of exploring one another. Their hearts and minds are mingled and bound together.

Just like the mingling and binding of our hearts and minds to our Father when we allow Him a lifetime of searching and knowing us and when we pursue a life of searching “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God”. We speak and His words and truths begin to flow out of us as a result of abiding with the Father. As a result of wrestling with Him in prayer…crying out to Him in desperation…a result of spending time soaking in His Word…a result of being surrounded by others who are wrestling and praying and seeking Him alongside of us. He molds and conforms us to speak and think and look and act like Him.

O Lord, please search me. Know me. Mold me and change me. Fill me with You. Like the beautiful Puritan prayer says, “Quarry me deep, dear Lord, and then fill me to overflowing with living water.” Thank you for your beautiful grace and mercy…you see all of me and still love me and want me as your own. Thank you for never giving up on your pursuit of me, even when I wander off the path. Thank you for gently guiding me back, beautiful Shepherd of my heart. You amaze me Jesus. In Your precious Name, Amen.

Blessings,

Nicole

“Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Colossians 3:16