Search Me

I decided last week that I wanted to visit my friends in Macomb (where I went to college) and to get out of the house. I was most excited to see Angie and Patrick and their amazing boys - aiden and anthony. Being around their family is such a warming feeling...I never feel out of place in their house!!

Today, I am sitting in the union of my university. It's quiet, for some reason, no one ever uses this top floor. I came over here this morning with a lot of things on my mind. I sat down on my favorite squishy comfy couch and started to type out what was on my mind - I feel flooded with memories and thoughts. I finished typing 2 pages of none sense when a song began to go through my mind - It's called Search Me by David Hunt. Which is odd because as I was showering, I was singing "Going to the chapel and we're, gunna get married, going to the chapel...." etc. As the lyrics were running through my head it took me a while to place the song "Hold me close, to your heart....search me, Oh God and know my heart...." As the lyrics continued to come I stopped. I stopped typing, I stopped answering the text messages and I just let the lyrics run through my head. I was hesitant to play the song but I did - on my computer - and I can hardly put to words the automatic sense of peace. Maybe it's the slow melody line, the simple background music, the soothing voice of Dave hunt ... but I think it's the powerful words, the plea, the crying out that just caused me to stop and just be in a moment with a wonderful worship song to my God.


Search me, oh God and know my heart
Test me, oh God and know my thoughts
See if there be any wicked way in me
Lead me into the way everlasting

Hold me close, to your heart
never drift, never part
Let me know, you are near
in your love there's no fear
hold me close, hold me close, to your heart

The second part of this song were the lyrics that began to run through my head first. I love the picture this paints - and the reminder that in God's love there is no fear! That God does not want to harm us, or to scare us away - that he longs to hold us close to Him. That we are the ones who get in the way of that happening. That we hold wickedness, bitterness, anger, frustration among other things in our heart - and we let it dwell and linger there. That I get upset at a person, a thought, a view, and I let it consume me and I allow that consumption to distance me to God. I allow one single incident to keep me from what is truly good for me and pleasing to God.
Yet, if I can do what Paul tells us to do - to cast my anxieties upon the Lord and release them from my heart - then I will be able to let God hold me, even closer. I will see that the fears I have in my life do not come from God but they come from myself. And that if I feel fear in a relationship or a situation - that maybe, just maybe, it's not from God.
Of course there is a healthy sense of fear - and a fear of God - but that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that gut wrenching fear that immobilizes me from taking a step forward. The fear that prevents me from being held bu God, that keeps me from having the Hebrews 11:1 faith - Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see!! That kind of faith can not be had with a wicked or fearful heart.

So, today I say "Search my heart, oh God - and show me my wicked ways. So that I may remove them, and allow YOU LORD to hold me, to guide me, and to love me".

Psalm 139 NIV
1 O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. 5 You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. 19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.