May 30 - Psalm 139:23

May 30 - Psalm 139:23

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 

And here it is.  This is what all of the passion is about regarding the wicked and those who hate God. The psalmist wasn’t out to make judgment on everyone else.  That was up to God.  What he wanted to know was what it was God might find in him.

I was looking back at some old journal entries I had made in the mid-late 90s and one of the things I observed at the time was the incredible amount of judgmentalism that was occurring … in the world, in my own communities, everywhere I turned.  We were turning the focus outward in a very negative manner, rather than worrying about how we transform ourselves.

A friend of mine used to tell the story of how, in his small town, a local man had refused to pay him for the veterinary services he supplied.  The man’s animal had died and he blamed my friend, though there had been nothing that could be done.  A lot of bitterness and anger had developed over the years between the two of them and it affected a great deal of this man’s life. The town was too small to manage that much anger.

He said that one day as he was pumping gas, this man drove into the gas station and my friend realized that things couldn’t keep going as they were, it was much too painful.  Even though this man had spread terrible lies about my friend, refused to pay a bill, took every chance to take potshots at him, my friend knew he would never receive an apology.  As a Christian, my friend felt that he had righteousness on his side.  He’d done nothing wrong … at all.  He was the one who had been wronged.

He walked over to the man and said, “I’m sorry,” then walked away.  My friend recognized that the greatest seat of anger and wickedness was within himself and he needed to release it.  In that moment of release, he was also able to release God’s love into the world.  It didn’t matter that the entire situation was caused by the other man’s wickedness, my friend needed to acknowledge that it was his heart that needed to change.

Three days later, the man came into my friend’s veterinary office, paid the original bill and asked for forgiveness.

We don’t release God’s love by setting ourselves up as his tools of judgment on the world.  When God searches our hearts and we allow his goodness and love to shine through, we become his tools for transformation.