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YVOPG (Your Very Own, Personal God)
Psalm 139
I don’t play hand bells. I did play in a hand bell choir for couple of years, but I don’t play them now. The reason I don’t play hand bells is because of something our hand bell director told me.
To play hand bells you have to concentrate very hard. You have two bells to hold, one in each hand, and then you have two other bells on the table in front of you which you may have to play if there is suddenly a sharp or a flat among the two notes you are responsible for playing. Anyway, my hand bell director once commented after a rehearsal, or maybe it was after a program we had just done, that when I play, I’m concentrating so hard that I stick my tongue out of my mouth! That was it. I didn’t need to hear any more. I had no idea that I stuck out my tongue when concentrating, but I’m very glad she mentioned it to me. Right after she told me, though, she had to find a replacement for my position with the bells.
There are some things we know about ourselves, things no one else knows or could know, and then there are, apparently, things about us that we don’t know, but others do. Those others could be our doctor or our teachers or our parents or siblings, or our spouse, or just someone standing behind us.
Of course, there are places we’ve been, situations we’ve known, and concerns we’ve had that nobody else could know about.
Maybe between all the various folks who know about us and our own knowledge of ourselves we can get the whole picture of who we really are.
The 139th Psalm tells us that there is another person that knows us. Psalm 139 tells us that God knows us completely.
The psalmist writes:
The LORD knows us completely, better than anyone else
There is something inside us that yearns to be known, to be understood. (It’s something that God has placed within us.) We can sometimes feel that nobody really listens to us; nobody knows how we feel; nobody realizes what we’ve been through.
Counselors and psychotherapists make their living listening to people. They provide an interested ear to people who need to talk to someone. They are wonderfully helpful to people who can’t find some other, friendly, interested person to talk to—to tell someone about what’s going on inside--who we are—what our concerns are.
Today’s psalm tells us that God knows us. That may sound simple, yet it is profound. Knowing that God knows us creates a basis for our relationship with God. So I would like to begin by considering how God knows us, and then look at how God who knows us invites us into a relationship.
So, HOW DOES GOD KNOW US?
The psalmist tells us that God knows us; he has searched us, sifted our thoughts from the beginning.
God knows us in every situation. When I sit down and when I rise up. The Lord sees our activities. He knows when we speak; what words spill from our lips; what web sites we are visiting; what magazines we read.
The LORD knows our most intimate history. He was with us through the growing up years, through the years of discovery, the awkward years. He was there during times of confusion, times of defeat, during times of fear, and times of boldness.
The LORD was there at the winning game, and at our greatest victory. He was there when we got the bad news. He was there when we tried to figure a quick way out of a jam. He was there when we really blew it. God was there before we ever asked for help. God know when we were stubborn or afraid to face the truth.
God has known us through thick and thin. God was there when we learned what ‘NO’ meant, and what ‘Hot! Don’t touch’ meant. God was there when we lost something valuable to us—a friend who moved,; the death of a family member; when we lost our confidence.
God has been there, and God has known all there is to know about us. Even more, God has known us from before we were even born.
Psalms 139 says that God knew us when we were in our mother’s womb. God knitted us together, making us who we are. God knows every tiny detail about our chemistry; about our electrolytes, and our sugar levels; He knows our cholesterol—the good and the bad; he knows our everything.
The psalmist also tells us that God hems us in, behind and before us. That is, God surrounds us with his love from all sides.
If we think when we wake each morning that we are surrounded by God’s love, in fact we can’t escape it; we should look for it. We can find it in many corners of the day—‘nature singing, round me ringing the wonders of God’s love. ‘
St. Paul tells us that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God—NOTHING. That’s an incredible promise.
Further in the Psalm it tells us that no matter where we make our beds—in Sheol, the land of the dead, in the highest heaven—God is there. We cannot escape God who knows and loves us.
I love it when have a chance to meet children. I’ll ask them their names, and then have each of them say their name and add, “I am a child of God’. They should know that even when they are small. We all should know it, but how wonderful it is when we know it from the time we are small!
Being a child of God, being known by God, because God has created us, is the foundation for faith in God.
When we recognize that God knows us that is a giant step in faith.
When I can say that my name is Marjorie, for instance, and I am a child of God, that immediately puts a new light on things. When we recognize that we are ones whom God knows, and knows intimately, we are standing on the threshold of a new experience. We find that we can be in relationship with this One who knows our names.
You might know people who say they don’t believe in a personal God, don’t believe that God knows them; they would not believe that God even knows their names, or anything about them.
There are some languages that have more than one word for the verb ‘to know’. There is a distinction between ‘knowing information’ and ‘being acquainted with someone’. We can learn much information about a subject and still not know it personally until we have experienced it.
Years ago Yohko Yamamoto came to Phoenix from her home in Kawagoee, Japan. She came to be an exchange student and live with my family while she attended high school for a year. Yohko had studied English for five years. Presumably she knew the language, but Yohko had never heard English spoken by a native speaker, and she found herself lost in this new world of English for a while. She knew about English, but she didn’t KNOW English.
We meet many people over the course of our lives. We know some better than others. There are many people we only know slightly; we know their names, maybe something of where they live and about their family or jobs, but we don’t really know them. It takes a while to really get to know a person. But there eventually comes a time when we can say to ourselves, ‘I know that person. That person can be my friend. Or that person is someone I can count on…That person is someone I like to spend time with, OR that person is someone I CAN’T count on!” A relationship has finally begun with the person, because you have begun to know him/her.
Marriage is a particularly good example of two people knowing one another. Spouses learn of one another on many different levels. The marriage relationship takes work, continuous work, or it won’t develop. What if the young man thought that after he had said his vows that would be all there is to marriage? What if he thought he would no longer need to call his wife, or give her gifts? What if he thought there was no need any longer for them to go out for a special evening; no more time spent over coffee or beer, just chatting. No communication beyond the most basic kind. Such a marriage would be on its way to the divorce court before it ever really got started.
Just like a marriage, our relationship with God needs care and nurture. It doesn’t come suddenly. It takes constant work. We cannot rely on one moment in our lives, maybe some mountain top experience, when we felt close to God and leave it at that, any more than a newly married couple can leave their relationship on hold after they’ve taken their vows.
You might ask, then, ‘how is it that we can continue to work on our relationship with God? What can we do to get to know God? We may believe that God knows our names, and indeed, knows everything about us, but what do we do about knowing God?
Think about the fellow who just got married. He wooed his young lady friend by spending time with her; sending her gifts; taking her out; getting to know her family. He made it his business to know all there was to know about her. He put his energy into being special to the young lady.
Are there no similar things we can do to know God? We can learn information about God through Bible study; we can talk to God in prayer; we can tell God how much we love God in worship; we can reach out to God’s children in this world; we can enjoy God’s family by fellowshipping with other believers.
St. Augustine once wrote, “Thou hast made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find rest in Thee.” In other words, God made us with a God-shaped hole in our hearts that only God can fill. If that is so, we could reverse the thought and realize that there is a place in the heart of God that only we can fill. And God’s is restless until we find rest in Him.
Hannah Goodall Smith once wrote a book entitled: God is Enough.
She came to write the book after she a particularly troubling season in her life, a time when she had much questioning and perplexity.
It seems there was a lady staying near Hannah who was known to be a ‘deeply spiritual Christian’ whom she had been advised to apply to for help. Hannah wrote:
‘I summoned my courage and went to see her and painfully poured out my troubles, expecting that she would take great pains to do all she could to help me. She listened patiently but when I had finished my story and had paused, expecting sympathy and consideration, she simply said, ‘Yes, all you say may be very true, but then in spite of it all, there is God.’ I waited a few minutes for something more by nothing came. “But”, I continued, “surely you did not understand how very serious and perplexing my difficulties are.” “O yes I did,” replied the woman, ‘but then, as I tell you, there is God.’ And I could not induce her to make any other answer. It seemed to me most disappointing and unsatisfactory. I felt my peculiar and harrowing experiences could not be met so simply as the mere statement, ‘Yes, but then there’s God.”’
Hannah Woodall Smith did discover that ‘God is Enough.’ In the presence of God we appropriate all the resources of God.
The 139th Psalm tells us great news. It tells us there is a God who knows us more intimately than anyone else could, a God who cares for us., putting his hand on us, a God we can know personally.
When all is said and done there is one fact that still remains, ‘But then, there is God!’
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