Psalm 139-1You have searched me, Lord, 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, Lord, KNOW it completely. 5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.6 Such KNOWLEDGE is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Verse 1 says that we have all been searched by God. Our hearts and thoughts have all been under His surveillance, and nothing has escaped His purview. For our purposes, let’s say God knows every thought we have ever had and has also known every feeling we have ever felt. Every inclination, every thought, every time an evil or wicked or self-righteous or judgmental thought has come across our minds, He has known about it. Every time we were jealous or angry, depressed or scared, He has known about it. He knows who we try to convince the world that we are, and He knows who we really are on the inside.
Not only does He know what we think, but He knows where we have been. He knows where we are every minute of the day. He knows what we do that we think no one else could ever know. He knows what the future holds for each of us in detail. He is familiar with all of our ways. He knows our likes and preferences, our personality and bent. He knows what triggers us to anger and impulsive behavior. He knows what we struggle with, what tempts us. He knows what we are good at and where we are weak or find ourselves limited. He knows what our tendencies are and what our go-to’s are when we look to things outside of God for comfort or help. God knows our hurts, habits, hang-ups and hangouts. He knows what we are hoping for, what we dream about, and what we wish could be our experience. Verse 4 says He knows what we will say before we say it, before we even think of saying it.
God doesn’t have to learn anything, and God never forgets anything. Since God knows it all, He also knows what you need in any given situation. He knows when to send someone to encourage you. He knows when to send an unexpected blessing your way. He knows if you need emotional or physical or spiritual help. He knows what is weighing you down and how to come to your rescue. He knows how to get His supply to wherever and whatever your need is.
If that isn’t enough to consider, how about we just move on to verse 5: 5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
In spite of everything that God knows about us, our frailties, our weaknesses, our limitations, our selfish nature, and our failures, He still lays His hand upon us. What? Does that blow anyone else’s mind? God knows what we are capable of, both for good and for evil, and yet, He lays His hand upon us. He chooses to call and use fallible human beings. He knows we will make mistakes. He knows we are short-sighted. He knows we will let Him down. He knows we aren’t always quick to understand, but He still invests in us. He still calls us into relationship with Himself. He still puts His hands on us!
Y’all, He knows we will be up one day and down the next. He knows we will be full of faith at times and will have doubts and questions at others. He knows we will have moments of full surrender and follow them up with moments when we are full of ourselves, and yet, the Bible says, He still chooses to place His hand on us.
Oh, Child of God, do not take for granted the God who knows you better than you know yourself and still chooses to put His hands on you. Those hands of comfort, those hands of correction and discipline, those hands of guidance, those hands of blessing, those Divine hands are on your life.
What a stunning realization it is when we understand that the God who knows us completely, the good, bad and the ugly, still wants to put His hands on our lives and use us for His glory.
Jesus knew the disciples would deny and desert Him, and He still called them.
He knows everything about us and still says, “Come here. Let me get my hands on you.” You can’t change that God knows everything about you, but you can control how close you get to Him. You can let Him be “hands on” in your life, or you can resist His work. It just doesn’t make sense to me to acknowledge that we have been fashioned by God’s hands and then to live as if He doesn’t care how we live. God has a plan for every person. He wants to anoint you for a purpose and to set you apart for His use. He wants to give you the ability to push back and subdue the powers of darkness. By His Divine hand He wants to put you in places where you can grow and learn what you need to know for what is yet ahead. He wants to cover and protect you with His hands. Through a touch of His hand, He wants to give you supernatural strength to destroy what might seek to destroy you and to protect others in the process. He wants to put His hands on your hands and enable you to hit precise targets and to defeat the giants in your life. His, are hands of blessing. By His mighty right hand, He will support you, elevate you and open the right doors for you and at just the right time. You can’t control what God knows or doesn’t know about you because He knows it all, but you don’t have to worry about whether He loves you or is for you. That is a guarantee. He wants you to be in His hands no matter what.
In Psalm 31, a different Psalm written by David, he said in verse 5, “Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God.” What an incredible prayer to pray. David trusted the hands of God. Jesus prayed the same with His very last breath. That ought to tell us something about how trustworthy the hands of God are. David said it again in verses 14-15: 14 But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” 15 My times are in your hands.
Here is what is speaking to me loud and clear. David not only trusted God’s plan for His life and trusted God’s help and protection for His life, but David also trusted God to receive and forgive him when he messed up. David willingly placed both the good times and the bad times in the Lord’s hands. Why should you eagerly place your hands in God’s hands? Because you can trust the God who knows everything about you and yet wants to put His hands of blessing on you. I am grateful that He is a “Know it All, Hands-on God.”
