Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
(Psalm 139:23-24 NIV)
Why does [David] ask God to search his thoughts? How does he show an awareness of his own limitations (vv. 23-24)? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 865).
One of today’s key psychological points of view is that we can be in a state of profound denial. We have repressed a fact or truth to such an extent that it submerges even below our own consciousness. I have personally experienced this and was only freed from it by a mental breakdown. My condition had many facets, but let me detail just one of them. I had for years SECRETLY wanted to be president. I would have been mortified if anyone knew my secret. Then came my mental breakdown and I told everyone who would listen that I was in the immediate future going to be president. When I recovered from my breakdown, I found that I WAS STILL ACCEPTED AND LOVED by those who knew my now disclosed secret. I even found that I was loved for having a worthy if quixotic dream. This heretofore secret was only one contributor to my chronic anxiety and many others were addressed as well during my breakdown. Since then, I have been enabled to be more truthful with myself and others.
Even so, David’s petition to God allows for a thorough examination by God of all conscious and unconscious matters and motives. This humility before God is no doubt a key reason David was a man after God’s own heart. We know that God himself is humble because only a humble being could possess his multifaceted and coruscating creativity.
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