You Have Searched Me and Known Me

Log in to take the quiz and save your progress.

1. Observe

   List aspects of God's knowledge in vv. 1-6.

   • Only general awareness
   • Knows sitting down and rising up; perceives thoughts from afar; searches out path and lying down; acquainted with all ways; knows every word on the tongue altogether; hems in behind and before; lays his hand on him
   • Surface-level information
   • Distant impressions

2. Observe

   What is the spatial scope of God's presence (vv. 7-12)?

   • Limited to the temple
   • Heaven, Sheol, the wings of the dawn, the uttermost parts of the sea, the deepest darkness — no place exists outside God's reach
   • Only earth
   • Only Israel

3. Interpret

   Is God's omniscience comfort or threat, and what determines the experience?

   • Always pure threat
   • Always pure comfort
   • The same divine knowledge that comforts the loved (he sees me, he knows me, I am not alone) can feel threatening to those hiding from him (he sees me, he knows what I have done, I cannot escape); what determines the experience is one's relationship to God — for those in covenant under grace, omniscience is loving intimacy; for those hiding from God, omniscience is exposure; the resolution is to come into the light, where being known becomes the means of being loved
   • Determined by external factors only

4. Interpret

   What does asking to be searched accomplish beyond God's already knowing?

   • Nothing
   • It is redundant
   • The asking opens the believer to receive what God knows — God's knowledge alone does not transform the believer who refuses to face it; the prayer for revelation invites God to bring to consciousness what was hidden from the praying soul, so that confession, repentance, and growth can occur; transformation requires self-knowledge, and self-knowledge requires being shown by God what we cannot see ourselves
   • It informs God

5. Apply

   Does one believe one is fearfully and wonderfully made, and what would change?

   • The verse applies only to exceptional people
   • Self-acceptance is irrelevant
   • Many believers struggle to apply this to themselves — accepting it about others while quietly believing themselves defective, mediocre, or accidental; receiving one's own existence as a deliberate divine craft changes self-evaluation (from comparison to recognition of intentional design), body-relationship (from criticism to gratitude), and vocation (from drifting to purposeful stewardship of what one was made to be); the change is significant and slow
   • Belief about self is unimportant

6. Apply

   What makes the search-me prayer difficult to pray sincerely?

   • Nothing
   • It is always easy
   • The fear of what will be revealed — areas of pride, hidden bitterness, secret patterns, motivations one would rather not examine, illusions about oneself that the prayer threatens; sincere praying requires being willing to receive what comes back, which may be uncomfortable; the very hesitation to pray it identifies where the prayer is most needed; the safety is that the searching God is also the gracious God who searches in order to lead one in the everlasting way
   • The prayer is forbidden

Your journal

Write your own answers — they save automatically, and only you can see them.

Log in to write and save journal answers.