We do things in secret as humans. In the darkness. We tell ourselves, God doesn’t see. We do things in front of the computer when no one is looking, on our phone in secret, when no one is home, and we assume, its safe, no one saw me. But God saw it all.
Our entire civilization has interpreted and re-interpreted everything from marriage, to entertainment, science, psychology, morality, philosophy, all of it re-interpreted to exclude the reality of God and His word. But in the end, they cannot dissolve God’s light, they rely on it even as they reject it.
The famous philosophy Voltaire said, “”One hundred years from my day, there will not be a Bible on earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity-seeker” 50 years after Voltaire had passed, his predictions had not come true, and the house he had lived in was in use by the Geneva bible society as a place to store and print bibles and Christian literature.
So if you have things you’re hiding from God, he already knows. What God asks, is that we stop hiding them, he wants us to bring them into the light, of our own choice. Because one day all things will be brought into the light by God himself, for judgment. Bring them into the light now, confess it to God, ask God to forgive it if it’s sin, ask God to heal it if it’s broken.
There are no separate categories of our lives that God isn’t allowed into, there is no division between our religious life and our personal life, it’s all one thing. It’s all before God’s eyes.
Judge yourself now, and bring those things into the light. As Ephesians 5:13 says, “ “But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”
In verses 13-15 it says, “13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.”
In all the endless thousands of years before you, all this human history took place, and then one day, through your parents, you began to exist. And God wove you together in your mother’s womb.
Lungs, kidneys, liver, pancreas, muscles, tendons, ligaments, all forming together in a magnificently complex series of pre-programmed functions written into your DNA.
If God can cause your mother’s womb, your DNA, and all those functions to weave together to form your birth, how much more can God be trusted to weave the strands of your life together to form a blessed and holy adventure?
All of this, from the intricate design of your body in the womb, to the intricate weaving of your life journey, all proves one thing about God:
He is love.
And when we see this incredible love of God in action, it causes us to trust Him.
But here’s how the journey works: We’re going through a rough reality on Earth, we’re walking through the curse of the fall.
So on our journey, God is training us.
It starts with love, and as we love God, and God loves on us, we learn to trust God.
Love and trust are deeply and intrinsically linked.
So then we learn, through love, to trust.
But what about when a difficult trial occurs in our lives? Or some traumatic event?
We remember God is love at the source. We’re going through a trial though, and its painful. Yet we do still sense God’s love for us through it. So we hold on to the two realities, of the fact of His love and the sense of His love, to continue to trust.
But as God weaves our journey together, he winnows our path as well.
So what happens is, we go through even tougher trials. And then we also don’t sense God’s love through it. He even feels distant and cold at times. Far off even.
It’s in those moments that we can’t sense his love, and we are in suffering, that all we have to hold on to is, the fact that we know God is love. And, during those hardest moments, if we remember God is love, we will trust, despite the distance and the trial.
Next verse 16: “You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.”
Not only did God form us in our womb, not only did he fashion our soul, not only does he weave our lives together through trials and joys, he also saw us before we were born.
This is a profound mystery, but some claim to have memories of before they were born. They were with God in heaven, about to be sent to Earth, into the womb of their mother. This of course can’t be proven. Whether you believe this or not is up to you, but the word of God does tell us, even before we were born, God saw us.
We get another interesting fact about our journeys on Earth, we’re told our lives are written in books in heaven. There is a book in heaven describing the events of your life and the choices you’ve made. It’s all recorded in heaven, every time you helped a homeless person, or prayed with a family member, or showed kindness to a waitress, or loved one of your children. Your book is in heaven, and will be opened on the day of judgment, and we as Christians will be able to say, every page where I sinned, it was washed away with the blood of Jesus, and that page would then be blank, and God would be able to search our book, and say, well, I only see the good things you did, because Jesus covered the bad. And we’ll be rewarded.
For those who did not receive and faithfully follow Jesus, they will be judged based on the sins recorded in their book in heaven. And the good won’t be able to make up for the bad. Only Jesus can forgive sins.
Verses 17-18 tells us: “17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!”
18 I can’t even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
Like the grains of sand on a seashore are the thoughts of God toward you. He is working on you in so many ways. And the best way to have the language and mindset to interact with those actions of God in your life is to know His word deeply, and to spend times in deep prayer, listening for His voice, and to spend time in heart felt worship. As you do those three things you’ll be engaged in the process God is doing in your life, able to Hear, and respond to His voice.
But I also want you to keep in mind the healing process that we went through together. It is vital to keep this process as a toolkit in your life. New traumas will come, new challenges will occur, and we can face them with the healing principles God has taught us in the psalms.
Let’s review the process God has taught us. The first message dealt with Psalm 23, seeking the restful healing God provides. 2nd, we talked about healing through prayer, Jesus will heal us through times of deep prayer. 3rd we talked about building faith, that by studying the evidence for God we can strengthen our faith. 4th we examined where suffering came from, how it came about through Adam and Eve’s fall. 5th, we talked about racing thoughts, and the tool of wrestling with God through these racing thoughts. 6th we talked about overcoming fear by allowing God to be our deepest foundation. 7th we talked about the dark night of the soul, that the rock bottom experiences actually bring us closer to God if we allow them to train us, 8th we talked about how we call our souls to hope in God after a dark time, 9th we talked about Joy coming after we’ve repented of sins, and found a clear conscience with God, 10th we talked about Gratitude, how we can choose gratitude by counting our blessings and rejecting negative thinking, 11th, we talked about humility, and how through God’s help, we can be freed from pride, remain humble, and lastly, today, we talked about the blessing of the presence of God, that after we’ve healed from trauma, and we’ve come out the other side cleansed, renewed, humbled and softened in our heart, we experience a deeper anointing of the presence of God, the greatest blessing imaginable.
Last portion, 18b: “And when I wake up, you are still with me!”
This is a great reminder. Going forward, life will continue to happen. We will face new challenges, and new trials, and new losses. We will also enjoy new blessings, new joys, and new adventures.
But the most wonderful thing about our walk with God is, than when we wake up tomorrow, the word tells us, “God you are still with me.”
He is there each day for us, ready to walk us through no matter what may come. He has future grace for us tomorrow. Even knowing life still happens, I can trust you God. I do trust you God.
I remember finishing writing this message, and thinking to myself, I’m missing something. There were all these elements of the message, healing, God’s presence in our lives, His overflowing love for us constant each day, difficulties we face and how God guides us through them, real trust that God develops in us, where we just trust him completely, how he weaves and winnows our path through this world, all God’s endless thoughts toward us, the records of our books in heaven, how God sees it all, and how he’s so much closer than we think.
And I thought to myself, all of this culminates into the heart of what it means for God to be the king of our lives, the one who loves us, and guides us, the one we trust through the hardest difficulties of life, it’s all the blessing we receive after we’ve accepted Jesus Christ into our hearts. And it’s active every single day we continue to follow Him. It’s the active blessing.
It brought to mind Numbers 6:24-26: Let this word be your prayer over you and your family: 24 “The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”
Prayer: Lord, today we thank you for healing us. Please continue to heal us of our deep heart wounds. God please bless us today with your presence in our lives, in every moment, may we sense, enjoy, and bask in your presence Father, as you bless us along this journey of life, in Jesus name, amen.
