Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, May 16. You are known perfectly by our Heavenly Father, and through Christ can be totally accepted. Let's take a few minutes in today's podcast to dwell on Psalm 139. Now, I want you to forget about everybody else for just a moment, and more than likely, most people sitting here this morning have something in their life they would like for God to solve. You'd like to just have a little extra special awareness this morning, an assurance that God really and truly does understand how I'm feeling this morning.
The things that all of us have, we'd like to share with the people, and sometimes we feel like we can't. And there's some things we can, but I want you to listen to how well God knows you. Now, watch this.
If you don't, you're going to miss it. In your mind, you say, oh, I'm sure God's omniscient. He knows everything. But I want you to forget that for just a moment, and I want you to hear God tell you how perfectly He knows your innermost being this morning, beginning in verse 1. David says, oh, Lord, thou has searched me and known me.
Notice what he didn't say. He didn't say like oftentimes we pray. Oh, Lord, we are talking to you.
We're praying that you forgive us of our sins. David said, oh, Lord, thou has searched me. That is, you have looked me through and through. You know what is on the inside of me physically. If there is any disease there, you ought to have it spotted.
Any physical problem, you know all about it. But he also knows something within you and about you that no doctor can ever detect with an X-ray machine, because he says thou has searched me and you have known me through and through. That means he looks on the inside and he sees what we feel. He sees what we're thinking.
He checks out our attitudes and our motivations. Thou has searched me, scrutinized me carefully, and has known me. And when the Bible says that God has known us, how does He know us? He knows us in the past. He knows us in the present. He knows us in the future. And one of the most assuring things about His omniscience is this. God knows every intricate detail of tomorrow and 50 years and 100 years from now, just like He knows all the things that have happened in the past. God knows your future better than you know your past. Thou has searched me and known me.
It is absolutely and totally comprehensive. There is not one thing about you that is not perfectly known by God. Second verse, he says, thou dost know when I sit down and when I stand up or when I rise up. When you're resting and relaxing, when you're just thinking, when you're doing nothing as far as the world is concerned, God says, I know the most intimate details of your thoughts, even when you're doing nothing. Listen, thou dost understand my thoughts from afar. Even before you and I can put them all into place, He knows exactly what we're thinking and what we're feeling. Verse three, thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down. That is, He knows the direction of our life.
He knows it perfectly. And you see, sometimes a person has to back off and say, now, Lord, just give me a new glimpse. Where am I headed? What am I doing? If I keep doing what I'm doing now, where will I be five years from now, 10 years from now? What are my goals?
What are the things you want me to achieve in my life? He says, God already knows those. Is it not foolish for a man to attempt to live his life, ignoring the God who has meticulously already seen every detail of his future life? He never rests.
He never sleeps. He's always conscious of every single thing that is going on within you, without you and all of your surroundings. There is no way in the world for us to be outside the knowledge of God. Listen, beginning in verse three again, and you are acquainted, intimately acquainted with all my ways. Now, watch this, intimately acquainted with all of my ways. Now, you and I can know something about each other by watching our actions. We can know some things about each other by listening to what we say.
But who can read our motives? He says he is intimately acquainted. Now, listen, when we talk about acquaintances, you say, well, I'm acquainted with her or I'm acquainted with him. That means that you have some bit of knowledge about them and vice versa.
But when God says, listen, he didn't say I'm acquainted with you, David. He says I'm acquainted with all your ways. That means I know your thoughts. I know your actions. And more important than those, I know the motivations of your heart. And you see, sometimes people do things and oftentimes we are critical of them. We don't know their motives.
Oftentimes a person will do something that seems to be so beneficial and magnanimous in such an expression of generosity when the real motive of their heart is selfishness and greed. He says he knows all of our motives. He is acquainted with all of our ways.
There is not anything about you past, present, future that he does not know meticulously. Now watch verse four. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, thou dost know it all.
Now we need to remember that. Before you begin to gossip about somebody, remember, God knows what you're going to say before you say it. That is, what he's saying is that before your tongue can verbalize what your mind is thinking, God knows what you're going to say. He says even before you and I can form it on the tongue, God knows.
Now watch this. Behold, O Lord, thou knowest, thou dost know it all. Listen, you can whisper it on the telephone. God heard it.
You can write it in a letter. God sees it. You can tell a secret to one person at a time. That's the way people usually tell secrets.
One person at a time. God hears it all the time. Now listen to what he says. Thou hast enclosed me behind and before. Now what does he mean by that? What he's referring to here is he has besieged us. He has surrounded us. He's hemmed us in so that there isn't anything about us that can get out from under the omniscience of God.
He knows all about us. And look, if you will, at the latter part of that verse, and lay thine hand upon me. Now listen, that is not a hand of judgment, but what David is saying, he's saying, Lord, not only do you know me so well, but one of the indications of how you know me so well is that you're always close enough that you have your hand upon me. What is David saying? He's saying the Lord who knows me so intimately.
Now watch this. It's one thing for him to know me, but I believe he put that little phrase in there to reassure us he's always close enough that he has his hand upon our shoulder. He says, and thou has laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me beyond my comprehension.
Too high I cannot attain to it. Now you say, well, what good does that do me? Or what should it do for you and me that he is divinely, supernaturally acquainted with us? The first thing it does, it relieves us of pressure.
Now let me show you what kind. It relieves us of pressure. They can all start with ours so you won't forget them. It relieves us of pressure. What pressure? The pressure that I've got to live up to these expectations of God, and if I don't, I'm going to disappoint God. You can't disappoint God. You can grieve the heart of God, but you can't disappoint Him because you see, disappointment implies expectations that fail to be fulfilled. If God is absolutely omniscient and is acquainted with all your ways, He knows better than to place on you an expectation that you can't live up to. Now watch this carefully. I did not say that God's going to lower His standards so He won't get disappointed.
His standard is always the same, but He knows that you and I are always working. That is, if our heart hungers for God, we're always moving toward Him. We're going to falter. We're going to move up.
We're going to falter. We're never going to reach the plateau where we say, aha, you can relax. You have made it to God.
It'll never be that way. But in our journey toward Him, in our searching to know Him better, in our becoming more and more acquainted with Him and learning to live and love Him, God knows that we're going to fall flat on our face, shattered in the mud, a total disaster in some instances in our life. But I want to tell you something. Don't think you've disappointed God. He knew you weren't going to do it before you were ever born.
He is absolutely omniscient. Now you say, well, but now wait a minute, hold that. Because to me, that's one of the most delightful things I've ever thought about in my life. Praise God, He knew all of this before I was born, and He still loves me in spite of all that.
Listen, it relieves us of the pressure. And you see, this is the problem with people who are legalistic in their interpretation of the Bible. If you're going to be a Christian, you've got to do this and do that and do the other. You can't dress this way and you can't do this, you can't do that. If you're going to do all these things, then you'll be acceptable before God.
That's not true. He's a loving Heavenly Father, and though He has, listen, He has a standard, He knows, and listen, now watch this, because I don't want you to miss this or misinterpret this. Even though He knows we're not going to reach His standard, He keeps encouraging us, He keeps building us up, He keeps lifting us, He keeps forgiving us, He knows we'll never make all we want to be. That's why when you and I stand in the presence of God, He isn't going to judge us for just what we accomplish, He is going to reward us for our motivation. He knows that you want Him.
He knows that you're hungry for Him. He knows that you're fault can fall, but He likewise knows that deep in your heart, you really wanted the best for God. Listen, God doesn't have any expectation of me, He's there to encourage me to do my best by His power. The second thing it does, it releases me to be myself.
It releases me to be myself when I know that God knows all about me. That is, I don't have to fake anybody out, I don't have to play the hypocrite, you don't have to go to work tomorrow morning with this face all fixed up and look like a Christian and act like you're something that you don't feel deep down inside. Listen, you don't have to worry about impressing anybody else. Listen, you may impress some other folks, but you can't impress God.
How are you going to impress God? Impressing people and putting on the plastic face like the world does, and that's what they do. You think about the people you work around, most of you. You work around people who claim to be one thing in the office, but there's something else at home. And there may be something else entirely when they're away from people that they know. But you see, when you and I know and are emotionally aware of the fact that God is acquainted with all of our ways, what does it do? It relieves us and releases us to be ourselves. We're just to be what we are, who we are, and God is working on us to make us into His image and to His likeness so that we don't have to get all hung up. And you see, most people are all hung up about like this in life, trying to impress us, where they live, how they dress, what they drive, the kind of vocation. They have all of these things to impress somebody else. And the only person in the world that really matters is God. It relieves us to be ourselves, not to impress the world, but to do what? To be conformed to His likeness. The third thing it does, and this is very important, it relieves me of Satan's harassment once I have asked God to forgive me. Now watch this very carefully. Many times when you violate some spiritual principle, what happens? You get all in the doldrums and, oh Lord, I'm not what I ought to be and I never will be, and you're just sinking deeper and deeper all the time. Listen, that is Satan's illegitimate harassment. Why?
Because now watch this. If God is acquainted with all of your ways and He knows you perfectly, He knows that when you ask Him to forgive you, you are absolutely pure in your motivation. And if you are pure in your motivation, He forgave you right then and there. You don't have to wallow around working up some kind of approval from God. He knew when you said, God, forgive me for even thinking such a wicked thing.
That's it. That settled it with God, what? Because He knows your motives. Now here's what we do. This is Satan's trick.
Watch this. We do this through ourselves. We ask the Lord to forgive us and then we set out by our walk and what we promised God and what we're going to do, we try to prove to Him that we really meant when we ask Him to forgive us. You see, it releases us from satanic harassment after we've asked God to forgive us.
He's divinely acquainted with my motives. The next thing it does, it removes the destructive ideas of secret sins. How many people say, well, you know, nobody's going to know it but me, so I might as well go take myself a little drink. Nobody's ever taken a secret drink. Nobody's ever told a secret smutty joke. Nobody's ever read pornography out from under the eye of an omniscient, all-seeing God. Listen, if you just go ahead and accept the truth that our love, listen, our loving Heavenly Father who loves us and who stops us from doing some things out of pure love, the fact that He's acquainted with all of our ways should remove from our lives the very idea of wanting to commit sins secretly.
There is no such thing. The next thing it does, it rebuilds our self-esteem. Now you say, well, how does it rebuild your self-esteem to think that God knows everything? Here's how it rebuilds our self-esteem.
Here's what I'm saying. Just the very idea, and you say, we need to build this into our children. Build this into your sons and daughters that are loving Heavenly Father. Think, son and daughter, you are worth, you are worth God knowing you intimately and caring for you meticulously and covering you and providing you and surrendering you and loving you and doing all the things for you your life needs. That's how much God values you. Somebody says, well, you know, I never have been in anything.
Now if that's false humility, forget it. Listen, there's no such thing as being a zero in the eyes of God. He's made it His omniscient, eternal, heavenly business to know you intimately.
You know why? Because He sees within you great work. Look at the cross if you want to know how worthy you are. Then if you'll notice another thing, I believe it restrains us from fulfilling some fleshly desires. If we know that the Lord really knows our heart, you see, once you and I are able to grasp that truth, we will think twice, three times, four times, ten times before we'll do some things. But it's our soulish life, our emotional being. God wants us to see ourselves like He sees us and restrains us from doing those things that do what?
That destroy and bring ruination to our life. The next thing, it refreshes our love for Him. When you think about the fact that He knows you, now just think about this. He knows you and is acquainted with all of your ways and in spite of everything He knows, He loves you just as much today as He did in the very beginning. He loves you just as much as He loves anybody else. Listen, you can't do anything to keep God from loving you. It makes no difference how much you sin. You say, now wait a minute, you mean to tell me that if I just go out and live like the devil, God's going to love me?
He is. He's going to love you so much, He's going to chastise the daylights out of you. And you say, but that's not love.
It is love because He wants to stop you, because He loves you. He wants to turn you around and head you back to the blessing, not to destroy your life. You just think about it, that even before you were saved, God knew what kind of life you would live. He said, going to save him?
Going to save her? Now you just think about it. It ought to refresh our devotion, our love to Jesus Christ and knowing in our heart that as well as He knows us, He does never get disappointed, He does never get surprised, and His love is not like the rollercoaster at Six Flags. His love for us is as high as it can be on an even keel, and it never wavers one eye over to the left or to the right, up or down.
It is always the same. The last thing a divine acquaintance ought to do for us is this. It ought to renew our desire to serve Him with all of our heart. Lord, you mean in spite of all that I am and all that I'm not, you're still willing to use me?
Friend, that ought to motivate you to serve the Lord, knowing what He knows about you, still loving you like He loves you, equipping you, strengthening you, motivating you, helping you, blessing you, providing for you, and what? Simply because He loves you. You know what God sees? We look at each other sometime, we say, shame on you. God doesn't look at us that way. He looks at us and says, look at the potential.
Now watch this. In one person's life He says, look at the potential, the tremendous potential that is being wasted and ruined and wrecked by sin. He looks at another person's life, He says, ah, look at the potential, struggling but building and working and achieving and succeeding. When God looks at two people as wicked as this man may be, as righteous as this man may be, He sees the same thing.
Tremendous potential in both men. One of them, He sees their potential being wasted and broken and shattered and washed in the streams of life, and He sees them building a tremendous structure of righteousness for God. And what I want to ask you this morning is this. When God looks at your life right now, what is He seeing?
Potential, wasted, broken, ruined, floating with life. Or does He see within you a fellow who may be struggling and having a hard time, but you're still hanging in there? You really want God's best.
And sometimes you feel like, oh God, I'm not going to make it. And just about the time you think you're not His loving omnipotent hand says, I'm still here and I'm going to help you make it through life. Thank you for listening to A Divine Acquaintance. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our 24-7 online station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
