A Psalm 139 Prayer

O Lord,

You have intimately searched all of who I am. You fully know me and understand how I think and why I think the way I do. You have penetrated the depths of how I feel and what I believe, and You know these better than I do myself.

I don’t need to wrestle for insight, I only ask You to reveal to me what You see and know.   Your piercing gaze is a fiery love that purifies as it reveals.

You know every movement I make, everywhere I go and every path I travel, both physically and mentally.  You see the paths worn hard and dry from being tread upon over and over, for years and years. Thoughts that have formed beliefs and given shape to words - You know these before my breath ushers them across my tongue into the physical world.

Even knowing these deepest thoughts and unuttered words, Your hand rests on me in loving acceptance.  You’ve wrapped yourself around me, hedging me into Your safe embrace.  Unrestricted by time, You are in my past and in my future and fully knowing every thought, belief and movement I’ve ever had or ever will have, Your love remains a constant presence.

This is so far beyond my limited comprehension.  I can only attempt to grasp how high and deep and wide this divine and infinite love is!

There is nowhere I could ever go that falls outside of your loving presence, Lord! 

Even if I tried to run away from You, it would be futile.

Whether in my highest, most spiritual moments, or my lowest most shameful ones, You are there with me.  When I chase after You like the light and hope of a new day, and when I avoid You, attempting to hide in the deepest dark, You are still with me.  Your hands are still on me, guiding me, leading me, holding me, loving me.

Sometimes my thoughts lie and tell me their darkness has separated us or that I am too far from You, and am closer to death.  The terror of this falls on me heavy like the blackest, moonless night.  But Your truth blazes through these shadows - for they are only shadows of death and separation.  You see only light because You are light, so even what feels like darkness to me, is not dark at all because I am hemmed in and fully surrounded by You.

Your light before me.

Light behind me.

Light within me.

Light that captures and conquers every dark thought, belief and action.

Your voice gives the same command to my chaotic, dark, swirling thoughts, that You spoke to the dark, swirling chaos on the first day of creation,

“Let light shine out of darkness!”

My heart surrenders as Your light shines out from darkness that was in me.

Your same hands that formed the first man from dust and Your same breath of life that filled the first empty lungs, have carefully and intimately formed me and breathed Divine life into my emptiness.

And even before light was commanded, and man was formed on earth, You had already conceived me in your infinite, creative imagination.  Every detail of who You saw I would be, You intricately planned for.  You were filled with such pure joy and satisfaction over Your design and every day since those eternal days past and into eternal days to come, You never stop thinking about me with delight and devotion.  Countless thoughts of love that leave me undone and in awe!

But Lord-  Your enemy is blood-thirsty and constantly hurling lies at me.  He desires to blaspheme You so he tries to destroy me, Your beloved.  Through thoughts of worthlessness, or lies that question my own value and lead to me questioning Your goodness, he tries to use me as a pawn to rise up against You. I hate him and any false things that draw my heart from knowing and believing in Your loving gaze and intentions for me.

So, 

I reject his words!

I refuse his blasphemous lies!

I repent of wrong patterns of thought and turn them to Your truth, Lord!

You have searched me and yet I will invite you, again and again, to gaze into my heart.  With Your all-seeing eyes, look intently into every corner and reveal anything that may be hidden, even to my own dim eyes.

Any thoughts marked by anxious cares, or unbelieving doubt - show me!

I want to return to walk in your light.

In Your presence.

In Your truth.

In Your eternal ways, all the days of my life,

just as you planned.

~ Robin Sturm, 04.20.2020

Psalm 139;  Romans 8:35-39;  Ephesians 3:16-19;  Genesis 1:2-3;  Genesis 2:7;