How Repentance Sets Your Heart Free: A Closer Look at Psalm 139
In our world today, especially in circles that teach about self-care, there is the prevailing idea of cutting people off to preserve your own peace. While there is certainly a place for that, a more holistic approach is needed when it comes to taking responsibility for the ways in which we don’t contribute to our own peace or another person’s peace. When I say peace, I mean well-being or the biblical aspect of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self. None of us are perfect or know how to perfectly love God, ourselves, and others.
For the Believer, this taking responsibility for our own detrimental actions and changing our thoughts and behaviors is known as repentance. Depending on your background, repentance may have a condemning connotation to it, but it is a refreshing and freeing process that creates space for deeper intimacy with God and others.
Recently, God allowed me to see ways in which I’ve needed to repent and take ownership for how I disrupt other people’s peace. This has been a difficult process, but it has been truly healing and refreshing to allow my Creator to do exactly what the Psalmist says in Psalm 139:
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
Psalm 139:23-24
There was a time when I cringed reading/praying this verse. If I’m honest, I can still feel hesitant to pray it! I once thought that praying this verse would bring pain (and being pruned by God is painful), but this verse is full of intimate and relational language that implies a beautiful closeness that comes from God when we allow him to correct us and prune us. In other words, repentance is another aspect of intimacy with God.
One of my favorite academic words as an English teacher is “diction”. An author’s specific word choices give insight into the message they’re conveying in their writing. The Holy Spirit, through the Psalmist, uses poignant diction/word choices to reveal the treasures of repentance. I’m going to start by pointing out the diction used to describe God’s heart and intentions before talking about repentance. As a good friend recently told me, “once the why is clear, the how is easier.” I believe this same principle applies to our understanding of our Creator. Once we understand why the Lord desires repentance, the application of repentance becomes easier.
“Search Me”
The words “search”, “know” and “lead” are all relational words that we’d want to practice in friendships, family relationships, and romantic relationships. I like when people “search” me or try to “explore” things about me. I remember a friend of mine asked me, “what does it look like for someone to make space for you?” In that moment, I felt loved and considered because she was searching a part of me in order to love me better as a friend.
In other instances, people have “searched” me only to then betray me and let me down. These experiences skewed my perspective of what God searching me is meant to look like. Yet, when I allow myself to put my faith in God’s lovingkindness while meditatating on this part of the Psalm, it resonates differently.
What if God’s searching of us is a loving exploration rendered with a mighty but warm and gentle hand? What if we allowed God to search us because He wants to shower his loving correction on the dark places of our hearts out of care and concern, not condemnation?
“Know My Heart; Know My Anxious Thoughts”
Similar to being lovingly searched by someone, being truly known is also euphoric. Just the other day, another friend of mine brought up a memory that we shared together and my heart swelled because I felt known and payed attention to. This moment was especially meaningful for me because I didn’t expect this friend to remember it, let alone bring it up in our conversation. Yet, it was a beautiful human moment of realizing the importance of being known in a relationship.
But again, trauma can darken my vision. There have been times in my life where people didn’t put the effort into knowing me, misunderstood me, or allowed their false perception of me to define who they thought I was. In those cases, the desire to be “known” hurt me more than it helped me.
Yet, when I allow God to give me spiritual eyes of faith, I recognize that His knowing of me is a pure knowledge. He understands me perfectly and his perception of me is completely accurate. In light of this truth, allowing him to “know my heart” and “know my anxious thoughts” is for my benefit. There is beauty in being known and accepted and loved in spite of the darkness and anxieties of our hearts. God wants to know us in order to transform us by leading us to the best place possible; his own heart.
“Point Out Anything In Me That Offends You”
I don’t enjoy telling the people I love that they’ve done something that offends me. I also don’t enjoy hearing from the people that I love that I’ve done something that offends them. Yet, that honesty is an integral part of relationship. The ability to tell a partner, friend, or family member when they’ve offended you ushers in vulnerability and humility. It gives us a chance to change our mindset and our behavior.
Similarly, along with the tender intimacy that comes with being known and searched by God, it’s beneficial for us to allow him to point out the thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors in our lives that offend him. As I mentioned before, I’ve recently gone through a season of significant repentance where I learned many ways in which I tend to offend my loved ones. I get defensive, I don’t always listen, and I don’t easily trust. These behaviors hurt my relationships, even though I don’t intend them to. God in his lovingkindness has been helping me to see these tendencies for myself by his loving revelation and guidance because yes, these behaviors hurt my human relationships, but they also hurt my heavenly father too.
So if repentance is about intimacy with God, why do we avoid it? I believe it’s because many of us have experienced being “searched”, “known”, and even “corrected” in unloving ways. And we’ve most likely committed those very same relational sins too. These experiences scar our hearts and distort our persepctive of God. But understanding the tenderness of his correction (this is not to say that God isn’t harsh sometimes too, but it is all out of love) makes space for submission to him. Anything God asks us to change is only for our benefit. Any darkness he reveals is meant to bring us into his marvelous light.
“Lead Me Along The Path To Everlasting Life”
Sometimes I hate to admit it, but it feels good to be led. It’s hard for me to admit that because it suggests that I don’t know what I’m doing, but deep down, being led is comforting! Consistently charting the way for others is tough because it requires you to make decisions and take constant initiative. But when someone charts the path and directs me through it, I feel supported and as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
So when the Psalmist uses this term, “lead me along the path to everlasting life” it shows us God’s intention in searching us, knowing us, and pointing out the ways we offend him. He doesn’t do it to cause us shame, He does it to lead us along the path of everlasting life. He does it while he is charting the path towards eternity for us! We don’t chart our own paths to eternity, God does, and repentance is one of the ways we follow his leading. The deeper we are in relationship with God the more we experience intimacy with him, which is everlasting life itself. If God didn’t search us, know us, and correct us we would be on the path to death and he loves us too much to desire death to be our destiny.
Dear friend, our hearts get set free when we learn to trust and walk with God at a deeper level. This depth always requires repentance. So what is it for you that you need to repent of? Is it worry? Distrust? Pride? Impurity? Being distant from God? Allow him to peel back the layers of your heart and point you along the path to refreshing repentance. It will be painful, but its fruits are priceless.
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.
Matthew 3:8
Love and Light,
Kourtney Naomi
