This week, the blog involves selections from Psalm 139 and focuses on the importance of our resting in God’s prior understanding of us.

Almost anyone who has had children understands that parents and children have a special kind of relationship. Often children do not understand or appreciate the relationship, but it is there.  Our children carry within them our genetics, our family history, the way we were raised, and the way they were raised—and that means that we know our them in a special and unique way.

Often step parents have difficulty understanding step children, and step children have difficulty understanding step parents. One piece of pastoral advice I have often given is to assure the step parent that no step parent can have precisely the same understanding and native empathy for a child that does not share their genetics. One can be a good and even great step parent, but no step parent can actually become the biological parent of a child.

Kathy and I have an understanding of our children—and you have an understanding of your biological children–that is based upon more than time together. It is based on family history, genetics, etc. Sometimes, for better or for worse, I can actually feel what one of our children must be feeling as if I was standing before myself. I have never had that feeling for another person’s child.

Why have I spent so much time on this? Here is why: We are all children of God. Even those who do not know God and have not received Christ and become children of God in a special way are children of God in the sense: that God created the human race. God is eternally present in all of his creation, including our bodies and hearts and minds even before we know or are aware of his presence. We carry the image of God inside of our hearts. There is nothing we can be or do that God does not know and understand completely. God is the ultimate parent. God knows us as a parent, but better than any human parent.

A Plea from the Heart.

Our text is from Psalm 139. Hear the Word of God as it comes to us this morning from the voice of the Psalmist:

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
 You know when I sit and when I rise;  you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;  you are familiar with all my ways.
 Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely.
 You hem me in behind and before,  and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”even the darkness will not be dark to you;the night will shine like the day,For darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful: I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!  How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—  When I awake, I am still with you. (vv. 1-18)

…

 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (vv. 23-24).

The Importance of Relationships.

This blog begins where many sermons either begin or end: by noting that relationships are essential for human life. it bears repeating that people with healthy relationships live longer, deal with stress better, are healthier, less depressed, have stronger immune systems, and even lower blood pressure than people who do not experience healthy relationships. People who are deprived of relationships when they are young suffer a host of personal, psychological, and social problems later in life.

Often,  we stop at the point of talking about the importance of relationships. We fail to go on to note that all relationships are based upon communication, and all communication is an exercise in knowing and being known. If you think back upon the most important conversation in your life with the most important person in your life, you are likely to conclude that what made that particular conversation so important was the moment in which the other person realized that you could be trusted to know them, and you realized that they knew you in a deep and loving way.

Scholars and pastors often tell their congregations that the Old Testament word most frequently used for knowledge is also used for the physical relationship of men and women. In other words, knowledge, real knowledge, life changing knowledge, is more than information. Information communicated in words or numbers is only the surface of our knowledge. The meaning, importance, and power of that knowledge is the depth of what knowledge is all about.

Sometimes in the church and in social groups we joke about the differences between men and women. While there are real differences between most women and most men, there are areas in which we are identical. One of those areas has to do with our desire to be known. We human beings express this in many ways. For example, communication experts tell us that people who do nothing but listen are often considered to be better communicators than those who speak. Why would that be the case? It would be the case because we all have a desire to be known and understood. We think of people who understand and know us as being good communicators.

God is the Source of True Loving Knowledge.

As Christians, the importance of relationships and communication should not surprise us. The Bible teaches that we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Our Christian faith teaches us that God exists as a loving relationship, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In John, the Son (the Second Person of the Trinity) is referred to as the “Word” or “Logos” in Greek. (John 1:1). This Logos, or Word, is the rational expression of God’s wisdom and love radiating into the world by the Grace of the Father.

God exists in the eternal relationship of self-giving love, and Jesus is the incarnation of the rational expression of that love. Part of being made in the image of God is being made for a loving, self-giving relationship with God and other people. The eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, exist in a perfect relationship of love. The members of the Trinity are the same in being and express a kind of unconditional love based upon perfect understanding (God’s Omniscience), Perfect Love (God’s being of Agape, Self-giving Love), and Power (the ability to express perfectly that love). Human beings, who are made in the image of God, were made for relationships that mirror the relationships of God, including the Divine communication of self-giving love within the Trinity.

Most people understand in some way that human relationships are important. In addition, most people understand that communication is important for healthy relationships. For example, there is no realistic kind of marital counseling that does not emphasize the point that most marital problems are actually communication problems. Financial problems, emotional problems, physical problems—almost any kind of problem you can imagine in marriage— normally involves an underlying communication problem.

It’s a harder for us to understand that almost all the problems we have in our spiritual life are also communication problems! If we feel isolated and alone, somehow we are communicating our need for a relationship to God in an appropriate way. If we feel lost and without guidance from God, often were not communicating with God appropriately.

This is not an essay on listening prayer; however, since at least 85 percent of successful communication is learning to listen, it’s not surprising that most of us have trouble communicating with God since all we ever do is talk! If you only time we pray is when were in trouble and need an answer, our level of communication with God and our relationship with God is going to suffer.

Prayer begins with Knowledge—God’s Knowledge of Us!

A second area in which we can misunderstand what it means to pray and communicate with God, to have a relationship with God, is when we think of God as a kind of abstract principle, a force, a power, or even a distant creator no longer personally involved in creation, a “First Principle” of sorts. You really can’t have a relationship with the force or power or principle. In order to have a vital prayer relationship with God we have to keep in mind understand that God is a person and he wants to have a personal relationship with us. God wants to communicate with us.

As I was preparing for this blog, I read an article about human relationships. It was actually an article about relationships between men and women. It turns out that whether the man for the woman initiates a relationship, people normally only initiate a relationship if they already believe that the other person wants to have a relationship. In fact, the person who initiates a relationship has already been signaled by the other person in some way that they want to open a relationship. This is also true in friendships and social relationships. We naturally form relationships with people we sense are already open to a relationship with us.

A good portion of Psalm 139 has to do with expressing the psalmist’s understanding that God has already established a relationship with the writer and the human race and signaled that He desires a deeper relationship, before we establish any relationship with God. God made us, God is always present with us. God already recognizes that we are unique and valuable—he made us that way! God already understands us. He knows our strengths, our weaknesses, our sins, our shortcomings, our fears, our needs, our hopes, and our dreams. God, you see, is interested in us. God also loves us before we love God. The doctrine of grace is a simple recognition of the fact that God loves us and desires us to be a relationship with him even when we are alienated or distant from God.

The author C. S. Lewis wrote a book called, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a character called “Eustace” askes Edmund whether he knows Aslan, a giant lion who is the Christ of the series. Edmund answers, “Well, He knows me.” [1] In other places in The Chronicles of Narnia Aslan is portrayed as knowing characters before they ever know Aslan. This is Lewis’ way of reminding us that God knows us long before we know God. God is listening to us long before we decide to communicate with God. God is offering us his grace long before we decide to accept that grace. The foundation of our relationship with God is God and God’s love for us.

Where Do We Go from Here?

For the next several weeks, we are going to talk about prayer. We are going to talk about praying to God for healing. We are going to talk about praying to God to refresh us and give us the strength to go on. We are going to talk about the importance of thanking God for answering our prayers. Finally, on September 11, going to talk about praying to God for protection. As Cindy mentioned in the moment for mission a few moments ago, next week after church you’re going to have a short seminar and an opportunity to learn more about prayer. We hope many people will sign up.

Those of us who have children know that long before the child speaks a word to us we are communicating to the child. Every time we hold the child, we are communicating love to the child. Every time we  put a child to bed, we are tell them we love them. Every time we sing a song, tell story, or just say good night, we are telling a child we love them. Every time we pick up the child and say good morning, we are communicating love to the child.

As to God, we are like a child. God has been knowing us, loving us, and communicating with us a long time before we ever know God , love God, and communicate our love to God. God is listening to us a long time before we listen to God. In other words, God is building a relationship for us long before we build a relationship with God. That is the meaning of grace.

I think it helps begin to learn to pray to remember that God already knows us, already knows our hopes and dreams, already knows what we intend to pray about long before we ever pray. Prayer, you see, is not as much about information as it is about a relationship with the living God who loves us and cares for us.

Amen.

Copyright 2016, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1]  C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New York, NY: Harper Trophy, 1952, 1980), 117. I am indebted for this quote and for the insights and research of Brian S. Rosner, Known By God: C. S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoerffer E. Q..4 (2005), 343-352. Both for the quote and for the insight into the way Lewis speaks of God’s knowledge of us through the character of Aslan. Rosner has the insight that evangelicals talk a great deal about knowing God, but not enough about God knowing us.