November 24, 2024 -- Psalm 139:1 - 5 -- Putting unworthy thoughts to death and raising up new life affirming ones

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O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
    behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
Psalm 139:1-5 ESV
 
Thinking about what you think about is called metacognition. The constant narrative that is running around in your brain, random thoughts, patterns of thought, and trained impulses to sin are not fixed or permanent. Look at the words of the Psalm. Recognize the confidence the writer has that the LORD knows his thoughts. Even the worst tangles of his thoughts are known to his God. In fact, before a word is on the tongue of this believer, the God Who knows him intimately already knows the thoughts behind the words and behind that the stain of original sin which prompted it.
 
Why mention this? Doesn’t it just increase my shame and the unbearable weight of all the sin that burdens me? No. Verse 5 teaches us that the LORD hems the psalm-prayer in. What does that mean? When a seamstress shortens the legs of pants, she turns up the cuff and hems it in. So also, God turns up our thoughts. He surrounds them. He isolates them so that the believer can confess them to Jesus Christ, learning to hate them more and more.
 
God our Father lays His hand on His people. Not too long ago I was in prison teaching a bible study and one young man in our group, who’d been struggling, suddenly burst into tears. He had been on parole, but he breached, he broke all his promises to the judge and the Parole Officers, and he was hauled back inside. There will be no more chance at parole for quite some time. The reality of it broke him and he did something unusual, he wept, shoulders heaving, in front of others. That is a sign of weakness and it can make you vulnerable to bullying and abuse when you’re incarcerated. I put my hand on his shoulder. It is a sign of comfort. It is a sign that he is not alone, though I know the bad he has done, he is in the right place, learning about God and His forgiveness. (BTW, the men in that group, prompted I believe by both their faith in Jesus and the strength of the Spirit, did not mock him or insult him.)
 
That is what it means when you read you “lay your hand on me”. God our Father, by His Spirit’s presence knowing the absolute worst about us—knowing us far more intimately even than we know ourselves because He is God, He can discern all the tumbling, jumbled mixed thoughts that pinball through our brains—still He lays His Fatherly hand on us. He knows the need we have for the Savior to rescue us from shame, guilt, sin, and to cleanse us from the stain of original sin (the sin nature that we inherited as descendants of Adam and Eve who chose to rebel against God). God lays His hand on you and on me, comforting us.
 
When we decide to submit our lives to the care of God as He guides us, a big part of that submission is examining our thought lives. What do you think about when you’re thinking about nothing at all? What are you planning? What are you afraid of? What are you scheming? What are you not even aware of that rocket through your brain? You submit it to God. He discerns your thoughts and by His Spirit He is teaching you to submit them to Jesus. When we recognize the thoughts which are against God, instructing us in evil, we take such thoughts captive and present them to Jesus (II Corinthians 10:5) so that He will defeat them.
 
I don’t know about you, but when dark secrets are about to be exposed, or I need to confess what is going on, I am more likely to run than I am to stand in place and humbly bare my soul. He hems us in. Gently, in His knowing, warm embrace of love, like a parent holding a child lovingly and firmly so that a deeply embedded splinter can be removed without the child squirming away and running from this painful moment. Yes, like that, so tenderly does He lay His hand on you and me.
When the thoughts are exposed. They can be addressed. When they are addressed, believers can replace the thoughts of evil, of life-controlling issues, of past shame, of guilt (fill in the blanks of all the ricocheting thoughts which fill your head). Replace the thoughts I have with what?

  • Memorize the word of God, it will be your go-to.

  • Sing hymns and spiritual songs and psalms. Funny isn’t it, how the songs of the world infiltrate your brain and often the lyrics are wicked and just add to the library of bad thoughts.

  • Read the Bible.

  • Journal your thoughts, thus exposing the extent to which you are still captive to old ways and so dedicate yourself to the change God is bringing to you.

  • Pray. Ask God to cleanse your thoughts so that the strong, majesty of Jesus, the Hero and Captain of your salvation, will fill your thought life.

Patient, Loving Father, thank You for the tender compassion You show us as Your children. As more and more of my thought life is exposed to You, sweep away all that is evil, unjust, cruel; in summary, clear out anything that is displeasing to You. By Your Spirit re-train my thoughts until they being fixed on Jesus will be transformed and healed. It is a big ask. I hardly even understand the full extent of what I need here, as the psalmist experienced it, so I am praying lay Your hand on me and help me. Amen.
 
https://youtu.be/a91_3VYRiZo?si=FRqzjofsW5rZvdc0 “Fill Thou My Life”
 

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