“O Lord, all my longing is before You; my sighing is not hidden from You.” Psalm 38:9

No doubt this happens to be one of the most comforting and reassuring texts in the whole realm of scripture, particularly when life’s situations may lead us to wonder whether God really cares about the details of our lives. We have often heard, recited and meditated on that well known and loved verse: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”, which has indeed reaffirmed our faith in God. But then there are other times, periods of dense ambiguity, when everything seems to be against us, especially what ‘appears’ to be God also opposing us. Many who are well versed in systematic and biblical theology can be very logical and dogmatic (almost ‘robotic’ – no sense of reality) in their affirmations of God’s truth, but there are times when circumstances betray our notions, putting faith on trial; God is infinitely deeper than our grasp of theology – a subtlety we can easily mistake for God Himself. Our finite minds are infirmed and incapable of fathoming the depths of Reality – the incommunicable attributes and ways of God. Oswald Chambers, in his book, ‘God’s Workmanship’ poignantly reminds us of our proneness to confusing our perspective with God’s:

“The existence of a truth is nothing to me until I am brought into the current of events where that particular truth is a living reality to me because it speaks the language of my conscious life. Reality must have its source outside of me; my conscious experience is the very sphere of Reality in me, but I must be careful never to confound the reality of my experience with Reality itself…We are delighted with our experience, it is the thing we can talk about, but unless our faith is in the God Who gives us the experience it ends in pietistic jargon…” or as Michael Horton splendidly puts it: “God is the Creator and infallible interpreter of reality, not us…We know that we have actually encountered the God Who is there when He is not Who we thought He was and eludes our captivity to our own idolatrous imagination.”

Of course, there are the communicable attributes of God made known to us by His grace through His Word, but is it any wonder why the apostle Paul, writing to believers – not the unregenerate – in Ephesians 1:17-19 and 3:16-19 longs and prays for the eyes of their hearts to be enlightened and to comprehend the depth of Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge? This is in no way approving of anti-intellectualism that is widespread in current day Christianity, where emotionalism takes preeminence over and above our reasoning – one of the very hallmarks distinguishing us from the animal world, man being uniquely created in the image of God – but there are Depths immeasurable to our finite minds. Ernst Lange in his hymn touched on the very nerves of this truth:

O God, Thou bottomless abyss!
Thee to perfection who can know?
O height immense! What words suffice
Thy countless attributes to show?
 
Unfathomable depths Thou art;
O plunge me in Thy mercy’s sea!
Void of true wisdom is my heart;
With love embrace and cover me!
 
While Thee, all infinite, I set
By faith before my ravished eye,
My weakness bends beneath the weight;
O’erpowered I sink, I faint, I die!

Does the dread of God’s omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience shake us out of our over-familiarity, or have we become so immune to hearing those terminologies that we have lost sight of their demand for serious thinking that transforms our conduct? Do we give time to think on the weight of these realities, even if it’s just to merely ‘brush the hem’ of these truths? Our problem with modern Christendom is that our thinking is done for us; we have laid our minds to rest. Gordon MacDonald, in his book – ‘Ordering Your Private World’ bears light on this: “When the Christian’s mind becomes dull, he can fall prey to the propaganda of a non-Christian scheme of things, led by people who have not neglected their thinking powers and have simply out-thought us.” Many of us are too content to read a commentary only to end it there with no further thought; many treat commentaries more like the canon than the Scriptures themselves! Serious biblical thinking inevitably leads to being in awe of God – but that element is seldom found today, even in our academic circles. We have not exhausted the depths of expositing God’s Word; great men of God through the history of the Church confessed to the fact that given all of eternity would never suffice to explore the riches of Christ. A.W. Tozer said, “We’ll hardly get our feet out of time and into eternity before we bow our heads in humiliation and shame, and say, ‘Oh great God! Look at all the riches there were in Jesus Christ.’”

What thoughts arise when we consider one of the attributes of God knowing everything (omniscience); how does that affect us? An over familiarity means we haven’t even begun to consider this fathomless and awe-filled reality. Does it make us tremble with awe? It never ceases to amaze me how these two words ‘tremble’ and ‘awe’ (awesome) are so misunderstood and misused. Almost everyone throws around the word ‘awesome’ that has an attachment of commonness to it; everything mediocre down to a potato chip has become ‘awesome’ – there is no distinction these days. A correct understanding of the word is something that evokes overwhelming admiration or fear; extraordinary and frightening. Tremble is a word many of us do not like; we associate it with abuse, cruelty and slavery, but in actuality it is something also known as a reaction to something greater than ourselves – particularly a power and reality that profoundly confounds (supersedes our understanding and level of existence) and astounds us – one is left speechless and numb with amazement and adoration. When the apostle John saw the Son of Man, he fell at His feet as though dead (Revelation 1:9-18). Did the apostle Paul err in his vocabulary when He exhorted believers ‘to work out their salvation with fear and trembling’ (Philippians 2:12) or did our Greek translators slip in a word or two, according to their bias? I’m sure many would like to think so, but a healthy fear (of God) is what produces sober-mindedness – a seriousness that is regrettably missing today. So let us equate the word ‘awesome’ with God, Who alone deserves such description. The word awe is described as, “a mixture of wonder and dread: a feeling of amazement and respect mixed with fear that is often coupled with a feeling of personal insignificance or powerlessness.” – and this is the meaning I am attempting to draw out here, especially when we are considering the ALL-knowing and powerful God. 

David said, “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether” (Psalm 139:2-4). No wonder he poured forth in worship, brokenness and humility: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it” (verse 6). He was utterly overwhelmed with the reality of God. Can we echo David’s words, more so (with him) – feel a sense of awe, or do we just experience a nice warm feeling when remembering what we have learned from a commentary and then blurt out so casually, “Oh yes, God knows everything – how marvellous!” only to get back on with whatever else we were preoccupied with? If the Spirit of God brought weight to our thinking on these matters we’d prostrate ourselves before God; we could not stand! Even the angels who cry, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ have to veil their eyes for the fire of God’s brightness, purity and awesomeness, and yet we’re content to ‘rap’ our way into His courts?! Something is definitely missing in our modern worship – and that’s worship in its true form, no matter how many will argue that it’s ‘anointed’.

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it”

Psalm 139 is a wonderful exposition of Psalm 38:9: “O Lord, all my longing is before You; my sighing is not hidden from You.” God certainly does care about each and every one of our details; God’s omniscience is scrupulous to number the hairs of our head, as the grains of earth’s sands – and beyond. That is not to imply He ‘counts’ as such, but rather to illustrate that He is already perfectly and infinitely acquainted with everything that we would not tend to notice or even be concerned about – “no sparrow falls to the ground without your Heavenly Father knowing.” and “…your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” There is not the slightest longing that God isn’t aware of and there isn’t a sigh (too complex for us to even interpret) that God is not attentive to, even when we are unconscious of doing it. I never forget a particular time when being overwhelmed with pressure and frustration. It was extremely difficult to express in words what to pray; all I could do was sigh. Suddenly, I was made so consciously aware that God had read the very heartbeat of that unspoken prayer – even though I couldn’t fathom the weight of it. It was an overwhelming moment, a moment of knowing the love and deepest care of our Heavenly Father in a very real and personal way.

Our God and Heavenly Father is flawlessly acquainted with the depths of our innermost being; we think we know what we need but oftentimes we come to learn what we don’t need and what we do really need, as Oswald Chambers said, “If I could look at myself from God’s perspective, what would I see as my true needs?” This comes with time as He diverts our eyes away from being selfishly concerned with our lives to being preoccupied with His ways and His glory alone, and it’s in that realm alone where we don’t just exist – we live!