—Search Me--- Am I That Brave?
Psalm 139 13-24 2 Timothy 2:1-4
When you think of someone doing something brave. What comes to your mind? A father lost his life, swimming for his kids. An uncle was severely burned running into a burning building to save his niece.
What would give you the most courage if the police were beginning to search you? Hopefully the realization that there is nothing there to find.
As a believer one of the bravest things we can do is to present ourselves before God and say, “Go at it God, show me where I need some work.” What makes this such a brave act, is that God will do it, and then we will either have to change or admit our walk with God is fake at worse or very limited full of conditions at best.
Do you know what leads to a stale and boring walk with God? It’s the refusal to take any dangerous risks for God that require some bravery on our part. Can you think when was the last time you took a risk for God, that wasn’t a safe one?
Most of the time we pray safe prayers. Lord bless me, my family, my children and my church. Lord please give me a good paying job. Lord let me do well on this test or on this interview. Lord heal my friend or Lord forgive me for what I did.
There’s nothing wrong with these prayers, and we should keep praying for things like this but they don’t require much bravery on our part. There is very little risk involved for us. Why not pray, God use me today to help somebody come to know Jesus Christ and open my eyes to the opportunity? How many of us prayed somebody would get saved today at church and meant it.
Praying brave prayers invite God into our lives in such a way, that dramatic things can happen. We become a different person on the inside when the prayer is answered. We put all kinds of things at risk when we choose a humble bravery before the Lord. We actually find ourselves reporting for duty, ready to engage in some type of battle.
We get to the point of recognizing, we are to be soldiers in the army of God.
Paul says this about soldiers: 3 Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.
Our motivation to be brave isn’t to boast of how brave we are, but to please our commanding officer. Soldiers expect to endure some suffering, expect to take some shooting at, and expect to be possibly wounded or killed. How many of us spend our whole prayer time praying to avoid these situations?
You see at the end of a dangerous assignment is an opportunity to walk with God, and to know God in a way that you have not known God before. Are you brave enough to even want an assignment with God.
Most of the time we have Moseites. Moses told God I appreciate the offer, but I’m just a nobody, I’m not a good speaker, nobody would believe me, I’m not sure I can trust you, and even if you did come through, I don’t want to do it anyways.
Which excuse do you use most often? What is God calling you to do in the life of our church that would put you out of your comfort zone, and make you brave enough to do something you wouldn’t ordinarily do.
God is putting in my spirit, 15 minutes of you, could change the direction and future of our church. Just 15 minutes. Are you brave enough to ask how?
When we think of David, we often think of his bravery in fighting the lion and the bear, his fight against the giant Goliath, or his going into battle against the enemies of Saul. But David did something even braver than this. He went before God, and asked God to show him the truth about himself from God’s perspective.
David prayed this prayer in the Psalms in Psalm 139:23-24 (NIV) 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
One of the things I found interesting about this prayer is the context in which it is found. In the verses before it, David is saying, “You know God it would be good if you just killed all the wicked people, especially the murderers , who take people’s lives without blinking an eye.
I can’t stand people who take your name in vain. It really gets under my skin when people talk bad about you and even have the nerve to claim they are doing stuff in your name. I hate them and count them as my enemies.”
All of a sudden David has a wait a minute moment, as if to say, whoa, have I been guilty of some of those things. But he does not do a self-check, he asks the Lord to “search him, and know his heart.” How many of you know that it is far easier to see the sin of others than it is to see our own sin?
Have you noticed how you could think about doing something wrong and can let your mind entertain the thought, but you don’t go through with it? Then you come across someone who actually did what you had thought, and you just thought their behavior was outrageous.
You even say, “How on earth could they have done something like that.” It doesn’t matter if it was lying, stealing, committing sexual sin, holding a grudge, or being jealous, it just seems a lot worse when its somebody else doing it. Somehow their sin, the same sin, is worse than if we had done it.
Do you know why? Because we don’t ask the Lord to search our hearts and to show us what it is that God sees. We are not brave enough to do that. Most of us simply look at hearts and give them an initial round of approval. If I told you to look in the fellowship hall and see if I left my keys in there, You would probably take a quick look and let me know you did not see them.
If I told you to search the fellowship hall for my keys, you probably are going to start to move some things and see if the keys might be underneath something. You are going to do a more thorough job of examining the situation.
We look at our hearts, and our hearts lie to us about our real condition. Our hearts tell us that deep down inside, we have a good heart. But we can only say that if we take a quick look without being brave enough to do any searching. God tells us that all of our hearts are deceitful and wicked. Jesus Christ is the only answer for dealing with the evil in our hearts.
Even now, even though we are in church, most of us are just one conversation from lying. If someone were to ask us, “how’s things going, we would respond,” fine”, or “just great” when in reality we have all kinds of problems in our lives, but we want to decieve each other into thinking things are better than they really are. Our hearts lie even to us, “if people know your business, they won’t like you, or they will think less of you.”
Our deceitful hearts keep us from finding the love, acceptance, and fellowship that is to be evident in the body of Christ. Our hearts make us believe we have to keep up some kind of false image of who we really are.
The wickedness in our hearts tell us, that we cannot trust one another. When we ask God to search our hearts, you’d be amazed at the kind of things that God will show us about ourselves when it comes to sin or when it comes to our motives.
Why is it when we are in an argument with someone, if we say the reason I did this was because, and we then expect the person to accept our reason as our motive.
But if they say the same thing to us, we know what their real motive was behind why they did or said such a thing or such an action. We are not brave enough to accept the truth because it means admitting we were wrong.
How many of us have been guilty of saying, “all I said was…. And they just went off. But the other person said, but that’s not how you said it.” This is why we need to pray, for the Lord to search us and reveal to us, where we have gone wrong, even if we think we’re not wrong.
David said Lord, while you are searching me, could you also test me to show me what my anxious thoughts are. Anxious thoughts are produced by fears. Fear of losing a job, fear of running out of money, fear of not getting into a school, fear of failing, fear of not getting married by a certain age, fear of being locked into a bad marriage, fear of losing a relationship fear of a sickness or a disease. The areas that produce fear in our lives are caused by not trusting God in those areas. Where do you trust God the Least?
Our fears show us where we trust God the least. The word of God tells us that perfect love casts out fear. The more we truly believe that God loves us, the more fear will be cast out of our lives. Our bravery is never rooted in our own power or ability, but in our trust in God.
David asks the Lord, ”see if there is any offensive way in me.” In other words, God what is in my life that is offensive to you. It is so easy for us to start to make compromises with sin and the appearance of sin. Is there anything in your life that more than one person has spoken to you about, but you keep saying, that’s their problem not mine?
Has anyone ever told you that you are too short with people, but you responded with “I’m just direct that’s all.” Anyone ever said,” you are too critical of others”, but you responded,” I just call it like it is.”
Anyone ever said, “that wasn’t very loving, but you responded, ”well that’s what he deserved” or even worse “well, I don’t care.” Those responses can be offensive to the Lord.
Where is Christ in those reactions? It takes a special kind of bravery to decide to love Jesus more than we love ourselves. I find that I am far too much in love with myself.
Other people can often see us leading down a path that will lead to sin, but we insist that the road is going to take us somewhere else. Our hearts will allow us to believe, I-71 south may have taken most people to Columbus, but we insist that when we are traveling on it, it’s going to take us to Pittsburg. I don’t care how old you are, how smart you are, or what you might believe, if you stay on I-71 south long enough, you will end up in Louisville KY.
As a society, we are no longer brave enough to ask tough questions because they show our moral bankruptcy. Why did we just vote to raise the age level to 21 to buy cigarettes, cigars and vapes, yet we are doing all that we can to legalize marijuana. I never heard of anybody getting high and doing things out of the minds while smoking a cigarette.
Why was it evil enough to send our people to jail for selling drugs in our community, but now its okay for rich people to sell them with the state’s blessings while keeping us out of the market.
Will the executives arrested for selling all the pills causing the opiad crisis get life sentences like El Chapo or will they pay a fine and be under house arrest. Do we really want a searching of our justice system.
Why do we claim we want to help the poor in the inner city, but allow insurance companies to discriminate against them by charging them more for car insurance and housing insurance simply because of where they lived? If red lining was wrong for banks to do business, why it it not wrong for insurance companie?.
Why can’t our society see a need for some absolute moral values. I was delighted to have a Dollar Tree move into my neighborhood. That may not seem like much to you, but it was huge for Glenville. Now politicians want to ban them because they don’t sell fresh vegetables. That’s better than no vegetables and no store.
We talk about racism keeping business out. Yet I am shame to say, that store lasted only a few years. It could not overcome the amount of theft that took place from employees and customers. We need to be brave enough to tell people they are accountable for their actions.
As I said before, our hearts can be so deceitful that we even fool ourselves.
Some of us have excused our sin for so long, that we think its no longer sin. We are not the first to fall into that trap and we won’t be the lask.
Be brave enough to ask the Lord right now, Lord what is in my heart that is offensive toward you. Show it to me that I might confess it and let it go.
But our actions do not stop there. We have an obligation to realize that everybody needs Jesus. That’s why Jesus gave us the great commission, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me therefore go and make disciples of all nations. We have a societal problem, but it all stems from an individual sin problem. When we reach people for Christ, it enables them to become brave enough to allow God to change them.
God reveals our sin to us, so that we can see our need for Jesus Christ. We will never be good enough on our own to walk with God or even to get along with each other.
Our sin will always be a stumbling block. Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins and to live through us.. On the third day he rose from the dead so that anyone who calls on his name would be saved, forgiven and given a new source of power..
Being a disciple is far more than sitting in church on Sunday morning. Many people come to church who are still happily on their way to hell.
It’s about being brave enough to be exposed by God to who we really are. It’s about surrendering your life to Christ and allowing him to complete the work He wants to do in your life to prepare you for the life that is to come.
If all you’re living for is this life, just remember, your life is going to be over far quicker than you ever imagined. You will wonder, where did the time go. In the mean time you will have missed out on so much of the good that God has in store for your life. Be brave enough to want to take risks for God to discover all that God has for you.
Heavenly Father, as hard as this is for me, I am asking you to search me. Search me, God, and know my heart. God, test my motives. Reveal to me my anxious thoughts. Show me anything in me that offends you. God, I want to see in me what you see in me, so I can become more like Jesus. God, I ask you to search me.
I am indebted to Crig Croeschel for some of the material in this message from his series on dangerous prayers.
