He wants to be loved and he has arranged a life in which nobody can know him, and he has never seen those two facts in the same room.
They live in different places. The wanting is old and it is deep and he could not put it into a sentence if you paid him. The arranging is technical and he is extremely good at it and it happens automatically.
And the arrangement has worked, in that he is well thought of. People like him. Several of them would say they love him and they would mean it.
What he does not have is the thing he wants, and he has slowly concluded that the thing he wants does not exist, or exists for other people, or exists in some form he was not issued the equipment for.
There is a psalm that opens with total knowledge and closes with a request that makes no sense unless the thing he wants is real.
What it opens with
Here it is, in the King James Version:
O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. (Psalm 139:1-4)
Thou hast searched me, and known me.
That is the opening line and it is total. Sitting down, getting up, thoughts, paths, lying down, every word before it is said.
There is nothing left over. The psalm does not describe a God who knows most of it.
And any man who has arranged what people know about him reads that first sentence and braces, because everything in his life has been built on the assumption that being known is what has to be prevented.
You are already fully known and you were never going to change that by arranging anything. Psalm 139:1 opens with thou hast searched me, and known me in the perfect tense, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a lowered guard who makes that a settled fact rather than a threat.
What he thinks about it
And then, six verses in, the writer says what he makes of being in that position.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. (Psalm 139:6)
Too wonderful for me.
Not too much. Not unbearable. Wonderful, in the old sense: full of wonder, more than he can take in.
That is the reaction of a man who has looked straight at the fact of being completely known and found it good, and the whole psalm turns on the fact that he got there.
He is not in denial about what is in him either. Twenty verses later he says some of the hardest things in the Psalms about his own anger. He is not a man with nothing to hide. He has looked at being fully known while having plenty in him, and called it wonderful.
You are able to find this good and you were never built to fear being seen. Psalm 139:6 calls total knowledge too wonderful for me, and it is His Spirit who makes the difference between exposure and being known something a man can feel rather than only argue.
What he asks for at the end
And then the request, which is the sentence that makes no sense if being known is a danger.
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)
Search me, O God, and know my heart.
He asks for it. The same two verbs as verse one, in the imperative, requested.
And he asks after twenty-two verses in which he has established that it is already the case. Which means he is not asking God to find out something. He is asking to be searched, as an act, deliberately, and the asking is the point.
That is what a man actually wants when he says he wants to be loved. Not to be regarded well from a distance, which he already has. To be searched and known and not left, which is a completely different transaction and the only one that ever satisfies anybody.
You have the thing you actually want and you were never wanting something that does not exist. Psalm 139:23 has a man ask to be searched after establishing he already is, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that request a thing a man can say rather than only admire.
And if this has taken you somewhere heavier, if it has reached not wanting to be here at all, that is not a thing to hold alone. A doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust who will pick up the phone. In the United States the 988 crisis line answers day and night. Nobody is asked to carry that by himself.
What is on the other side of the knowledge
And the verse in the middle that says what the knowing is full of.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. (Psalm 139:17-18)
Thy thoughts unto me. Not his thoughts about God. God's thoughts toward him, and the psalm says they are numerous past counting.
So the knowledge in that psalm is not surveillance. It is attention, and the attention is described as precious and constant.
And Paul, on where this ends up:
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Even as also I am known. The being known is already complete, and the knowing catches up later.
And Jesus, describing the arrangement in one line:
I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. (John 10:14)
Both directions, in one sentence, as a description of what He is.
You are known and you have thoughts toward you past counting and you were never under surveillance. Psalm 139:17 says His thoughts toward a man are more in number than the sand, and it is His Spirit who makes total knowledge feel like attention rather than exposure.
So say it out loud, plainly, alone, and let it be the whole of it rather than the version.
The psalm opens with total knowledge, calls it wonderful, and then asks for it as a request, and the man asking has plenty in him and knows it.
You are already searched and known and you have not been getting away with anything. The written word says thou hast searched me, and known me in Psalm 139:1 in the perfect tense, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a lowered guard who makes that a settled fact a man can live inside of.
And what the knowledge is full of is not a file. You have thoughts toward you past counting and you were never under surveillance. Psalm 139:17 says they are more in number than the sand, and John 10:14 has Him describe Himself as knowing His own and being known of them, in both directions, in one sentence.
Nothing here promises anybody else finds out. The man at sixty-one says his whole life is the same and always was. What is promised is that being fully known was called wonderful by somebody who had plenty in him, and you were searched and known before you arranged anything (Psalm 139:1, Psalm 139:23), and it is His Spirit rather than your courage who makes saying it out loud a receiving.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over your own condition is genuinely yours, handed to you and never invented. A psalm opens with a man being completely known, calls it wonderful, and then asks to be searched, and the man asking had plenty in him, so speak to the arrangement where you are loved and not known: you have standing to address it because Scripture addressed it first and did it with tenderness. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own opinion, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Psalm 139:1 and Psalm 139:23 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not the courage behind your saying, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Arrangement where I am loved and not known, you are not what I was made for. The Word of God says thou hast searched me, and known me, and the man who wrote it called that knowledge wonderful.
- Fear that being known ends the loving, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture has him ask search me, O God, and know my heart twenty-two verses after establishing it was already so.
- Father, Your thoughts toward me are more in number than the sand, which means the knowing is attention and not a file. I receive what Your word says in Psalm 139, and I am saying it out loud today, the whole of it.
Psalm 139:1-6
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