SHOW ME MY HEART

After church Wednesday, a brother and I were just chatting. I'm not sure how it came up, but he noted that the rich automatically get a bad rap. That's true both in the liberal political environment and, many times, in the Church. The rich are all lumped together as uncaring, greedy narcissists, exploiting villains, and, the spiritually carnal. He then made this statement--as nearly as I can recall it: "Riches don't make a person bad. Riches just bring out of a man what he already is. Riches show him his heart." My immediate thought and response was, "If riches show a person his heart, I am going to start praying, 'God, show me my heart.'" Immediately my weak attempt at witticism was crowded out by the thought of the cry of the psalmist, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me..." (Psa 139:23-24). Many, I think, misunderstand what the psalmist is requesting. He is not saying, "Come on God, see if you can find anything wrong with me." Searching his heart was not about God benefitting by gaining knowledge of his heart from the search. It was about the psalmist's benefitting by gaining knowledge of his heart. Although he ended this psalm with this request for God to search him, note how the psalmist began this psalm: "O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me." (Psa 139:1). God, the psalmist notes, has already searched and known him. If God already has, why then is the psalmist requesting that God search him and know him? I think it is this the psalmist is saying: "God, you have searched me and known me. This time take me with you on the tour of my heart and point out and show me what you found to be there. It is like a mechanic who has searched for what was wrong with your car. You then ask, can you show me? He says, "Yes, if you step in the garage for a moment, I will show you what I found." It is like a spelunker who has discovered and explored a cave on your personal property. You say to him, "Could you go through the cave again and this time take me with you and show me what you have found?" God is intimately acquainted with everything about our hearts. It isn't that He doesn't know. It is that we don't know. Our prayer should be, "God, show me my heart. Let me see what you see, what you found. And, God, if it takes lots of riches for You to show me my heart, pile them on." (That last line, if you didn't catch it, was just another attempt at witticism not to be taken seriously--well, maybe not.)

SHOW ME MY HEART

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