This morning the thought that keeps running through my mind are thoughts about God’s love for me. Powerful revelations of God’s love are pouring over my mind like a healing oil that soothes, mends, and brings peace to my soul. I want to share this healing oil with you.

In Psalms 139 it says “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me.”  Let’s just stop right there. He knows us. How amazing is that! Trillions of souls out there and he knows me individually. The truth is transformative, that he would know me and still love me. Another Psalmist was amazed at the same thought when he asked, “who is man that you are mindful of him?” Why would the great God of the entire universe even care to know me much less search me.  Although it is inconceivable to me, it is still true. He searches me, and he knows me fully.

Psalms 139 goes on to say” you know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a single word is on my tongue you know it completely.” There is nothing about us that he does not perceive or know. This can be a scary prospect because he knows the things that aren’t right just yet, he knows not only our strengths but our weaknesses and our shortcomings. Still, we know as his children we are saved by faith through grace. So, we do not have to fear his knowing because as the psalmist says, “you hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.” He covers us, even knowing us fully he still covers us! At my best and at my worst he still knows me, covers me, and loves me.

So, I ask you today as the Psalmist does. “Where can you go from his presence?” What is that place you think that our great God will not be accessible to you or you to him? Too many of us imagine God only sees the good, or only cares for the good. That his light cannot reach or pierce any darkness no matter how great. Yet the truth is there is no place he can’t reach, no place he will not abide with us or love us.

“Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go to the heavens, you are there if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of dawn or if I settle on the far side of the sea even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say” surely the darkness will hide me and the light will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” 

So powerful, to think and know that there is nowhere God is not with me, knowing me, searching me, loving me, and reaching for me! No darkness that he cannot penetrate with his radiance.

My sister once shared her testimony with me. At one point in her life, although raised in the church and loving God still, she had made choices she thought would separate her from God. She felt not good enough to approach the throne of grace in her fallen position. She was certain she was unworthy of God’s love, grace, or acceptance. She sat in her car in the church parking lot, unable to bring herself to go in. Here’s the thing, God wasn’t only in the church that day that she was unwilling to enter because she was sure of God’s rejection, God was in the car with her. In that parking lot he was with her-knowing her and loving her.

We have all been there in our own parking lot, wrapped in our own failures and fears, certain of God’s rejection of us. We have all been in the depths. The enemy wants you to think you are alone there. Because you are not what you think that you should be before God, that you are unworthy to approach him, and that you are so unworthy and unholy, that he is not with you. The truth couldn’t be any further from that lie. He never left even when we leave. He remains loving and faithful even in our unfaithfulness. That even at our worst, in our most desperate situations literally in the depths he is just as present with us as he is at our best. His love for us is still the same.

None of us deserve his love (at our best and at our worst), his very present help in the time of trouble, his faithfulness, his kindness towards us, or the redemption purchased by his son’s death. He paid a debt He did not owe; I owed a debt I could not pay. Even so, he still paid it and paid it in full.

Don’t believe the lie the enemy would want you to believe! Instead believe in God and his greatness. Believe that he will be true to what he has promised, and he said” I will never leave you or forsake you.” Never! There is no point in staying in the car in the parking lot, he’s with you there too. And remember “nothing can separate you from the love of God! Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither height nor depths, nor anything else in all creation! Nothing!

Believe and receive, be transformed by the truth of the amazing love of God that fully knows us, covers us, loves us, and remains-even at our worst!