Psalm 139:1-24 (NASB)
1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar.
3 You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
5 You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,”
12 Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.
13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

In this psalm of David, he is acknowledging who God is and then asks for a spiritual checkup. But, T.S. Eliot was correct when he said that “we humans cannot bear much reality”. We prefer for the most part to believe a fictional version of ourselves.

However, when we allow God to uncover the sin in our lives, God not only receives glory, but adds a bit of glory through sanctification to us. Did you know that the Puritans did this type of examination that is taught in Psalm 139:23-24 each week on Saturday nights? It was a good cleansing of the soul that prepared them to worship well on the Sabbath.
Reread verses 1 and then 23 and 24. David recognized that God is constantly searching us all the time. Verses 23 and 24 are a prayer asking God to reveal the result. A prayer asking God to do a spiritual checkup on us, showing us what we need to do.

I wonder if, when we do repent, we often miss the mark. Have we taken the first step of praying those last two verses in Psalm 139 and listened to God’s answer?