The Story Of My Life (Part 1)

Do you start thinking about where your life is headed, what you've done or haven't done when it's quiet and everybody else is in bed? Do you ever pause and add up what your life amounts to or came up short in? Maybe you just feel like a hamster in a cage, turning the big wheel. Life is a treadmill of the same-old, same-old. You're working hard, but it doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere. It seems to me that most people who take the time to reflect on the story of their lives struggle with these incomplete feelings and dead end thoughts. Some people wrestle with them every day. Many take stock of their life and say, "What difference does my life make? Does anybody really know or care about me?"

God has a word for you in Psalm 139. He wants to show you a different story of your life. He wants to give you a view from the top, to help you see the meaning of your life from His perspective.

In Psalm 139:1-6 there are eight different Hebrew words that stack up to tell you that God knows your story intimately: "O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I stand up; you understand my thoughts from far away. You observe my travels and my rest; You are aware of all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, LORD. You have encircled me; You have placed Your hand on me. This behind and before, and lay Your hand upon me. [This] extraordinary knowledge is beyond me. It is lofty; I am unable to [reach] it."

Each of these words conveys a different layer of God's knowledge of you. Combined, they picture God like a detective, tracking even our most mundane activities, studying us even when we think we're alone. He dissects our inner world into parts, discerning what makes us tick and why we do what we do. He has penetrated past our best foot forward. He has such a grasp of each one of us on an programming level that He knows precisely what you will say or do next, as if it had already been uttered or performed.

So God knows your heart, your fears, your thoughts, motives, dreams, and frustrations. He knows your past, present and your future. He understands you. He notices what's going on around you, to you, inside you. He gets you. In fact, God has you pegged better than you do. You think your motive for doing something is this, when God, who is not fooled, knows it is that.

That sounds unnerving, but you can rest assured about this: God knows, but He loves you still. When David says that God has laid His hand upon him, he's referring to an OT practice of bestowing a blessing on someone. A wise father would place his hands on his children and speak words into their lives about who they are and will be, what their place in the family meant, and what their future will be. This was one of the most important acts that happened in Hebrew families.

In the same way, your Heavenly Father who knows you bestows blessing on you, borne out of love, that marks your place in His family and what your future is all about. You're not a nobody, because in His family, nobodies are non-existent. He knows the story of your life.