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Devotion provided by Rich Villodas
“Interior examination is a way of life that considers the realities of our inner worlds for the sake of our own flourishing and the call to love well. Much of modern life resists this kind of living. Many of our days are strategically and subconsciously constructed to avoid looking beneath the surface. We often belong to church communities that reinforce a lack of introspection. We use God to run from God, and we use God to run from ourselves.
In Psalm 139, we see the heart of a person who is a model of deeply formed interior examination: David. The first fourteen verses of the psalm are about God’s knowledge of humanity and David in particular. But by the end of the psalm, you get this sense that David was keenly aware that although God knew everything about him, David didn’t know everything about himself. So in words of interiority and confession, he wrote,
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting! (verses 23–24)
Most of us want an awareness of God. But what we need in addition is awareness of self. David affirmed that God knows it all, so he asked for revelation not of God but of himself. The disposition of David’s heart was to go beneath the surface.”