Listening to the Right Voice

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.  When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.  How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.  When I awake, I am still with you.”  Psalm 139: 13-18

Maybe it was David’s child or one belonging to a family member, but it seems that holding a newborn baby in his arms could have triggered the thoughts we see in Psalm 139.  As an adult, he saw God at work in his life in vast ways.  David also recognized that God’s work started in him before he saw the light of day before he was born.  He understood the omnipresence of God, and in a moment of humility, realized that God deeply loved him since the beginning.  Above his thoughts about himself, he valued God’s opinions, being ever so grateful for God’s early work in his own life.  Without much effort, we can easily see David’s thankful heart and praising soul.  And it gives us perspective as we begin our look into how God has been at work in our lives from our first breath as well.

As we mature in Christ, we hopefully build faith and internalize that God’s thoughts are greater, higher, more accurate, and worthy of belief than anything we already know to be true about ourselves.  We can learn that hurtful authority messages we heard as children can be replaced with what God thinks because some of those things from our past were broken messages from broken people.  But God’s words are eternal.  David learned early on to value God’s thoughts above his fears, what anyone said about him, any messages he received from family or friends – and learning this gave him success not only in life but more importantly, it helped solidify his relationship with God and why God described him as “a man after God’s own heart.”  We will do well if we can value God’s words above the internal images we have of ourselves.