When my parents separated during my last year of middle school, you could usually find me hiding in my school’s tiny library.

You’d think that, with my love of fiction, you would find me clutching an old copy of Artemis Fowl or Percy Jackson. But actually, I’d be reading 2 well-worn pages in my Bible over and over: the pages that bore Psalm 139.

This psalm become my anthem, my standard, my blessed assurance. “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me,” I would whisper. “You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar…”

All the while, other truth filtered in: I am not a monster. God doesn’t make mistakes. God sees me and knows exactly what I’m going though. I’m not alone.

Again and again, God showed himself to me through those words. He opened his arms and I fell into them.

And after the self-hatred abated, after the tide receded, the spiritual amnesia set in. It became just another psalm.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it remained a favorite. But it was a little like a friend from school that you love to see but never text. It was just “that really nice psalm that helped me stay alive a few years ago.” I didn’t even highlight it in my 2019 Bible until a couple months ago. I have 20 journals worth of my life and not one of them in recent years has dug deep into Psalm 139.

Which recently signaled two things to me:

1. I was diminishing the pain of my past
2. I had forgotten how much God’s words had allowed me to keep moving forward

Now, I haven’t taken Hebrew yet—that’s for the Ultra MDiv nerds (whom I deeply respect), but this psalm conveys the assurance of God’s knowledge and love in any language it’s in. For the next couple articles, I’ll unpack how God moves through this passage and hopefully bring a encouragement and further depth to this beloved Psalm.

Vs. 1-2a: “Lord, You have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up!”

All too often, we fall into believing 1 of 2 mindsets after we read this verse: the “God is watching your every mood, waiting for you to fail” and the “God actually has better things to do, David is exaggerating to get his point across.” Neither of these mindsets are true. Yes, God sees everything we do—he sees the times we decide to watch Parks and Recreation instead of journaling like He asked yesterday. He hears us when we fall exhausted into bed, a prayer half-mumbled on our lips. But He is never surprised by our strengths or our weaknesses. He beckons for us to know Him more in either situation, and He never despises a contrite heart.

Vs. 2b “You perceive my thoughts from afar.”

He knows every thought you’ve ever had. The ones you say, the ones you don’t say. The ones you swallow in the dark, try to gouge from your mind, or the ones that lead to blessings. The lies you tell yourself that He, of course, knows aren’t true. Every. Single One.

Are you freaked out yet? Do you feel a little like a bug under a microscope? I know—because as much as this verse gave me comfort as a kid, it also crawled into my head, leading me to “mind loops” where I thought that as long as I thought this one thing, I would be a better person in God’s eyes. Turns out it just kept me in denial of my own sin and need for His salvation. God knows our thoughts, but he also guides us in our thinking when we are open to His counsel. His Spirit is woven through our veins. When we read “you perceive my thoughts from afar,” let us remember that our mindsets are not set in stone. They are capable of change and transformation through the Spirit of the Living God.

Vs. 3-4 “You searched out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh LORD, you know it all together.”

This verse reminds me of a scene in Marvel’s show, Loki. Loki is given an enormous stack of papers and told to sign off on it because he is told that it’s a transcription of everything he’s ever said.

“That’s absurd!” he exclaims. This statement is transcribed and added to the pile. And that’s just Loki. God knows everything that that human race has ever spoken—the greetings, the wise encouragements, the sly daggers and shouts of rage. He knows every way we will ever help or hurt anyone with our words.

God doesn’t just see our ways, though; he knows the underlying causes that we don’t even understand. He watched our grandmothers and grandfathers, our great-uncles and great-aunts make the choices that sometimes we also make, be they wise or foolish. He’s watched every generation make its choices, as he will with the generations after us. Yet he is not intimidated by our depravity. He is not unsure of his own status as LORD when we make the right choice. He is God.

To sum up: God knows us holistically, more than we could ever fathom. We forget good days and bad days. Our Savior knows them all. We hyperfocus on our places of pride and shame—He sees the nuances and every act in between. We think one page at a time. God knows the book like the back of His Own Hand.

He is a God of Stories. And ours isn’t over yet.

Tune in next time for Part 2 of Psalm 139!