Threat or Promise

Over the years of being a believer and reading my Bible, many of Jesus’ sayings have become familiar to me. However, I’ve noticed that the implications of what He speaks and my understanding of what He is really saying have often changed, developed, and deepened.

Re-reading Luke’s gospel this week brought me to today’s verse, and I remembered how, when I was a new believer, I found this verse a real threat. It was as if Jesus was saying to me personally, “You had better watch out, I know your every thought and I will surely find them, and you, unacceptable”. It felt like a terrible threat to me; an ever-watchful judge that could read my thoughts. I wonder if anyone else has had that same frightening thought.

It will come as no surprise to many of you that my earthly father had seemed to me to be very hard to please and critical, so I had brought my wounding, and my expectations of a father from my tainted earthly experience and this was affecting my new relationship with my perfect, heavenly Father.

Over the years, God has done some deep healing. So these days, although I fully accept that Father God is indeed  the holy righteous judge, I have also come to grasp that this verse is a wonderful promise. He does know what is in our heart, even when we can’t express it in words. He is our Father who lovingly cares about those deep wounds from the past, and even those sinful, self-focussed thoughts of today, when we can’t or dare not articulate them. Perhaps we can’t even acknowledge what is going on inside. As Romans 8 tells us, He ‘searches our heart’, not to smash us down with judgement, but so that the Holy Spirit can take our innermost thoughts and intercede for us. What a wonderful promise!

I suspect none of us would welcome an intense scrutiny of all our thoughts by another human being. Under such a scrutiny, we would be in daily fear of ridicule or condemnation. But our heavenly Father isn’t like that, He knows all our thoughts and He is for us, not against us. He seeks to convict us, and comfort us, to challenge us, and console us, to cherish us, and to bring life-benefitting change to us.

As a well-known chorus says, ‘He knows my name, He knows my every thought, He sees each tear that falls and hears me when I call’. What a wonderful promise!