775 On Being Led - Enjoying God Part 8 - Psalm 139:23-24

Do you carefully examine what you follow? Are you even a follower at all? Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast. 

Today, we're talking about being led and we've been doing this series through Psalm 139 to enjoy God and the passage wraps up today with these two verses that are pretty famous. I'm reading from the New American Standard Psalm 139:23-24. "Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way." 

You've probably heard those before. The Psalmist wraps up this Psalm with this request that God would search us, that he would know our hearts. Why is that a question? Well, I think it's a question because it's easy for us to fool ourselves. It's easy for us to follow something other than God. We can pursue the appreciation of others. We can pursue money and power and strength. We can pursue glory, trying to be famous or trying to be well known. When we pursue anything that comes from anyone other than God, our heart is not pure. 

And he says here, "Try me and know my anxious thoughts." We want God to know what's going on in the recesses of our mind so that we can be his fully.  We tend to  listen to ourselves. We tend to let our minds guide us. And our mind is part of our flesh. It's part of our fallen nature. That's why it has to be renewed.   And that's how our body gets transformed. That's how our life gets transformed is when we renew our minds.  That's from Romans 12:2. 

And so today our challenge as Christ followers is to turn to God. Ask him to search you. Ask him to show you what you need to get rid of that's in your heart. What are you anxiously thinking about? Or what are you worried about? 

"See if there is any hurtful way in me," can also be "offensive" or "grievous" or "wicked," ways that are opposite of God. The New Living translation says, "Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life."

God would you examine our minds and our hearts and show us how you want us to live and what you want us to do in our workplaces and with the people that we come in contact with today? 

Thank you so much for being a marketplace minister. Let's enjoy God. Let's trust him to examine our mind. Let's trust him to guide us and follow him. He's who we want in the lead. Not ourselves.  If we let God lead us, he will use us in the lives of the people that we interact with. He will use you to make himself visible to the people that you work with, or the people that you're around today. 

Let God transform you. Ask him to show you what you need to do, and then do it. The ideas that we get while we're praying. If they line up with scripture, they're God talking. Let's figure out a way to do them. Let's try and find a way to do what God says. If we listen to God, but we don't do what he says. Are we really being led? 

Today let's pray for the people around us and let's ask God to search us and know our hearts, to try us and to sift out those anxious thoughts and show us how we can join him in the everlasting way. He can get rid of our wicked and hurtful thoughts. He can show us what those are and transform those in our lives.

Thanks for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for listening to this series. If you haven't heard the other seven episodes, check them out. Check out this whole series on our podcast. Also, if you'd like to be part of a community of people who are actively pursuing God on a regular basis, join us at https://community.followerofone.org.

Thanks very much.