ON BEING SEARCHED OF GOD

Sermon exerpt by Charles G Finney. . . .


"Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."--Psalm 139:23, 24.

These words occur at the close of that wonderful Psalm, written under a vivid sense of God's omniscience and omnipresence, and which begins--"O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me."

In treating my text, I propose,

I. To show when this prayer, always appropriate, is especially and peculiarly so.

1. When persons are in spiritual darkness, and have low and faint conceptions of spiritual things. Then they have great reason to suspect that something is wrong, and should be searched out that it may be set right. It must be that something separates between your soul and God, and you should set yourself to urge this prayer unceasingly.

2. In a state of spiritual insensibility let men cry to God in like manner to be searched. When you do not feel the power of truth, you may be assured something is wrong, and you certainly should not rest till it be searched out. Those who suffer themselves to remain in such a state, without enquiry for the cause, wrong their own souls.

3. When the mind is oppressed with a sense of guilt, but does not clearly see where the guilt lies, no one should remain at ease at all till the whole matter is searched to the bottom. Often persons carry a sense of guilt in their souls a long time, yet do not see the particular cause. Probably they will not see it, unless the Spirit of God search them thoroughly. Hence, they should cry mightily unto him for his searching power.

4. When in attempting to approach God, you find access denied you. You try to pray, but find no access to God. Your prayer seems to be shut off; it falls, but never rises toward God. Then you should enquire why your Father's door is shut against you, and why, when you try to come to a throne of grace you can get no access to it. Then ask God to search you.
Again, when you have no spirit of prayer. When you have no inclination to go to God; when you know you need blessings, but do not feel inclined to go to God and seek them in earnest prayer; then cry to God for the searching grace of his Spirit.

Read more here . . . .On Being Searched of God