Last week Whit of Whit's Whittlings posted a Rudyard Kipling poem that really hit me where I live. Besides remembering the version that became a Yalie song from my childhood, I really studied the words and it made me cry. He asked for our takes on it and I responded. It was, by far, the hardest to write comment I have left on anyone's blog and it left me emotionally spent when I was done. I have copied and pasted just the refrain from the song and Whit's and my responses.

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence,
Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us
And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.
We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We're little black sheep who've gone astray,
Baa--aa--aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!

My take of the words mean:

We have lost all sense of the future, and all integrity in ourselves. We have seen so much that we have lost the innocence of our First Love and can't find it any more. We can't tell the truth from a lie anymore. Our youth was filled with the hell and pain of war and we feel the shame of what we've been through and fail to feel the pride in what we've accomplished that others feel for us. We feel disqualified from this thing called life and our disinheritance surrounds us until we pass to the other side.

They sound like dead men walking, Whit. They have lost their innocence, their faith, the truth that they once knew. Their torments have caused them to see the world and others from the other side and they will never be the same. They followed the herd, baa, baa, baa, into the horrors of war and now they have lost who they are, the boys that they used to be, what they once stood for......

Don't we all lose our innocence sometime, Whit? Don't we all lose our faith, our hope, our love for God and our fellow man SOMETIME? Who has not felt those emotions so unique to the human experience? My wars have been different....I have not held a gun....not ever in my whole life....yet I have been to war and I defy anyone to minimize it or say that I haven't. I know what it means to lose my hope and to lose my honor, in my own eyes and in the eyes of my fellows. I know what it means to question my own integrity and to think that I MUST be the wrong one and everyone else MUST be right. I know what it is like to hug my pillow at night and pray to die.

I know what it is like to follow the herd, baa, baa, baa, and the price that is exacted from that. I know what it means to leave the herd and have to follow another road. A harsh, rocky, lonely, narrow road. I know what it means to lose the innocence of my youth and know that nothing....nothing....will ever gain it back....that I will never trust people, any people, even the people closest to me, the same way again.

I know first hand the curse of Reuban and know that my earthly inheritance is not worthy to be compared to what awaits me in heaven. If they deny me, I deny them. My hope is not 'false hope' and I do not hang onto it because I have nothing else to hang onto....I hang onto it because I have 'tasted and seen that the Lord is good' and no one in this world, not even my dearest and best can take from me what I have experienced.

I am a prisoner of the hope the Lord has put so far down inside of me that it can never be pulled out no matter how hard someone.....or circumstances try. When my hope fled from me, He caused me to hope against hope, and a greater hope was born. A hope that is not dependent on anyone but Him. He is all my hope, all my honour, all my innocence, all my youth and all my truth. In my darkest moments, in those times when I thought I would die from the grief, I found something so much greater than my own integrity to hope in.

Ps. 18 says, "He made darkness His secret place". For a while He was so bright and I didn't have to look hard to find evidence of His love for me. Then it's like someone walked in the room and flipped the switch. When the light went out all I could think of was "God is light and in Him is no darkness at all" (1John) and it condemned me. Yet His Word says that when our hearts condemn us He is greater than our hearts. Then I saw the Psalm and God drew me into that secret place, and it was dark....and I so HATE the dark....and it changed me, Whit. Forever. I am changed and even if I wanted to I can't go back. It would be like slapping Him in the face for all the times He has secretly met me in my need.

I am called rebellious and unsubmissive to authority....but I was such a good girl, wasn't I? It was only when I realized that nothing I could ever do for these people would please them, that I became truly free to please God alone.

Well, this is the first post on any blog in the whole time I've been here, that has taken me more than a minute or two to comment on. I had to process this one for a while and then I had to get past the tears. The nostalgic Whiffenpoof song was an easier take....but I knew this meant more to me than that.
by prisonerofhope (PM , CC ) on Thursday March 16, 2006 @ 10:05 PM



prisoner:At last we know how you acquired your blog name--prisoner of hope. I am not certain I like the use of the word "prisoner" within this context. I think of a prisoner as someone who is incarcerated against his or her will. And you have voluntarily entered into this relationship and are free to disengage anytime you wish. But meanwhile, the hope that you have goes deep into your own soul.I am pleased that you found a force which has allowed you to surmount all the turmoil in your life. And you are right. Sometimes, the battles we must fight within ourselves are just as real and traumatic as any battle by a soldier on a battlefield.Good luck to you as pursue your destiny.
by Whit's Whittlings (PM , CC ) on Thursday March 16, 2006 @ 11:04 PM



The blog name is really not original with me. There is a book, written by a Holocaust survivor, by that name. I understand what you mean about the 'against your will' aspect of the word but I don't see it that way, anymore than I see anything wrong with the scripture that calls us 'slaves to righteousness'. You speak of destiny, and I believe that, but right now, Whit, I can't see more than a day ahead of me. I know that I have hopes and dreams for the here and now, not just for the hereafter....but, well, we'll see...I'm not the type to barge my way in somewhere I'm not wanted. Anyway, I liked this post, even if it was hard.
by prisonerofhope (PM , CC ) on Thursday March 16, 2006

Whit, thanks for a great post and for making me think.

Gossip and its more evil cousin Slander, are two of the most detrimental sins in the Body of Christ today. They have caused more dissension, more broken hearts and more destruction to the church as a whole and the individual than probably anything else ol' Lucifer could have found in his bag of tricks.

On a recent post, a blogger quoted Socrates in saying that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. I agree. Without periodic self-examination, a principle taught in all AA-groups but should be taught to all people everywhere, we continue to move forward in our lives yet not get ahead. We can own everything and have all that the world has to offer, but if we just blindly keep shoving our way past people without a thought of who they are and what they mean in our lives, I believe we come to the end of our lives harboring bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness and cynicism inside. It would behoove all of us to examine ourselves, our lives, and our hearts, at LEAST every time we take communion, if not every single day!

I have met SO many bitter old people, Christians and non-Christians alike, and have come to realize that the problem did not start when they got old. It started when they were much younger and never got over the issues they had with others. Now all they can do is talk about how this one and that one hurt them, continuing to gossip, even using names, even into their old age.

It may seem justified to hold resentment when someone has truly hurt you, yet we are commanded to cast all of our burdens on the One Who cares for us. When we fail to do that, and hang onto the grievance, even if the other person was truly wrong, it eats at the very fiber of our being. We need to get rid of it, if only for the sake that we will lose our intimacy with God, if for no other reason. Get rid of it, get RID of it, GET RID OF IT.

In our society today gossip is not looked at as the evil that it really is. From the famous female comedian spouting, “Can we talk?” to the women around the table wanting “to dish” or gloating and bragging that they have some “new dirt” it’s all the same thing…..it’s all gossip. While Christian women may do it, at least they are generally convicted about it and know that it is wrong. The world has a very lax attitude about it and even revels in it. Half of all TV shows and magazines are dedicated to this very thing!

I have a child who has had a fairly serious problem with this. What makes it worse is that she has problems with cognitive reasoning and sometimes doesn’t comprehend what the person is saying correctly. Besides the fact that abstract thinking is next to impossible for her, she misinterprets things regularly. The problem is compounded by the fact that she does not “look” delayed, and in fact looks quite bright….it is only upon broaching subjects beyond the local grapevine, that one finds out she is incapable of fully understanding some concepts. If this child was quiet and unassuming this would not be a problem. Because she is almost a non-stop talker, who is eager for the spotlight in any situation, this becomes a SERIOUS problem. When this has gone unchecked for any length of time the rumors and innuendoes begin flying around the house until finally Mr. Hope or I take control of it. Even still she seems incapable of understanding where her fault is. I have been known, at the risk of hurting her feelings, to make her stop, even in front of family and friends, from spouting her flashy bits of news when it concerns people at the table that none of us have heard of but especially when we have.

I questioned God about this and have listened for a long time to get His answers. I don’t claim to have every answer but I have some thoughts that He has given me.

The Bible is clear that if one talks too much they will eventually sin with their mouth. All of us need to watch our speech but that can be difficult to impossible without a CHANGE OF HEART. As a “talker”, myself, I have taken seriously the Proverb that says, “In the multitude of words there lacketh not sin”. Yet, I have found that even seemingly quiet people can be very evil in their speech not to mention their facial expressions (there IS some truth the term “dirty look”). Even our countenances can convey our feelings, sometimes better than words. We learn over the years to hide behind our words, but the tone of voice, eye contact, or lack thereof, give us other clues.

The principle, God has shown me, behind all speech is our heart. Whether we talk a lot or not, if we harbor things in our hearts and do not “examine” and clean ourselves out, emotionally and spiritually, on a regular basis, we WILL say and do things that we regret.

The Bible says that “out of the heart the mouth speaks”. So, if our speech is evil it means our heart is evil. Have you ever been in the situation where you said something you “didn’t mean to say”? Or someone else said something to or about you that they “didn’t mean to say”? Well, this is what I have to say about that….yes, you did, yes they did.

Saying something the ‘wrong way’, or the person misunderstanding is different. That is a circumstance where in the former case the person said it in a way that came across different than they meant. In the latter, the other person took something wrong and it isn’t the fault of how the person said it.

But those supposed “Freudian slips” and other occasions when some bit of sarcasm comes out with a piece of that person’s truth attached to it, in those cases it can be safely assumed that the thought was harboring in that persons heart and mind, probably for quite a while. They may not ever have said it, but it was still there.

So, the answer to this problem is not to talk less, but to keep your heart cleared out regularly. As soon as some garbage rears it’s ugly head, repent. Quickly. While repentance may involve some saying of 'I'm sorry', what it really means is 'to turn'. To make a 180 degree turn.

God made some of us to be talkers. As a child I didn’t talk very much. I was what my mother called rambunctious a lot of the time but I was certainly not chatty by any means. My son was exactly the same way. He has always had a deep voice and when he got hyperactive he could be loud, but he was never talkative in that way.

I became much more chatty and conversational after I was an adult. It is interesting to note that I made my radical commitment to Christ at 23 years old. Yep, it would be around then. My son did the same thing. He was a teenager, but suddenly he went from a relatively hyperactive yet non-talkative kid to a physically less active one who can monologue for HOURS!

People seem to think that other people who talk too much shouldn’t do that and Christians, in particular, have this idea that we need to be very quiet and unobtrusive all the time. Anyone can disagree with me if they like, but I am convinced that mine and my son’s talkativeness is Christ-led. I did not recognize this for a long time and when I was teased about it, I took it as a fault. I believe the teasers meant it that way too. I was watching Joyce Meyer one day on TV. She is an awesome woman of God whom I have the utmost respect for. I saw her preach in person at Rod Parsely's church and just loved her. One day on TV she was interviewing Stormy Omartian, who is a much more quiet type, and every time Stormy would begin to answer the question, Joyce would barge in and practically answer her own question herself. At first I was getting somewhat annoyed and then began to laugh hysterically. My friend watched the same program and called me after. We laughed about it. She said, "see, Connie, you and Joyce are just alike!" She said that the reason we both do that is because we have so much to say. Well, who am I to be offended at being compared to the likes of Joyce Meyer!

It was only after God clearly showed me that this is the way He wanted me to be and I accepted it as His will, that He began to use me in the life of teenagers. It is interesting to note that teenagers LOVE to be talked with, even or maybe especially by adults!, but they DESPISE being talked AT, talked down to, or lectured. Well, gee, SO DO I, what a revelation! If we can find our way clear to treating them like a person and not like a child, it goes a long way in establishing a friendly relationship that is open to dialogue.

As an adult, if you can somehow find that netherland (it is almost impossible with your OWN children, btw, others are MUCH easier) that bridges the gap of the generations and talk to them openly, without the judgment that so many adults show young people and the rejection that teenagers display toward adults, one realizes that teenagers aren’t so different from us after all.

However, what God has shown me is not that He wanted me to talk LESS but that He wanted to CHANGE what I talked about. He wanted to fill my mouth with the Word, with faith, and with love.

I would like to make it clear that being a talker does not mean I was a gossiper. I have always had something of a sensitivity to that. I am not saying that I have been totally exempt from it but I guess I’m always more interested in talking about my self and the other person I am with than to engage in dialogue about a third party. As mothers, however, we need to be careful that in our zeal for our family and children that we do not allow ourselves, even unwittingly, to gossip about THEM. That has been more of an issue for me than talking about my neighbors or fellow Christians.

As talkers and writers, however, it makes it is imperative that we keep our heart right before the Lord. If I don’t keep my heart clear, I will still talk too much, but not about the things of heaven, but about earthly things. I will talk about my problems but not about the solutions and forgiveness that has been shown to me and I have shown to others.

That is the core of love, isn’t it, forgiveness? I am not implying that we should not ‘talk out’ our problems….in fact, that is the way I have solved most of mine. What I am referring to is the on-going, never-ending gabbing without ever actually DOING anything about it. I think of the verse, “Be doers of the Word, not hearers only”.

As for gossip, I have often wondered why women seem to be much more vulnerable to doing that and to listening to it. There is something so attractive about it but what is it? People say that it is because the gossiper is insecure and by gossiping about someone else it makes them feel better about themselves. Are not men insecure too? Don’t men need that ego-boost that comes from a tasty bit of juicy gossip? I’m not saying a man can’t be a gossip, but the vast majority I have met are not. Maybe it is true, that gossip makes the gossiper feel better (it always gave me the feeling that I need to take a shower) but I believe that God has shown me that

the reason women have more of a problem with this is because they are natural nurturers.

I put that on it’s own line because it is a point I don’t want you to miss. I know that may seem incongruous, doesn’t it, gossip and nurturing? The daughter with the serious gossip problem (which I have tried over a ten year period to fix and have failed miserably to correct) is, by far, the most people oriented one in the family, including me, which is saying a lot. She just LOVES people. She seeks them out and would spend all her time with them if she could. She can be, especially toward children, a very nurturing person yet she is also a gossip. She has very few other hobbies or interests..... let’s just hang out and gab and play with the babies.

Think about it this way. We talk about what we think about. If we are thinking about people all the time we will talk about people. What is good can become bad. We need to eat, but in some of us it becomes gluttonous. We need to drive cars but for some of us who have the ‘need for speed’ (oops!) it becomes dangerous. Medicine is a good thing and can help us in many ways but if we overdose or abuse that medication it can hurt us.

As nurturers we are constantly thinking about, caring for, and tending to the needs of others. It is our God given ability as wives and mothers, and a firm attribute of our gender. The problem comes in when we begin to speak out of the thoughts that consume our minds and our hearts and all of a sudden we are saying things that we shouldn’t be. Men are not exempt from this, but it is definitely something that women struggle with more because of their orientation toward people.

The issue, truly, is not just to try to control our tongue. Brother James tells us that is almost impossible anyway. The issue is to keep a clean and repentant heart toward the Lord, then we won’t have to worry so much what comes out if we “get talking’. If we can do THAT, it is my contention that most of the garbage in the church and in the world at large can be cleaned up. selah.

Teen years are the ones we anticipate with all of our might when we are nine years old longing to be like our seemingly cool and confident older sister. They are years we ride through like the roller coaster at Six Flags while we are living them, unsure of our appearance, our intelligence, our ability to be a desirable friend or mate, unsure of our future and our place in society.

They are years we look back on with a mixture of nostalgia and loathing. Part of us remembers them as “the best years of our lives”, full of parties, proms, best friends, new freedoms and experiences, and we relay that message to our children typically at the wrong moment when they are struggling most. The other part, the part we bury away somewhere where we might never find it remembers the excruciating embarrassment, the fear of our fellow peers, the desire to be perfect and seemingly forever falling short.

They are years that many parents orchestrate for their children; unwittingly placing horrendous burdens on their teens by harboring secret agendas that lurk deep down in the heart. The prophet Jeremiah said it so succinctly,

“The heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9)

and both the parent and the child may find this truth played out during this period in their lives. Only God can know and reveal our heart to us (Ps. 139: 23) and only as we seek His guidance for our job as parents and teachers of young people (Ps. 73:24) and they seek His will for their lives and future (Mt 11:25) can some semblance of order come from this most likely chaotic time of life.

Even in the most positive of situations where the entire family is lead by godly parents (Col. 3:21) and being followed by honest, God-fearing children (Col. 3:20) there will still be clashes of the will, flaring of tempers, occasions to have to come to each other in deference and repentance. A more common scenario in the home during this time is one fraught with dissension, frustration, argument and unforgiveness.

Into this sometimes exciting, sometimes scary picture comes the classroom teacher, the youth leader; one in some way, called to work with this age group. In reality, most do NOT choose to work with this age group. It is, for many people, just to difficult to push past the hard, arrogant exterior many teens display to reach the soft, malleable part underneath. For the person called by God to work with this age, however, it can be, by far, the most fulfilling, funniest, craziest, most enjoyable age to work with. As these ones are embarking on adulthood it also lends itself to gaining for the teacher or leader the possibility of developing life long friends from this group.

Since this is an age of such rampant emotions and easily wounded feelings there are many, especially apart from God in their life, who exit this stage with hardened attitudes on the outside that say, “I can handle anything”, but hurting hearts that speak of unresolved pain and discouragement. As a former youth leader, a mother of teenagers and someone who simply cares to see our children grow to their full potentials, I believe it is of primary importance to be, above all, an encourager in the life of these young people. Just as all people crave acceptance and unconditional love, teens, more than anyone, need that constant reassurance that they are loved by God and by us. In the midst of their occasional hopelessness they need many reminders that

“God Who began a good work in us (them) will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

They need to be clearly taught that as believers they were chosen by God from the foundation of the earth to know Him. (Eph. 1:4) and serve Him and that He will not abandon them (Ps. 27:10). They need to know that God made them for His good pleasure, not for His wrath (Eph. 1:5).

Often it is difficult because of the few years a young person has lived for them to look beyond their present circumstances to see the faithfulness of God toward them. I believe God is calling us as leaders of young people to imbue our own with visions of hope for the future (Ps. 147:11), assurance of love in their life (Ps. 103;3,4) and a knowledge that their Heavenly Father will never slumber nor sleep (Ps. 121:3), but will with His eye keep watch on the evil and the good (Pro. 15:3).

In my own work with young people of this age I have learned that while they are not exactly mini-adults, they have many of the same hopes and dreams that adults have. Dreams of an abundant life filled with love and the hope of a future of purpose and directions (Jer. 29:11). As they can see the connection between those dreams and the ability of God to fulfill it for them (Ps. 37:4), they will have come a long way in their walk with God and their faith to follow Him.

These years are typically an overwhelming mix of insecurity transposed with cockiness, indecision combined with the ability to argue a point to death, and uncertainty about one’s future coupled with the sure knowledge that parents, even though they have already traveled that road, can’t possibly know anything about what they are going through.

Adolescence is a period in one’s life when one can know some of the most intense feelings of euphoria imaginable tempered by some of the cruelest moments of seemingly unbearable emotional pain that one has ever experienced or may ever experience again.

Over fifty years ago Arnold Gesell, M. D. wrote Youth-The Years Ten to Sixteen. He recognized, even then, the highly emotional nature of the teen years. “It embraces countless situations in which unnamed feelings are aroused or suppressed. These feelings in fluid or fixed forms, intense or mild, are omnipresent.”

Most, in this day and age when many teenagers are living, daily, on the precipice of self-destruction, would agree with that premise although they may not have a clue as how to deal with it. James Dobson allots a whole chapter to the subject of emotions in his work Life on the Edge. He tells teens that “we must take charge of our emotions because they are manipulated by hormones-especially in the teen years-and they wobble from early morning when we are rested, to the evening, when we’re tired”.

In an earlier passage Dobson asserts “Even the young and brave can be fooled by the shenanigans of runaway emotions” Anyone who has lived through the teen years and has a memory will remember the hormonal flights of fancy common to that age. Less remembered and understood is that this is also an age of serious emotional attachment between friends of the same sex as well as friends of the opposite. Deep commitments are made with words like forever, always, eternally and many times bonds that are formed during this time, if broken later, can leave a scar. For many the friends of their teenage years are some of the dearest they will ever know.

Peer pressure in this age group is at an all time high compared to two decades ago. Many teens like to think they are their “own person” but according to a teen in Josh McDowell’s book entitled, Why Wait, “The most important thing in life is how we are viewed by our closest friends”. McDowell quotes Merton Strommen from his book The Five Cries of Youth, “Friends are to them what bread is to the hungry and clothes to the naked.”

Most teens struggle with morality issues at sometime during their development. Children from believing families as well as unsaved are apt to struggle with issues of conscience such as cheating on tests, lying and stealing or matters of vice such a smoking, drinking or sexual immorality. Gesell addresses this thoroughly in this chapter on Ethical Sense making it clear that even in the relatively inane days of the 1950’s, and throughout all the years of adolescence this age group has struggled with what they believe to be right and wrong, true and false, good and evil.

Dobson’s more current book includes a chapter titled “Questions for the Edge”, detailing God’s laws and answering many of the same ethical questions and dilemmas for teenager today that many faced, albeit more silently, in the middle part of this century.

Webster’s Dictionary defines philosophy as the study of truth and/or knowledge. Gesell says philosophy is systemized knowledge. Teens, whether they realize it or not, are in a developmental stage when their philosophy of life is being shaped for the remainder of their lives. Apart from God’s intervention many people stay stuck in the belief system they formed for themselves at fifteen or sixteen years old. According to Gesell, teens, in general, believe in “something eternal”, “an intangible Being”, “some kind of afterlife”, but they are unclear as to what they think beyond that. I believe that it is at this age that questions of death and the point of life, God and His relevance to their life, and even the Cross and it’s significance can be raised, and a thinking, searching young person can somewhat easily be led to find the Truth.

Ambivalence has always been a common thread running through the teen years. Now, more than ever, teens are being pushed and pulled by the forces that strain at them. In a survey done by a local youth pastor, it was discovered that exactly half of the respondents felt they were moving away from their parents while the other half felt they were drawing closer. That appears to be the dichotomy of the teenage experience-one minute pulling away, the next rushing back to the security of the family nest.

Many teens, even professing Christian ones, are equally uncertain about their own moral standard. Although they may be quick to take a stand on something, they may back quite easily down when actually confronted with it. Again, we hear from McDowell, “The majority of teens want guidelines and restrictions. Ask a teenager if he wants rules and he will probably laugh at you. Deep inside, however, teens want someone in authority to say, “No further”. Yet, for many, no one does. Consequently, they become their own god."

In a surprising chapter in McDowell’s book he chronicles his first hand research on what teens really want. Like a haunting revelation he reveals “their number one desire is for a happy home life”. Not success in college, not success in business or career.
Interestingly, boys today want this even more than girls”.

Seventy five percent of the surveyed teenagers felt it was too easy to get a divorce. The second most popular answer was affection. McDowell quotes Yvonne Martin from her work Lack of Parental Closeness seen as Teen Sex Cause, “We are all running around needing to get hugged…the dilemma for some is that if I want to be touched, if I want to be held, I have to have sex”. The last need in McDowell’s survey is intimacy. “A fifteen year old girl once described intimacy as “a place where it is safe to be real”. This chapter concludes that teenagers want their homes to be happy, someone to hug them once in a while and an intimate relationship with someone-not necessarily physically intimate but emotionally intimate.

God is divine, eternal, self-existent, self-sufficient, omnipotent, merciful, all-knowing…..oh no! Not all-knowing! What do I do with the knowledge of THAT? If He knows everything, EVERYTHING about me, where can I go? Where can I hide in my shame? What can I do when my sin eats at me and causes me no sleep?

“The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” (Proverbs 15:3)

If God knows all, from creation to eternity, when we are born, how we will live, when we will die, what we will have for dinner tonight; how do I respond to that?

For those who believe in a God of the universe but do not have a personal relationship with Him it is understandable that this would be a scary thing to deal with or just go into denial about. If the view one has of their earthly father has warped the name of Father for them then it might be doubly difficult to find this a desirable attribute to contemplate.

When I began to have an on-going, worshipful, intimate, childlike relationship with the God Who loves me so much He sent His Son to die for me while I was yet a sinner, this concept became more and more a mainstay of my faith. It causes me to relax and enter into His all-loving presence even in my darkest hours and know that He knows everything about me and still loves me, accepts me and cherishes me as His very own. My sin will not hinder me, my weakness will not stop me, nothing will keep me from running to Him as I begin to correctly grasp the full weight of this attribute of God.

Psalm 139 is probably the most well known of the passages that declares God’s knowing of me. He knows when I sit and stand which means that He must know what I had for breakfast today. He knows my going out and my lying down which means He knows all about my child’s concert I went to last night and that I came home and went straight to bed. He knows the words I am going to speak, which means that He was aware of the big argument I had with my child the other day, even before we had it. He knew me even when I was in my mother’s womb being formed and He knows the day that I will die and come to be with Him.

He says that there is nowhere I can go to get away from Him. His Spirit is in the heavens and if I make my bed in hell He will be there too. In agreement with the Psalmist I will declare

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

I accept by faith what God has declared about Himself but I readily affirm by experience what He says about me. I know that I cannot, until the day I see Him face to face, know or understand all of His ways completely. Many times, even the small glimpses He gives me are too big for me to comprehend wholly.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8)

I totally agree with that statement in faith and in experience.

God’s knowledge is original. Nobody taught Him anything about anything and He cannot learn anything about us or anything in the world because he already knows it all. His knowledge is pure and undefiled. 1 Samuel 15:29 affirms this,

“And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for He is not a man, that He should repent” (NKJV)

Even though God is knowledgeable about sin there is no sin in Him that He would be affected by it. His statutes are easy to understand, if not also to accomplish in our sinful state. His ways are infallible; He will not question Himself the way an earthly parent might question their actions toward their children. Lastly, He will not forget. If He knows everything about our ways and never forgets anything about us (except our sin when we repent) how much more will He remember His own ways and His own laws?

Stepping out on my own here I would like to add that I believe that God’s knowledge is also creative. He is not a stagnant God that requires us to live under the heavy rod of rules without giving us outlets for expression in Him. I believe that as we enter more and more fully into His plan for us He reveals more and more for us to do and gives us His creative power to do it.

Reiterating the early part of my paper; what a pleasure it is to know that the God Who made the universe, the One Who rules and reigns in power and majesty not only knows every little thing about me and still loves me! While He may not condone everything that I do and He is diligent to work those things out of me. He never abandons this work of His hands and will bring to completion what He started in me until the day of Christ Jesus.

What desire for Him wells up in my heart when I allow myself to meditate on this! What excitement to follow in His perfect will floods my soul when I realize that He will never do anything that is not in my best interest or abuse me in anyway.

“The Lord is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and rich in love.
The Lord is good to all’
He has compassion on all He has made.” Psalm 145: 8,9