Episode 1574: God Knows My Name

===

Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 1,574 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

Dr Julia DiGangi: Hey, I'm Dr. Julia DiGangi. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, developing your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to lead well, even when it's hard is key.

One way to be inspired is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

Scott Maderer: They really want to get to know us. We respond by wanting to get to know them, and that is what the Lord is calling for us to do. Because the Lord has searched me and known me, and we are called to return that by knowing [00:01:00] God and knowing. Each other. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling in the Inspired Stewardship Podcast who will learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk about Psalm 1 39 verses one through six and 13 through 18. I talk about how we search for meaning in knowing God, and I also talk about how searching God calls us into relationship with God and with others. Psalm 1 39 verses one through six and 13 through 18 says, oh Lord, you [00:02:00] have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before Word is on my tango, Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It is so high that I cannot attain it. For it was you who formed my inward parts. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld. My unformed substance in your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them is yet existed. How weighty to me or your thoughts, so God, how vast is the sum of them? I try to count them. They're [00:03:00] more than the sand. I come to the end and I am still with you. Maybe I'm showing my age, but have you ever heard the expression search me?

I'm sure it's not a phrase that's used that much anymore. It shows that I'm out of date old, out of the coolness. I don't know if whatever is what's used now or something else. But that idea of saying, I don't know. By saying some phrase like, whatever, or search me a, an admission of ignorance.

Sometimes an admission of kind of complacency or not caring, it refers to something we don't know, but it also is admitting that it's something that maybe we don't even want to know or we don't wanna bother knowing. It seems. That nowadays, we're in an age where everyone has to [00:04:00] be certain of everything.

There's no doubt, there's no grayness. Everything is either black or white. We don't admit when there's something beyond our understanding or experience or knowledge. We're all experts of all things, and I think that's one of the problems the church has these days is. We're no longer really sure what we believe because we want to move beyond just a basic childish faith, and we want to begin to incorporate all the stuff that we know that the humans have learned about how the world works.

Since the Bible was written, we want to think about how we work and how the universe works and how all of this fits together and how does it fit into how we understand and know and believe. About God and faith and religion and all of these things. Sometimes it's like the Bible is so outdated. How could it possibly [00:05:00] hold anything that's relevant to today?

The modern world and science and all that it studied seems to bump up against faith and tradition and religion and they don't match and therefore something has to go. And it seems like for a lot of us, what goes is actually. Thinking deeply about theology, thinking deeply about faith, thinking deeply about what do the words really mean?

Instead of working at it, we just stop thinking about it. We can't seem to fit these things together, so we just give up and don't bother. When asked, what do you believe about God? Most people don't have an answer. Instead they just say. Search me or whatever it's easier. But Psalm 1 39 at the beginning is using, search me in a different way.

[00:06:00] It's using, searching, or rather the acknowledgement of God's searching as part of our existence is something that we can use to begin to reclaim our faith and make it real, make it reasonable, make it part of us. And faith, though it may seem strange to think of faith as reasonable, it can be reasonable.

It's something that we can hold onto, but at the same time, we have to acknowledge that there's always something beyond knowledge about faith. The Psalm even admits that the Psalm ends with an admission. That knowing all of God is always beyond us, but it starts with an affirmation that we are known by God.

God has searched us out. We are known by God, and that is the [00:07:00] nature of the relationship. In fact, that's the key. The Psalm declares that the only knowledge of God is reached through relationship. That's what the creeds that we say, that's what some of those words that we say, the traditions are echoing the Lord's prayer.

We look at God and we say, our father. Yeah. That's not to say that God is reduced to a human role, but rather to lift up that parenting is part of the divine, whether your father or mother, whether you care for birth children or adopted children, or just children baptized into the family of God, we are then at reflecting into the world an aspect of God.

We believe that God cares, and so we also care when we act out of love and reach out to somebody about injustice or lift somebody up who's down trodden, we're reflecting [00:08:00] the glory of God. God is a creator. We recognize that in our liturgy. We understand that creation has happened. How it's happened, doesn't matter.

It doesn't say that there's a conflict with any other belief, but God ultimately is the creator. We talk about God as the Almighty, which says that God is more than we can grasp with our understanding. God is bigger than we can ever really know, but that doesn't mean we can't trust it. That doesn't mean we can't sense it.

That doesn't mean we can't see it and feel it and believe it. Because even when we can't feel it, even when we think God has lost his grip on the world, we still can look around and see evidence of that power and that presence with confidence and hope. But [00:09:00] why are we struggling so hard to understand God in the first place?

Why do we seek to know God? To see the face of God, to know God's will? It's honestly an answer to the fact that God has first searched us. That's what Psalm 1 39 is saying. That's what the gospels say. That's what Paul's letters say, is it says that a response to God, knowing and seeking us is for us to know and seek God.

God seeks us. We seek him. God loves us. We love him. And we seek and love each other. God knows everything about us and loves us anyway. God is not studying us like a scientist. No. Instead, God knows us intimately and personally. And that calls us to know others in the same way. And think about it, when you [00:10:00] meet someone that actually shows interest in us, not just superficially, but as a real person, they really want to get to know us.

We respond by wanting to get to know them. And that is what the Lord is calling for us to do because the Lord has searched me and known me. And we are called to return that by knowing God and knowing each other. Thanks for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor. Go over to facebook.com/inspired [00:11:00] stewardship and like our Facebook page and market.

That you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.