You Know My Heart

One day a while back I was trying to spend time in prayer, but I couldn’t seem to focus. I was overwhelmed with questions, anxieties, and future plans. I had so many thoughts running through my head and was struggling to sit and rest in the presence of God. My prayers were scattered and distracted, and I was frustrated with myself for the way I was feeling.

But the phrase that kept coming to me was this: God, you know my heart. I was so tired, so unable to verbalize to God what I was feeling. All I knew was that it was just too much. But God knew my heart. I didn’t have to explain anything to Him, didn’t have to try to make Him understand. He just knew.

This thought put me at peace. I was assured that despite the chaos going on in my head, God was still able to make sense of what I was feeling. God knew the depth of my frustration, my confusion, my exhaustion. He knew that I was overwhelmed. And as I was released from the burden of having to explain myself to Him, I could simply sit in the peace that He was giving me. My time of prayer didn’t have to add to the fatigue; instead I was able to find rest in the Lord.

It feels so good to be known by someone. I’m sure we’ve all had times in which we felt that no one knew what we were going through; those moments can feel so lonely. And even in our most intimate relationships, there will always be some level of distance between ourselves and our loved ones. No one will ever know us entirely.

Except God.

He knows us – the good along with the bad – and He loves us. The darkest parts of ourselves, our sins and insecurities, do not scare Him away. And the pain, fear, and exhaustion that we feel, that can be so hard to express to others, He already knows and is already taking care of.

I feel so secure and so loved when I think about how deeply my God knows me. He is “intimately acquainted with all my ways” and He “understands my thought from afar”. He knows my heart – my anxious heart, my troubled heart, my weary heart – and I am blessed to be known and loved so deeply.

Related Scripture

Jeremiah 1:5

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…”

Psalm 139:1-6

“O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful to me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.”

Psalm 139:23

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts.”

1 Corinthians 13:12

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”