October 22, 2019 – Psalm 139:23–24

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
—Psalm 139:23–24

Saints who ask to be searched must be willing to submit to anything that God sees fit to lay on them.20
Saints should be prepared to receive answers to prayer in their own persons. Perhaps God lets them fall ill just when they had some very great object in view. Well, it is intended for their good, therefore they ought not to brood or murmur but receive with thankfulness the good that is intended for them.
It is necessary that these trials should be awarded us, for it will not do that God should always feed his children on sweets. We need severe discipline; it makes us good soldiers. A mere silken religion that passes through no trials has little productiveness in it. These providential trials take away the dross and tin and make us strong in the Lord. How lovely is the character of the Christian who has patiently endured the trials through which she or he has had to pass. These individuals quiet themselves under all the dispensations of providence; they receive everything as bestowed on them from their Father. The more holy Christians become, the more necessary they find it to lay their whole hearts before him and ask him that he may search them and purify them, until he is satisfied with his own work. Christians, are you in the habit of asking the Lord to satisfy himself, to do that which will bring you into a condition that will please him? Don’t you long for the pruning knife to be applied, to be purged of all your selfishness and everything that is offensive to God, so that you may stand before him in meekness and love, while he looks on you and says, this is my handiwork, and it is very good. Ask God to search you, then, and do not be afraid to have it done. Look on all the trials of life as coming from your heavenly Father, in order that if you are really self-deceived you may know it, and if you are not, that you may grow up into the likeness of the Son of God.
—Charles G. Finney