To Encourage You

Psalm 139:17-18 “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand.  I awake, and I am still with you.”

Do you know God?  How much do you think about Him?  Do you go days without any thoughts about Him?  Maybe you almost never think about Him, for, why would you?  I recently saw someone write the following about God: “He’s never done anything for me.”  Certainly, that person seldom, if ever, thinks about Him, and when he does, it is apparently in a negative light.  But have you ever thought about how much God thinks about you? 

In the verses above, God reveals an awesome truth about himself.  It’s the fact that He thinks about you and me all the time.  His thoughts toward us are “more than the sand.”  This is true for each and every person alive on the face of the earth.  This is just one of the many proofs of His vast love toward us, His “wide, and long, and high, and deep” love (Ephesians 3:18). 

I remember when I was dating the one who is now my wife and planning to be married to her.  Although I was working at a job and had day to day responsibilities, I found that I was thinking about her all the time!  I couldn’t stop. Thoughts of her occupied my whole day.  It’s because I loved her very much and couldn’t wait to be with her and speak to her.  That’s just a little taste of God’s love toward us and his thoughts about us.  Can you even imagine how awesome it is to have the God of the universe think about us at all, even for a moment; yet he is thinking about us all the time.  And his thoughts are thoughts of good will towards us.  He says in Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”  In other words, he is always thinking about how to bless us and to give us a future full of hope.  How can we not think about such a One as this?  Yet we have the choice of either embracing this love, or of spurning it, rejecting it, ignoring it.  Sadly, that’s what most people do, for we are told that “He came unto his own and his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). In response, Jesus expressed His own and His Father’s love in these words: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing (Luke 13:34-35)!” 

God help us to have thoughts toward this lover of our souls that are even a tiny fraction of the thoughts He has toward us.