Simone Biles an Olympic Gold Medalist, Mental Health Advocate, and Survivor of Sexual Abuse told Vogue in 2020 that she was "very depressed" in 2016 as fellow gymnasts came forward about Nassar's abuse.
“At one point I slept so much because, for me, it was the closest thing to death without harming myself. It was an escape from all of my thoughts, from the world, from what I was dealing with. It was a really dark time," she said.
It is in these dark times, that we must be intentional about asking God to search us.
In the biblical sense, to search means to penetrate or to examine intimately. The psalmist asks God to penetrate him, to examine him intimately. He further asks God to see if there is any offensive way in him. He doesn’t just ask the question as an exercise in ‘question asking,’ the psalmist asks with an intention. That intention is for God to see if there is anything offensive or wicked in him. Are you willing to ask God the same question--with intention? To attain authentic intimacy, asking God to penetrate and examine us intimately is a question we must be intentional about asking.
What are the benefits of asking God to search us?
Asking to be searched sheds light in darkness. When I realized that I was having challenges with intimacy and could not connect with people as I wanted, I asked God to search me. It was not until then that I realized that what I had labeled as a man who was 28 years old ‘dating’ a teenager who had just turned 16 years old was not dating at all. It was rape. It was this identification of what I had experienced as rape that shed led to light in my darkness of disconnection. Disconnection from my body, disconnection from my spirit, disconnection from me.
Asking to be searched stops the lies. Until this point, I had both been lied to and been lying to myself. Some of the lies I had told myself were: 'I am bad at relationships; there's something wrong with me; if I just try a little harder; drink a little more alcohol; loosen up a little more;" Then, I will be able to connect with people. The truth was that I had an unhealed wound, the lie was that living in a place of unhealed wounds was normal.
Asking to be searched gets to the source of the symptoms--sometimes treating the symptoms is helpful for immediate relief, but does nothing for the long-term. Why had I felt numb in my relationships? Why had I stayed in relationships too long? Why had I thought it ok for my companions to undervalue my presence in their lives? Why did I devalue myself and my needs in relationships? The source-- My power had been violently taken away.
God wants to give us our power back and to equip us to use that power in Godly ways. Asking God to search us is one of the practices that God gives to help us connect to our power and use it in mighty ways. When God searched me, light was shed in my darkness, the lies were stopped, and I was led to the source of my symptoms. It was not however, just the source of my symptoms to which I was led, I was led to the source of my power--God.
In what area of your life will you ask God to search you?
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