Welcome to Lent!  This season, we’re blessed with a set of Lenten devotionals by contributing author Lee Hinkle.  Find out more about Lee at the bottom of this article, or at hinkledownunder.com.

Sunday

Sundays are a day of celebration during Lent; a day of feasting. This will be the day that we have a reading from the Book of Psalms. We will allow it to be our reading, meditation, prayer and action. It can be all four things for us. Let us bless the LORD. Let us praise the LORD.

One meditation for 3 days. Thanks for the grace.

Reading, Meditation, Prayer and Action

Psalm 139 (ESV)

Search Me, O God, and Know My Heart

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
     you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
     and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
     behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
     and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
     it is high; I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
     Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
     If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
     and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
     and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
     and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
     the night is bright as the day,
     for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts;
     you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
     my soul knows it 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 saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
     the days that were formed for me,
     when as yet there was none of them.

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.

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
     O men of blood, depart from me!
They speak against you with malicious intent;
     your enemies take your name in vain.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
     And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
     I count them my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
     Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
     and lead me in the way everlasting!

-Psalm 139, ESV

• • •

Lee Hinkle is an American pastor who, with his family of 7, felt God’s call to pack up and plant a church in Fremantle, a town in Perth, Western Australia.  Last Summer, the Hinkles left Indianapolis and arrived in Oz to begin their work.  You can follow their adventures at hinkledownunder.com.