If someone comes to our house with a search warrant, we may feel guarded. Can we trust this person to be fair? What if they’ve fabricated evidence? Certainly we don’t trust the person to be kind.

Think of how much the psalmist must trust God to invite God to search his heart! With whom would we be willing to have our deepest motives revealed, to be tested to see if any bit of sharp or cutting thought existed? The psalmist must trust that God does not try to catch us doing something wrong or seek to “teach us a lesson.” He must feel completely safe with God.

Many of us don’t feel safe with God, especially if we’ve experienced a lot of darkness. But God is a creator of light, and God works behind the scenes to help us shed darkness.

A friend once told me that God had put him out on a ledge and made him dangle there in panic. My other friend turned to him and said, “Don’t think anything bad about God” as if God would punish him for saying or even thinking such a thing about God. God is good and God is love—patient and kind, firm in truth but doing what is best for us. As we settle into that realization, we can trust God enough to invite God to examine us and learn what’s really going on below the surface.

Best of all, the search ends with God guiding us in the way forward—“the way everlasting”—from darkness to light. If something is found to be wrong or if nothing is found to be wrong, there’s a next step toward moving into union with God.