If we’re honest with ourselves, when we ask for someone’s feedback or opinion, what we’re often looking for is for them to flatter us, to praise us, to compliment us.
The Psalmist asks, “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 139:23-24)
What is he asking for? What does it mean for God to search, know, try, and see me? The words are painting a picture of winnowing.
In the winnowing process grains are thrown up and into the wind. As the wind blows, it separates and carries off with it the chaff, shell, husk, leaving only the grain. So to ask God to search us and to know our heart is to ask for the wind of his Spirit to blow through our lives, separating and carrying off that which is grievous to him and leaving only that which is pleasing to him.
God isn’t seeking to flatter you, but to know you—to winnow you.
The place of winnowing is often a place of solitude. It’s a place we must seek, because in solitude we remove ourselves from the presence of others in order to draw near to God. But it’s a dangerous place. We will enter a place of vulnerability and of stripping away. Our heart will be uncovered, and all the gods or idols we seek, trust in, and rely on will be exposed.
In solitude we move away from the shore of our dependency on others and on other sources of comfort and security out into the ocean and a dependency on God alone. There are things, though, that can only be discovered, learned, given, and received in solitude. It is there that we can finally begin to ask and answer a pivotal question for our life: whose eyes matter most to me?
When no one is watching you, when no one’s eyes are on you or on what you do, how do you feel? Angry that your work is going unnoticed? Anxious that you seem forgotten? Afraid that you are unknown? Or do you feel content and at rest, because there is, in fact, One who sees and knows you?
God isn’t seeking to flatter you, but to know you. His eyes are looking for and are fixed on the humble of heart, not the proud. And humility is built in solitude, in the place of winnowing, one on one with God.
Your willingness to be known by God can set you free from the crushing need to be flattered, noticed, praised by others. It can free you to return and reenter society a freed man or woman, no longer clinging to, trusting in, or relying on the praise and admiration of others.
It is for freedom that Christ has set you free—Christ who removed himself from others to seek God’s will, who was abandoned by all his friends and family, who was left alone with his enemies, who was forsaken by God at a cross, where he suffered and endured full and complete isolation and separation from God.
Jesus went into that solitude for you, so that your sins which separate you from what matters most, God himself, might be forgiven and removed as far as the east is from the west. Yet, he was crucified not only for your forgiveness, but also for your eternal life.
Upon his resurrection, Jesus conquered sin and death and he was glorified in God’s very own presence with the glory he had with God before the world existed (John 17:5). It is this very same Jesus who has opened up the way for you to enter into the very presence of God. He saves and brings you in himself, because he longs for you to be with him, to see his glory, and to know and be known by God, in whose eyes you are as fully loved and accepted as Jesus is. Forever.