Many in our culture have come to associate doctrine with dusty textbooks, cranky professors and lapsarian debates, believing that it is impractical and has little to do with the daily Christian walk. It largely not their fault because the way much doctrine is presented, they are exactly right. But this raises the objection that doctrine has been presented in a wrong light.

Doctrine is essentially the study of theology, which is itself nothing less than the study of God. We have erred greatly in allowing people to think that such study could ever be impractical. What could be more practical than having our view of God enlarged, for when our view of God is enlarged, our joy in Him and dependence upon Him are enlarged accordingly. Scripture clearly and repeatedly connects doctrine with doxology, learning about God with praising Him. We see this both in the New Testament (an example is discussed here) and the Old.

For example, Psalm 139 considers God’s omniscience, His omnipresence and His omnipotence, three very important doctrines simply meaning that God knows all, He is everywhere and He is all powerful. The Psalmist does not present these truths as cold academic filler but as fuel for his soul.

The Psalmist begins by discussing God’s omniscience, the fact that God knows everything in verses 1-5:

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.

I don’t know about you, but there are times when I need to be reminded that I am not alone, that no matter my comings or goings, God knows. When I am startled by life, I can take comfort in knowing that God is not. God is not surprised, God is not “reactionary,” He knows things even before they happen. Rather than the response that many of us might have that God gives us no privacy, the Psalmist exclaims in verse 6: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.” The Psalmist finds inexpressable comfort in the fact that God knows all, do we?

Next, in verses 7-12, the Psalmist moves to discuss God’s omnipresence, the fact that God is everywhere:

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.

Again, rather than resent a lack of privacy as our pride would likely do, the Psalmist takes great comfort and joy in the fact that he is never alone. There is nowhere that he can go outside of God’s loving guidance. If it were not so, could we say with the Psalmist in Psalm 46:1 “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble?” God is always a very present help and He continually proves Himself as such. Think of the word of encouragement that comes exactly when needed or the simple gesture that reminds us we are not alone. If we deny coincidence (which I think Scripturally we must) then we must see these as reminders that, no matter where we are, no matter what we are going through, God is a “very present help.”

God is bigger than we will ever know and we must ask His forgiveness for continually trying to lower Him to our standards rather than asking that our view of Him would be increased that we might see Him as He really is because once we see that, our only response is praise and dependance. Woven throughout the entire Psalm is the fact of God’s omnipotence, that He can do anything. Whether it be a meditation on the fact that this very God knit us together in verses 13-16, the plea that God would destroy His enemies in verse 19 or the acknowledgement of the fact that God “hems us in” of verse 5.

These truths about God, these doctrines, His omniscience, His omnipresence and His omnipotence are balm for the weary soul. We are never alone. As the Psalmist says in verse 18, “I awake and I am still with you.” When we allow Scripture to present God as He truly is, our only response is, with the Psalmist in verses 23-24: “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!” We are laid bare before a God who is able to lead us “in the way everlasting,” and our lives must demonstrate that we believe that He can and will.